Marie Louise, Countess Larisch von Moennich, niece and confidante of Empress Sisi, was born Marie Louise Elizabeth Mendel on 24 February 1858 at Augsburg, the illegitimate daughter of Ludwig Wilhelm, Duke in Bavaria (1831-1920) and actress Henrietta Mendel (1833-1891).

Countess Marie Larisch (L) and Baroness Mary Vetsera (R)

Her father renounced, on 9 March 1859, his rights as firstborn son, and Henrietta Mendel was created Freifrau von Wallersee on 19 May 1859 in preparation for their morganatic marriage on 28 May 1959 in Augsburg.

From 28 May 1859 she was thus Marie Louise, Freiin von Wallersee.

She became the confidante of her aunt, the Empress Sisi of Bavaria, being selected at least partly because of her skills on horseback. Their relationship was shattered by the revelation, after the Crown Prince Rudolf’s suicide at Mayerling, that Marie had acted as go-between for he and his lover Marie Vetsera.

On 20 October 1877 at Jagdschloß Gödöllő in Hungary she married Georg, Graf Larisch von Moennich, Freiherr von Ellgoth und Karwin (1855-1928). The marriage had been arranged by the Empress. They divorced on 3 December 1896. Marie had five children during this marriage, though only the first two were indisputably fathered by her husband; their first-born was oceanographer Franz-Joseph Ludwig Georg Maria, Graf Larisch van Moennich, Freiherr von Ellgoth und Karwin.

On 15 May 1897 at Munich she married musician Otto Brucks (1854-1914). They had one child, Otto.

She met and conversed with poet T. S. Eliot, and part of their conversation found its way into his epochal poem ‘’The Waste Land’’.

She is said to have been given a great deal of ‘hush money’ not to publish her memoirs, and to have accepted voluntary exile to the United States in exchange for an annual pension of $25,000. She, of course, published her memoirs anyway – a series of ghost-written works which are completely undependable factually.

On 2 September 1924 at Elizabeth, New Jersey, she married naturopath William H. Meyers (1859-), living initially in New Jersey and later in Florida. They divorced in 1928.

Marie died on 4 July 1940 in a home for the elderly at Augsburg and is buried in Munich at the Ostfriedhof.

Based on her life Emmerich Kálmán composed the operetta “Marinka” (1945, libretto by K. Farkas).

Works

• Countess Marie Larisch, My Past, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York & London, 1913. Ghostwritten by Maude Mary Chester ffoulkes
• The Baroness von Larisch of the Imperial Household, Behind the Scenes with the Kaiser, Hertag Publishing Co., New York, 1922.
• Larisch, Marie, (with Paul Maerker Branden & Elsa Branden), My Royal Relatives, John Long, Ltd., London, 1936. (in which she claims to have been the daughter of Marie, Queen of the Two Sicilies by a “Count Armand de Lavaÿss” who cannot be found outside the pages of this work)
• Marie Louise Countess Larisch von Wallersee-Wittelsbach, with Paul Maerker Branden and Elsa Branden, Secrets of a Royal House, John Long, Ltd., London.

References

• Sokop, Brigitte, Jene Gräfin Larisch...: Marie Louise Gräfin Larisch-Wallersee: Vertraute der Kaiserin - Verfemte nach Mayerling, Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., Wien, Köln, Graz, 1985.