This blog follows my research into the history of our local movie theater— The Goetz— and surrounding personalities. The history of early film is rooted in the political and economic situation of Austria-Hungary. One of the most forward promoters of bordello-culture from onward was Elisabeth of Austria, wife of Franz Joseph from A poster featuring Romy Schneider in the role she made famous. Unfortunately, in the case of the Empress, such taints are not dishonest and are justly subversive.
According to her biographer Katrin Unterreiner, this turned Sisi into the type of empress whose picture soldiers would hang above their beds. Sisi: Myth and Truth. An image of a s German corset at the Miedermuseum in Heubach is below, courtesy of Redthreaded. This is a linen corset from the s, not quite like the one Sisi wore…. Her response was to stop having sex with her husband and flaunt the dereliction of her duty to produce heirs in an age where children often died before adulthood.
In Lieu of a Love Life: These paintings of Elisabeth were done by Franz Winterhalter in , shortly after she stopped sleeping with her husband. The second of the private paintings. The linen corset pictured above is not quite like the ones Sisi wore, hers were leather. This is an important point because leather corsets— serious cinch— were the corsets associated with Parisian prostitutes, according to David Kunzle, an art historian at the University of California.
Sisi tied these leather garments so tightly that they were useless after a few weeks. No one has done this. Kunzle summarizes the prevailing social attitude:. Its major concentration was probably among the lower-middle classes The tight-lacer stood in a very difficult position within a society generally and vocally hostile to the practice In closing ranks against the enemy, they developed the identity and something of the psychology of an oppressed minority.
The accusation of tight-lacing was a serious one. It cannot have been easy for any girl or young woman, whatever her compensations in the form of male admiration, to cope with being officially branded as a depraved, criminal being, as a potential infanticide and willful destroyer of posterity. It is thus not surprising that few tight-lacers could admit publicly to the practice The pro-corset party called upon an exceedingly prestigious example— that of the beautiful Empress Elizabeth of Austria, reputed to possess the smallest waist ever seen.
