On August 21, 1858, in the castle of Laxenburg, near Vienna, Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria was born. He was the only son of the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary Franz Joseph I and his wife, Empress Elisabeth, born Duchess of Bavaria. From birth, Rudolf was the heir to the throne of the Austrian Empire and later of Austria-Hungary.

Rudolph was named after an ancestor of the Habsburg dynasty, German King Rudolf I. The crown prince, considered weak, was subjected to strict military training at his father's insistence to become a good soldier, a passionate hunter, and a good Catholic. In 1881, under pressure from his father, Rudolf married Princess Stéphanie, the daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium, who was his second cousin. However, their marriage was unhappy, leading to the "Mayerling tragedy." This term refers to the events surrounding the suicide (or, according to some researchers, murder) of Rudolf and his mistress, Baroness Maria Vetsera. Their bodies were found on the morning of January 30, 1889, in the imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling in the Vienna Woods.

In Russia, an Arctic island named Rudolf Island is named in honor of the crown prince, which is part of Franz Josef Land, the northernmost island of the archipelago. The archipelago was discovered by an Austro-Hungarian expedition led by Karl Weyprecht and Julius von Payer. The Austrian explorers named the new land after the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I. In Russia, both during the imperial and Soviet periods, there were discussions about renaming the archipelago: first to Romanov Land, and later, after 1917, to Kropotkin Land or Nansen Land. However, these proposals were not realized, and the land still bears its original name.

At the age of 14, Crown Prince Rudolf was appointed the chief of the 34th Infantry Seversky Regiment of the Russian Imperial Army, which until 1889 was called the 34th Infantry Seversky Regiment of His Imperial and Royal Highness the Hereditary Prince of Austria.