18 August in Bad Ischl - the birthday of Kaiser Franz Josef

Kaiser Franz Josef and his brothers owe their appearance in this world to Bad Ischl

After five unsuccessful pregnancies the physician recommended the saline baths of Ischl as a therapeutic treatment to Sophie, the wife of Archduke Franz Karl. After various treatments in Ischl, Sophie bore four sons. Because Sophie's first three sons arrived only after she had begun taking regular health cures in Ischl, they were popularly known, even in court circles, as the "salt princes".

The future Emperor Franz Josef was born in Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna  on 18 August 1830.

In the summer of 1831 Archduke Franz Karl and Archduchess Sophie brought their infant son Franz Josef to Ischl, where he celebrated his first birthday - and another 80 birthdays in the following years.  That baby was to succeed his childless uncle Ferdinand in 1848 as Emperor Franz Josef I and ruler over all the far-flung crown lands of the Austrian Monarchy. But almost every summer of Franz Josef’s 86 years was "a heavenly sojourn in Ischl", in his own words.

To this day, the Emperor’s Birthday is commemorated in Ischl with great ceremony on 18 August every year, with red carpets on the streets.