Luise von Österreich-Toskana

Luise Antoinette Maria von Österreich-Toskana was born in Salzburg on December 2, 1870. She belonged to the Tuscan branch of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and was the eldest daughter of Ferdinand IV, the former Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his second wife, Alice of Bourbon-Parma. Her father had lived in exile since the Sardinian-French-Austrian War, and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany had been incorporated into the new Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Luise grew up with nine siblings, including Leopold Ferdinand, who later lived under the common name Leopold Wölfling, as well as several brothers and sisters who entered into prominent military or dynastic marriages. From an early age, Luise was expected to marry suitably. Several suitors from the houses of Wettin and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha were interested in her, but she initially rejected them. In 1890 she met the five-years-older Saxon prince Friedrich August Johann. He was the eldest son of Crown Prince Georg and was regarded as the future heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Saxony. The couple married in Vienna on November 21, 1891. Through this marriage Luise became a Saxon princess and later attained the rank of crown princess. At first, the marriage fulfilled the expectations of the Saxon royal family. Within a few years, Luise gave birth to seven children: the princes Georg, Christian, and Ernst Heinrich, and the princesses Margarete Karola, Maria Alix, and Anna Monika Pia. Another daughter died at birth. When King Albert died in 1902, Luises father-in-law ascended the Saxon throne as Georg I. Her husband became crown prince, and Luise herself became Crown Princess of Saxony. At court, however, Luise increasingly encountered difficulties. She came from a relatively informal, Italian-influenced environment and struggled to adapt to the strict demands of court ceremony. Her relationship with her sister-in-law Mathilde, her husband’s eldest sister, was particularly poor. At the same time, Luises natural manner made her popular with the public. Her vivacity and family life with her many children won her sympathy, but also aroused the suspicion of King Georg and his interior minister, Count Metzsch-Reichenbach. More and more intrigues and rumors arose against her. It eventually became known that Luise was having a relationship with André Giron, the Belgian language teacher of her children. At the end of 1902, she was pregnant with her seventh child. On December 9, she left Dresden, supposedly to rest, and traveled with two ladies-in-waiting to Lake Geneva in order to meet Giron. Her brother Leopold Ferdinand helped her escape; he himself wanted to leave the Habsburg household to marry a woman of bourgeois background. In Geneva, Luise met Giron and told him that he might be the father of her unborn child. Swiss police and the press soon discovered where the two were staying, and a major public scandal became unavoidable. The affair caused a sensation in the German states and Switzerland. Luise was harshly condemned for leaving her husband and several of her children and living with a commoner. King Georg established a special court, which dissolved the marriage on February 11, 1903. Friedrich August was not even questioned during the proceedings. Shortly before the divorce, Luises relationship with Giron also ended for unknown reasons. On May 4, 1903, she gave birth to her daughter Anna Monika Pia in Lindau. A physician commissioned by the Saxon court administration concluded from the child’s physical features that Friedrich August was the father. The girl was therefore recognized as a princess of Saxon blood. The Saxon king granted Luise the title Countess of Montignoso and a generous allowance. In return, her youngest daughter was also expected to live and be raised in Dresden with her siblings. Luise resisted this arrangement and tried to prevent the child from being handed over. Emperor Franz Joseph also strongly condemned her conduct and initially refused to recognize the divorce. After an unsuccessful attempt to see her children at Dresden’s Taschenberg Palace in December 1904, Anna Monika was taken from her as well. Although her financial allowance was increased, the Saxon court enforced her separation from the children. In 1907, Luise married the Italian composer Enrico Toselli, who was twelve years younger than she was. Their son, Carlo Emmanuele Filiberto, was born in 1908. The relationship soon broke down, however: the couple separated that same year, and their marriage was officially dissolved in 1912. Their son remained with his father. It was only on the occasion of this second marriage that Franz Joseph recognized the dissolution of Luises first marriage. At the same time, he expelled her from the Habsburg family and deprived her of her titles and privileges. After staying with her uncle Ludwig Salvator in Mallorca, Luise returned to Brussels. In 1911 she published her memoirs. In them, she primarily blamed her deceased father-in-law, King Georg, and Saxon politicians for her fate. She claimed that they had plotted against her out of jealousy of her popularity and fear of her future position as queen. After 1918, she was no longer permitted to use her birth name and called herself Countess Maria d’Ysette. Nevertheless, she continued to receive regular payments from Saxony for many years and lived comparatively carefree in the Brussels district of Ixelles. When German troops invaded Belgium in 1940, these payments ended. At the age of seventy, Luise fell into complete poverty and eventually supported herself by selling flowers. She died alone and impoverished in Brussels on March 23, 1947. She was initially buried in a paupers’ cemetery. In 1953, the Hohenzollern family had her remains exhumed and reburied at Hedingen Monastery in Sigmaringen. Her letters and personal papers are preserved in the Dresden State Archives. Several restaurants in Dresden also commemorate her name and her Tuscan origins.