![The personal notes of the Austrian Empress have been kept in the Swiss Federal Archives since 1951.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/tagebuch-300x225.jpg)
Sisi the poetess and her long journey onto the bookshelf
Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary was an empress, and a poetess as well. Why her personal notes are in Switzerland’s Federal Archives, and why they remained unpublished until 1984...
![Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, 1867.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/sisi-234x300.jpg)
![Federal Councillor Eduard von Steiger.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/eduard-von-steiger-275x300.jpg)
And on the North Sea’s surging waves
My beloved, you lay prone
Soaked with a thousand filaments
I have you, coated with salt and foam
![Letter to Ludwig, Duke of Bavaria, dated 6 October 1951.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/brief-an-ludwig-seite-1-226x300.jpg)
![Letter to Ludwig, Duke of Bavaria, dated 6 October 1951.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/brief-an-ludwig-seite-2-251x300.jpg)
Letter to Ludwig, Duke of Bavaria, dated 6 October 1951. Swiss Federal Archives
![Letter from Duke Max in Bavaria to Federal Councillor Hans Hürlimann, 1978.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/max-in-bayern-228x300.jpg)
![Hans Hürlimann (left) during the state visit of King Juan Carlos in 1979.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/huerlimann-205x300.jpg)