https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharina_Schratt
Katharina Schratt (11 September 1853 – 17 April 1940)
Katharina Schratt was an Austrian actress. She took an early interest in the theatre, and her parents' efforts to discourage this only increased her ambition. At 18, despite family opposition she joined the Hoftheater in Berlin, achieving considerable success in a short time. She then went back to Austria after only a few months, to join the Viennese city theater. She soon came to the notice of the 'stage door Johnnies' (or whatever the Austrian equivalent was), and one, Hungarian aristocrat Nikolaus Kiss de Ittebe pursued and married her in 1879. She then toured overseas, and appeared on stage in New York, after which she returned permanently to Vienna's Hofburgtheater, She was one of Austria's most
popular actresses until she retired in 1900 ....
But, her private life wasn't quite as placid, she appeared at the 1885 Industrial Exhibition in Vienna and attracted the roving eye of the Emperor Franz Joseph, who invited her to perform for visiting Czar Alexander III of Russia. He soon invited her to perform for him
betwixt the bedsheets and she became Franz Joseph's
intimate companion and mistress .... and they stayed together, even after the murder of the Emperor's wife, Elisabeth, in 1898.
They had one falling out 1900, due to a difference in opinions, but after about a year resumed their affair, and remained together until his death in November 1916 ..... one assumes that her husband reaped the usual rewards for his acquiescence ... titles or promotions. She was
amply rewarded with generous gifts including a mansion near the Schönbrunn Palace, and a three-story palace on the Kärntner Ring, just across from the Vienna State Opera ...
handy for work then.
After the death of Franz Joseph, she lived completely withdrawn in her palace on the Kärntner Ring. She turned down large financial offers for her memoirs (but then she had a decent pension from Franz). In later years, Schratt became deeply religious (
don't they all?). After her death in 1940 at the age of 86, she was buried in the Hietzing Cemetery in Vienna.
Trivia:
- It is said that Franz Joseph's wife Empress Elisabeth actually promoted the relationship between the actress and the Emperor
Pictures:
