Elena Hell has a huge Sisi painting on the wall of her office in Westend. “I bought that three weeks ago,” she says and smiles. “I find it very nice.” Hell, 32, wrote – together with Robert Krause – the Sisi scripts for an RTL series and a Sisi book that was published this week. She knows Krause from the University of Television and Film; she studied, he was her lecturer. One day, Krause approached her with the Sisi project, says Hell. “Robert said that when he heard Sisi he immediately thought of my author’s voice.”
SZ: Ms. Hell, Romy Schneider shaped the Sisi image in the films by director Ernst Marischka …
Elena Hell: … I was a big Sisi fan as a child. My mother had to watch the Marischka films with me every other weekend.
When you said “every second” I thought it would be followed by the addition: every other Christmas.
(laughs) No, every other weekend.
In your book – and also in the RTL series – a different picture of Sisi is drawn than in the Marischka films of the 1950s. Sisi is wilder, more courageous, more unadapted, more modern. Do you have any new historical knowledge that led to this picture?
No, there are no new sources that we would have used. Although we refer to historical facts, we are very free to deal with them. We tell a big, deep love story between Sisi and Emperor Franz, in which sexuality also plays a role – and Sisi’s love for a man with a dark side.
What dark side did Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria have?
He was actually trained to be the emperor. His mother, Archduchess Sophie, was driven by the ambition to bring him to the throne. We have taken this seriously in our history. Franz was not supposed to show weakness, and he was taught that feelings and love make him weak. He is therefore afraid of love. We also added a curse …
Who really existed?
Surely he wasn’t cursed just once. (laughs) He wasn’t popular with everyone because he was neo-absolutist. Especially in the crown lands like Hungary and Lombardy, which at that time belonged to Austria, people pushed for their freedom and national self-determination. In general, we show different aspects of this time than the Marischka films. Politics consisted only of portfolios that were presented to the emperor so that he could sign something. Franz also goes to battle with us. Riots are represented.
And the curse?
Here a Hungarian woman curses him because Emperor Franz let her husband, a revolutionary, hang down. The woman cursed Franz and everyone he loved. He should die a lonely old man. In fact, he lost two children and Sisi died in an assassination attempt.
You write that Sisi brought a former prostitute to the court as a maid – although Emperor Franz had previously been with this woman in the brothel.
This is purely made up. Sisi brings this woman to the court as a confidante, also to learn from her in matters of love. She was insecure and believed that he was more experienced than her. I don’t think that Franz, as we described, was in this brothel near Possenhofen. But it was common then for men to have women in addition to marriage.
Emperor Franz in the brothel, Sisi learns from a former prostitute: You expect something from the Sisi audience. How do you think it will react to the series and the book?
In general, I hope that it will respond enthusiastically to both the series and the book. Sisi was a naive figure in the Marischka films and corresponded to the image of women in the 1950s, but she was also a very lively figure. Now it is shown even more contemporary, we also write about the dark sides and abysses …
… and about a Sisi with a tattoo.
She really did! But only later, so it does not appear in our story yet. Empress Elisabeth developed into a very unadapted, self-determined, even progressive woman for the time. But I still believe that we can pick up the audience from the Marischka films. Even then Sisi was rebellious, a tomboy, close to nature. With us she is enthusiastic about horses and life, and she doesn’t want to be as unhappy and self-pitying as her mother Ludovika. She really has a lust for life.
Which Sisi is closer to the real Sisi – the Sisi from the Marischka films or your Sisi?
(smiles) I can imagine that we are a little closer.