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

Hametz and Schlipphacke's Sissi's World: The Empress Elisabeth in Memory and Myth explores various manifestations of Sissimania around the world, including Sissi-inspired tourism and Sissi facebook groups. Although there are references to the historical Elisabeth, the volume is primarily interested in Sissi as an iconic figure. Hametz and Schlipphacke's introduction draws on Mosse, Halbwachs, Benjamin, and Barthes to highlight the importance of memory, myth, and nostalgia in the reception of the Austrian empress, who remains little known in the United States. They link the emergence of Sissimania to the decline of the Habsburg empire but also argue that all figurations of Sissi are invariably beholden to the respective Zeitgeist. If there is a through line in the reception of Sissi, it lies in the stark contradictions that mark her life and image: she was an aloof aristocrat and a champion of the empire's minorities; a rebel who resisted the constraints of the Austrian court and a slave to self-chastising dieting and exercise regimes.

The first section of the volume, entitled "Memory," opens with Christiane Hertel's essay on Ulrike Truger's marble sculpture Elisabeth—Zwang—Flucht—Freiheit. Hertel discusses Elisabeth—Zwang—Flucht—Freiheit in the context of its placement in Vienna, of Truger's other works and of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's sculpture of Maria Theresia as Queen of Hungary. She posits that the sculpture is caught in a permanent state of tension, as Truger folds three figures into one. Echoing the baroque concept of "Dreiansichtigkeit," Truger avoids sublation (Aufhebung) since no one view absorbs the other. In the following article, Beth Ann Muellner argues that the Sissi Museum in Vienna's Hofburg functions as a vehicle of nostalgia. Muellner pays special attention to the exhibit's focus on corporeality conveyed through death masks and clothing and explores how such corporeality encourages "innervative encounters" in the Benjaminian sense.

Judith Szapor and Andras Lenart trace Sissi's fate in postcommunist Hungary. They tie Hungary's increasing openness toward the West in the 1990s to a new-found appreciation of the Habsburg dynasty, manifest in the focus on Sissi in the restored Gödöllö Royal Palace near Budapest. Sissi's prominent status in Hungary is rooted in the empress's love for Hungarian culture and in her only political intervention: Sissi helped to broker the 1867 compromise of the Dual Monarchy that eased the rift created by the 1848 revolution in Hungary.

Maura E. Hametz and Borut Klabjan analyze the history of the bronze statue Elisabetta at the train station in Trieste, which was erected in the wake of Elisabeth's assassination at Lake Geneva in 1898. The statue symbolized a hated monarchy to some and an homage to a beloved champion of oppressed peoples and of a multiethnic empire to others. Upon her reemergence in 1997 after decades in storage, Elisabetta served to tie Trieste's Habsburg past to its central European future, while eliding Italian fascism.

Olivia Gruber Florek offers an interpretation of the famous Franz Xaver Winterhalter portraits of the empress in the context of the Gallery of Beauties, created by Sissi's uncle, King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and Sissi's own Albums of Beauty, which contained carte de visite reproductions of Winterhalter pictures along with photographs of Parisian prostitutes, thus linking the European aristocracy with the demimonde. Gruber Florek argues that Winterhalter's 1865 portrait deemphasizes Sissi's link to the monarchy (and to her husband) and instead highlights her individuality, thus contributing to the emerging cult of celebrity.

Carolin Maikler focuses on Karl Lagerfeld's reimagining of Sissi. His 1996 book of photographs, shot at Sissi's villa Achilleion on Corfu, centers on a love story between Achilles and a student who imagines herself a reincarnation of Sissi, while his 2014 short film about the empress, entitled Reincarnation, features an elevator attendant and a waitress who transform into...