The case shocked Austria. Florian Teichtmeister, the actor playing Emperor Franz Joseph in a film about the life of Sissi, was sentenced on Tuesday, September 5, in Vienna to a two-year suspended prison sentence for possession and production of child pornography.
The 43-year-old actor has taken note of the decision and will be placed in a specialized medical center. “I sincerely and deeply regret my actions and would like to apologize,” he previously said on the stand, wearing a charcoal gray suit. Thanks to therapy work that began two years ago when the investigation was launched, he says he now understands that “behind every image hides sexual violence”.
Victims aged 7 to 14
Starring in Corsage, the actor was accused of having obtained “approximately 76,000 documents” online over a period extending from February 2008 to August 2021, more than half of which involved victims aged 7 to 14 years old. He had edited many of them, making collages, slideshows and video montages.
The actor had arrived very early at the regional court, which was placed under heavy police surveillance to avoid incidents with child protection protesters, Austrian media reported. Prosecutor Julia Kalmar had requested a prison sentence “not to minimize such acts”. “Consumers determine the market, even if Florian Teichtmeister did not abuse a child himself,” she pointed out.
The film Corsage, which hit theaters in 2022, was filmed before the “Fall 2021 rumors” surfaced, as its production explained. It was then presented in nearly seventy festivals and its actor, who had said “with conviction to be innocent”, was invited to premieres in Austria as well as in Germany. He competed in the Un certain regard selection last year at the Cannes Film Festival, where the actress who plays Sissi, Vicky Krieps, received the prize for best performance.
Caught up in the scandal
In the running for the British film awards, the Bafta, Corsage was overtaken by the scandal in mid-January, when the actor was prosecuted, and was ultimately not retained on the list of nominees for the Oscar for the best foreign film. In Austria, the prestigious national theater Burgtheater, where the actor was a member, announced his dismissal, while the public audiovisual group ORF undertook to no longer produce or broadcast projects with him.
The affair sparked a controversy over the silence of the cultural elites of this Central European country with a rich artistic scene. The government has in the process proposed a revision of the penal code, which should be adopted by Parliament this fall, according to the Ministry of Justice.
Penalties for this type of offence, deemed “ridiculously weak” by the political class, will be increased, with a possible ten-year sentence for the production of a “large number of representations” of a child pornography nature.
