TRAGEDY OF 1889 RECALLED

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27751, 31 August 1955, Page 7

TRAGEDY OF 1889 RECALLED

Death Of Austrian Crown Prince MAYERLING LODGE INQUIRIES (Special Corresvondent N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, August 29. Experts from the Austrian State Archives have examined and confirmed the authenticity of a document, found recently in Berlin and now in the hands of the Vienna newspaper, “Die Press,” as the secret report written by Baron Krauss, the Vienna Chief of Police in 1889, on the Mayerling tragedy, says the correspondent in Vienna of “The Times.” The report, which is 250 pages long, with annexes, and is mostly in Baron Krauss’s handwriting, reveals the full circumstances of the death of the Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf and Countess Maria Vetsera on January 30, 1889, at the Crown Prince’s hunting lodge at Mayerling, a village about 20 niles south-west of Vienna. These details were hushed up by irder of the Emperor Franz Josef. The report apparently confirms that the Crown Prince shot Countess Vet- : 'era with a revolver and then shot himself with a sporting gun. It also discloses that to avoid attracting public attention the dead body of the Countess was dressed, seated in a carriage and driven to the neighbouring town of Heiligenkreuz, where she was secretly buried without religious rites. A report describing this macabre journey is given by its organiser, the deputy police chief. The document - also contains a telegram in cipher (with the key) instrucing him to do this. Among the annexes is a copy of a letter, of which originally 20 copies were made for private circulation, written by Countess Vetsera’s mother in her daughter’s defence. The Emperor had them confiscated by the police and destroyed. The document shows that the Crown Prince had been under police observation for some considerable time before his death, and gives hitherto unknown details concerning the Crown Prince’s other involvements and the complications .to which they were leading. The document was found in Berlin among the papers of a dead Berlin Municipal Councillor, Mr Payerle, who was in charge of requisitioning dwellings in Berlin after the war. He is said to have found the document in a deserted Berlin flat. It is not clear how it got to Berlin, but Austrians believe that it was taken there in 1938 by a former Nazi Deputy Police Chief of Vienna, MrFitztum. Legally it is now the property of the Austrian State.