| Princess Maria Josepha of Saxony | |
|---|---|
| Archduchess and Princess Maria Josepha of Austria; Princess Maria Josepha of Hungary, Bohemia, and Tuscany | |
| Spouse | Archduke Otto Francis of Austria |
| Issue | |
| Charles I of Austria Archduke Maximilian Eugen |
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| Full name | |
| German: Maria Josepha Luise Philippine Elisabeth Pia Angelika Margarete | |
| House | House of Wettin House of Habsburg-Lorraine |
| Father | George of Saxony |
| Mother | Maria Anna of Portugal |
| Born | 31 May 1867 Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony |
| Died | 28 May 1944 (aged 76) Erlangen, Bavaria, Germany |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
Princess Maria Josepha of Saxony (31 May 1867 – 28 May 1944) was the mother of Emperor Charles I of Austria and the fifth child of George of Saxony and Infanta Maria Anna of Portugal.
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Maria Josepha Louise Philippina Elisabeth Pia Angelica Margaret was the daughter of the future King George of Saxony (1832–1904) and Infanta Maria Anna of Portugal (1843–1884). Her maternal grandparents were Queen Maria II and King Ferdinand II of Portugal.
She was a younger sister of the last king of Saxony, Frederick Augustus III. Her maternal first cousins included (among others) Charles I of Portugal; Infante Afonso, Duke of Porto; Prince Wilhelm of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen; and Ferdinand I of Romania. Her paternal second cousin was the ill-fated Crown Prince Archduke Rudolf while George V of the United Kingdom was her third cousin.
On 2 October 1886 at age nineteen, she married Archduke Otto Franz of Austria, "der Schöne" (the handsome), younger brother of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand who was killed in Sarajevo.
A pious woman, only her strength of religion enabled her to bear the burdens of marriage to the notoriously womanizing "gorgeous Archduke". His frequent absences from his family helped her goal of keeping her children away from his bad influence succeed. Eventually, however, she herself enterred in to a relationship to the actor Otto Tressler, who had been presented to her by the emperor Franz Joseph, who felt sorry for her because of the adultery of her spouse. Maria Josepha often invited Tressler to her home; he sometimes met her husband and his friends in the doorway. When her husband died, her ability to avoid extravagant displays of grief was much admired. As a widow, she ended her relationship with Tressler, probably because of her sense of what was appropriate beahaviour for a widow.
During World War I she nursed the wounded in the Augarten Palace of Vienna, which had been converted into a hospital.
In 1919 she left Austria with her son Emperor Charles I of Austria and his wife, Zita of Bourbon-Parma, and went into exile with them. She lived first in Switzerland and from 1921 in Germany.
She died at Schloss Wildenwart, Upper Bavaria, a property owned by some members of the Royal Family of Bavaria. She is buried in the New Vault of the Imperial Crypt in Vienna, beside her husband.
With Archduke Otto Franz she had issue:
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