Wealth to Poverty

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 867, 10 January 1930, Page 11

Wealth to Poverty

Austrian Princess Becomes Housemaid WAGES 5/- A WEEK Ida Sulkowski, an Austrian princess, and the descendant of one of the richest and proudest families of Imperial Austria, has been found working as housemaid to a Vienna family at a wage of five shillings a week, says the Vienna correspondent of the “Daily Express” (London). The story of their tragic life and misfortunes has shocked society in Vienna, where her father, the late Prince Josef Maria Sulkowski, who inherited a vast fortune, was one of the most lavish patrons of art and music. He founded the Sulkowski Theatre in Vienna, and married Fraulein Ida Jaeger, the beautiful opera singer, whose name was the toast of the town.

Their only child, Ida, was brought up in the magnificent Castle of Felstritz, in the Tyrol, but her early life was saddened by the extravagance and eccentricities of her father, whose debts, when he died, she nearly ruined herself to pay. Princess Ida’s marriage ventures were equally disastrous. She divorced her first husband after the mysterious death of their only child. Her second husband was a German count, who ruined her, while her third was a Polish knight, who treated * her so cruelly that she left him. The end of the war found the princess penniless, and forced to accept menial work or starve, as she was too proud to appeal to her rich relatives. The princess, while engaged as maid-of-alf work in Vienna these days, became ill, and was removed to hospital, where her real identity and sufferings were disclosed.