The actor playing Emperor Franz Joseph in a biopic of Sissi was given a two-year suspended prison sentence in Vienna on Tuesday for possession and production of child pornography, a case that shocked Austria.
Florian Teichtmeister, 43, has taken note of the decision and will be placed in a specialized medical center. “I sincerely and deeply regret my actions and I want to apologize,” he had previously said at the helm, 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 each image, sexual violence is hidden”.
On the Corsage poster, the actor was accused of having obtained “about 76,000 documents online” over the period from February 2008 to August 2021, more than half of which involved victims aged 7 to 14. He had modified many of them, making collages, slideshows and video montages. The actor had arrived very early at the regional court, placed under heavy police surveillance in order to avoid incidents with demonstrators for the protection of children, reported Austrian media. Prosecutor Julia Kalmar had requested a prison sentence “so as not to minimize such acts”. “Consumers determine the market, even if Florian Teichtmeister did not attack a child himself”, she had underlined.
The movie Corsage, which hit theaters in 2022, was filmed before “rumors of fall 2021” surfaced, as its production explained. It was then presented in nearly 70 festivals and its actor, who had affirmed “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 award for best performance. In the running for the British film awards, the Bafta, Corsage was overtaken by the scandal in mid-January, when the comedian was charged, and was ultimately not retained on the list of Oscar nominees for best film stranger. 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 case sparked a controversy over the silence of the cultural elites of this Central European country of nine million inhabitants 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. The penalties for this type of offence, deemed “ridiculously weak” by the political class, will be increased, with a possible sentence of 10 years for the production of a “large number of representations” of a child pornography nature.
