📍Gumpendorf, Vienna, Austria
1810 – 1830“I was born Franziska Elssler in June 1810 in Gumpendorf, then a village of craftsmen, gardens and small houses just outside the walls of Vienna. My father, Johann Florian Elssler, had been a copyist and then valet to the composer Joseph Haydn, who lived in Gumpendorf too, and my father was with him when he died, the year before I was born. My mother took in work to help feed our large family, and money was always short. My parents hoped I would sing, but I only ever wanted to dance. With my sister Therese, two years older than me, I began to study dancing as a small child, with the ballet masters Friedrich Horschelt and Jean-Pierre Aumer, and before I was eight I was already appearing on the stage of the Kärntnertortheater, the court opera house, in children's ballets. Therese and I danced together almost always; she was tall and I was small, and she often partnered me. The stage became my world, and I worked very hard, for I knew dancing was our family's best hope. At fifteen I went to Naples to dance, then to Berlin, London and, in 1834, to the Paris Opéra, where I became the great rival of Marie Taglioni. Where she was spiritual and ethereal, I was earthy and passionate, and my Cachucha, a Spanish dance with castanets, made Paris wild. I toured America for two years, the first great European ballerina to do so, and it was said that Congress adjourned so its members could see me dance. I retired to Vienna, and Gumpendorf remembers the girl who danced her way out of poverty.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today