Archduchess Elisabeth, nicknamed 'Erzsi', was born at Schloss Laxenburg on 2 September 1883 to Crown Prince Rudolf and Stéphanie, daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium.

In 1889, when Erzsi was a little over five years old, her father and Baroness Mary von Vetsera, his mistress, were found dead in what was assumed to be a murder-suicide pact at the Imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling.

Her father's death interrupted the dynastic succession within the Austrian imperial family, fractured her grandparents' already tenuous marriage and was a catalyst in Austria-Hungary's gradual destabilization, which culminated in the First World War and the subsequent disintegration of the Habsburg Empire.

[better source needed] However, after her assassination in 1898, her will specified that outside a large bequest of the sale of her jewels to benefit charities and religious orders, all of her personal property was bequeathed to Erzsi, her namesake and Rudolf's only child.

The Empress made no secret of her dislike of her daughter-in-law prior to the scandal, and after the Mayerling incident, blamed Stéphanie's jealous behavior for her son's depression and suicide.

The crown princess herself was entirely dependent on the Emperor's charity, therefore the lack of imperial support towards Stéphanie following her husband's death negatively impacted her relationship with her daughter; the parent and child were never close.

[3] In 1900, Stéphanie renounced her title of Crown Princess to marry the Protestant Hungarian count Elemér Lónyay von Nagy-Lónya und Vásáros-Namény (he was eventually made a Prince in 1917 by Emperor Karl I.).

Although Emperor Franz Joseph provided his daughter-in-law with a dowry and Lónyay eventually converted to Roman Catholicism,[4] Elisabeth broke off all contact with her mother as she disapproved of the marriage, feeling it a betrayal of her father's memory.

However, King Leopold II vehemently disapproved of Stéphanie's recent morganatic marriage to Count Elemér Lónyay and thus refused to give Albert his permission.

[9]Throughout their marriage both Elisabeth and Otto were open in having affairs, most notably the former's liaison with the young Austrian naval officer Egon Lerch, who would later command the submarine U-12 during World War I.

In 1921 Elisabeth joined the Social Democratic Party, where she met Leopold Petznek from Bruck an der Leitha, then president of the audit office, at one of the election meetings.

A teacher and a committed Social Democratic politician who became president of the Lower Austrian Landtag (state parliament) after the war, Petznek came from a modest background, but was highly cultivated.

On her deathbed, she ordered her staff to close her villa against her two surviving children and call for a police detail to secure her belongings until the Ministry of Education could remove them.

Over the objections of her first husband, who thought they should go to their children, she wanted all art and books to "be put back in their former places", as she did not believe Imperial property should be sold at auction or come into the possession of foreigners; these pieces are in museums in Vienna today.