Before Sisi – The Swiss Road to the Habsburg Crown

Everyone knows how the Habsburg story ends: the glittering court of Vienna, an empire of fifty million, and Empress Elisabeth – Sisi – the most captivating royal icon of them all. Almost nobody knows where it begins: in Switzerland. The dynasty takes its name from Habsburg Castle, a modest fortress in the Aargau hills – and a great Swiss inheritance helped carry the family to its first crown. The road to that crown leads through the Bernese lands, to a castle hill above the medieval town of Thun, where the River Aare leaves the lake and the snow peaks of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau rise beyond the battlements. This is where our journey begins.

Thun Castle is a place where great history was written. Its mighty keep, one of the best preserved in the Alps, was raised in the late twelfth century by Duke Berchtold V of Zähringen – founder of the city of Bern and one of the most powerful princes of his age. In 1198, the Archbishop of Cologne and his allies elected Berchtold King of the Romans: he stood one coronation away from the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, and chroniclers even tell of a crusader’s vow that was to carry him to the Holy Land. He renounced the throne for 3,000 marks of silver and a swathe of territories – the emperor who never was. His tower still stands, and on this tour you will walk through it.

When the last Zähringer duke died in 1218, his Swiss lands passed to the counts of Kyburg, for two generations the mightiest noble house between the Alps and the Rhine. Thun became an important stronghold of their western territories, and the castle’s grand knight’s hall still breathes the world of their age. Then, in 1263/64, the Kyburg male line died out – and the question of who would inherit hung over half of today’s Switzerland. The answer came from a shrewd, ambitious nephew of the last count: Rudolf of Habsburg.

As a nephew of the last Count of Kyburg, Rudolf secured a substantial part of the great inheritance after 1264. This gain in power strengthened his position within the Empire – and in 1273 he became the first Habsburg to be elected King of the Romans, founder of the dynasty that would shape Central Europe for more than six centuries, down to Emperor Franz Joseph and Sisi herself. In the same year, Thun passed to the newly established line of the counts of Neu-Kyburg and became one of their important centres of power – until debt and defeat forced the counts, in 1384, to sell Thun and Burgdorf to the rising city-republic of Bern. Dukes, counts, kings: three great dynasties shaped these walls – and one of them went on to rule half the world.

One enigmatic witness remains. In the museum you will stand before the famous Thun executioner’s sword – a knightly blade forged in Passau around 1300 and engraved with heraldic emblems. How did such an aristocratic weapon come to serve the executioner of a Bernese country town? Perhaps, as one intriguing theory suggests, it came here as a trophy from the wars against the Habsburgs. Look closely – and decide for yourself.

Come and stand where a duke reached for the imperial crown, where counts held court – and where a Swiss inheritance set the Habsburgs on the road to world history.