Seite - 638 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

638 The Death of the Old Emperor agreement in an authentication line. Then, two copies of the document were taken for safekeeping by the Office of the Master of the Household. On 16 November 1913, Franz Joseph added a codicil to his testament, which reg- ulated the payments to the Archduchess of Hohenberg, the wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and their children. And on 29 June 1916, there was a second codicil, which dealt with payments to Count Otto Windisch-Graetz, after his marriage to the Em- peror’s granddaughter, Elisabeth, had again been patched up. The Director General of the Imperial Fund was also instructed to do what was necessary in this case.1458 In summary, it can only be said that it was a very bourgeois and conceivably prosaic procedure that Franz Joseph employed in order to prepare for his death. Material issues were by far the most important. The individual sections of the will make for very easy reading. There was talk of transience and salvation. Then the Emperor decreed that following his death, the usual embalming procedure should take place, but ‘without transferring individual parts to other crypts’. By this, he meant that the heart was not to be taken to the St. Augustin Church and the intestines to St. Stephen’s Cathedral. This was immediately followed by the section on material goods. A reference was made to the entailment institute, from which the respective bearers of the crown were to benefit. Everything else was to be divided in equal parts among his daughters Gisela and Marie Valerie, as well as his granddaughter after Crown Prince Rudolph, Elisabeth Windisch-Graetz. The daughters were to ensure that all closer relatives received suitable mementoes, with the same applying to persons ‘who were close to me and who performed loyal services’. After arrangements regarding material goods had also been completed, two articles followed that addressed the peoples of the Empire and the armed forces. In Article 14, the testament read : ‘To my beloved peoples I express full thanks for the loyal love that they showed to Myself and my dynasty in happy days and in times of danger.’ (A semantic lapse had been made here in the original, which clearly nobody noticed, and which remained uncorrected.) ‘The knowledge of this devotion did My heart good, and gave Me strength in the fulfilment of my difficult duties as regent. May they maintain the same patriotic feelings towards My successor to the throne.’ Article 15 then read : ‘I also remember My army and fleet with feelings of touched gratitude for their bravery and loyal devotion. Their victories fill Me with joyous pride, and misadventure through no fault of their own with painful sadness. The admirable spirit that has from the beginning animated army and fleet together with My two standing armies reassures me that My successor to the throne shall be able to count on them to a no lesser degree than I.’ That was all he had written. The article regarding the peoples of the Empire was very similar to the testament written by Emperor Franz I (II of Hungary), who in his last will had also already coined the phrase ‘My people, My love’ in Article 14. In the Latin version, ‘Amorem meum