Sissi's World: The Empress Elisabeth in Memory and Myth ed. by Maura E. Hametz and Heidi Schlipphacke (review)

Who, really, was Elisabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, imperial consort to Franz Joseph, better known as "Sissi"? In the excellent and engaging Sissi's World: The Empress Elisabeth in Memory and Myth, we learn the answer to this question: it is the wrong one to ask. Elisabeth the monarch died at an assassin's hand in 1898, but Sissi the symbol, clad in many meanings, is alive and well today, manifested kaleidoscopically in a "diverse constellation of consumer objects and cultural works" from across the globe (24). This volume, much more transcultural and interdisciplinary than its cover billing as German Studies/History would suggest, appraises the Sissi phenomenon in thirteen critical essays rooted in myriad analytical perspectives. It is a collection best read, in my opinion, from cover to cover, for this is the only way to fully appreciate how well its chapters cohere around its fragmented and protean subject.

Editors Maura E. Hametz and Heidi Schlipphacke frame the twin aims of the book around twin absences: the lack of a scholarly treatment of "Sissimania" and the nonexistence of a Sissi cult in the United States, despite her lasting cachet in Europe and Asia. They propose that the "explanation for the veneration of and popular fascination with the Empress very likely resides in the interplay of myth and memory" (3) and so divide the volume in two parts, "Memory" and "Myth." But ultimately the division matters little, precisely because of that interplay, which is palpable throughout. Part I ("Memory") is vaguely more "historical" in approach, with an unstated emphasis on material culture and memorialization, while Part II ("Myth") dwells more in the post-1950s contemporary.

In Part I, Christiane Hertel's chapter examines the unstable monumentality of Ulrike Truger's sculptural tribute Elisabeth—Zwang—Flucht—Freiheit. It fits nicely with Maura E. Hametz and Borut Klabjan's account of the cultural-political contestation of Trieste's Elisabeth statue. Beth Ann Muellner offers a critical reading of the Sissi Museum at Vienna's Hofb urg and an analysis at how visitors engage with its displays, leading fruitfully into Judith Szapor and András Lénárt's history of the Érzsébet cult in Hungary and its post-1989 commemoration at the former royal palace in Gödöllő. The iconic official portrait of Elisabeth painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter receives a subversive reading against her erotically charged carte de visite collection in Olivia Gruber Florek's contribution. Carolin Maikler looks at fashion designer/film director Karl Lagerfeld's forays into Sissi memory-work. To round out the section, Fei-Hsien Wang and Ke-chin Hsia provide a fascinating glimpse onto Sissi ("Xixi") fandom in China and the ways her image is refracted through the prism of post-Maoist consumer culture.

Part II kicks off with a double feature, as it were, of essays arriving from both film studies and queer studies. Heidi Schlipphacke reads Ernst Marischka's Sissi films against the typical grain of Heimatfilm by revealing their themes of displacement and temporal queerness, followed immediately by Susanne Hochreiter's broader evaluation of Elisabeth as a queer icon. Anita McChesney gives a postcolonial reading of Lilian Faschinger's novel Wiener Passion to highlight the ways it challenges prevailing national images of the Austrian "imagined community." In her chapter, Elizabeth Black studies the stage and screen versions of Jean Cocteau's L'Aigle à deux têtes for the work's dreamy blurring of history and legend. Focusing on themes of the body, self-representation, and female autonomy, Kate Thomas compares the fate of Elisabeth to Queen Victoria and Princess Di. Finally, Susanne Kelley examines how Sissi has been deployed in the construction of the Habsburg myth and the branding of Vienna as a tourist destination on both sides of the Atlantic.

While the editors do a fine job introducing the project...