100 Schilling Rudolf - Mayerling

This coin marks the centenary of the Mayerling Incident of January 30, 1889, in which Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria was found dead alongside his teenage mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera at his hunting lodge — an event the Habsburg court initially attributed to heart failure before admitting it was a murder-suicide. The political consequences were immediate: Rudolf had been the empire's only direct male heir, and his death set in motion the succession that would eventually land on Franz Ferdinand, whose own assassination in 1914 triggered the collapse of the dynasty entirely.