Echoes of Mayerling:

The Unlikely Movie Career of Countess Marie Larisch

By 1918, the Austro-Hungarian and the German Empires had collapsed into nothingness.  Imperial, Royal, Grand Ducal and Princely families were stripped of their titles and relegated to the status of citizen; their laws and traditions were wiped away and - absent the suffocating censorship of their former rulers - artists, musicians, playwrights and write…