Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg

Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg (21 April 1673 – 10 April 1742) was a Holy Roman Empress as the wife of Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor.

Family and early life

She was the youngest daughter of John Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and Benedicta Henrietta of the Palatinate. Her two surviving sisters were Charlotte Felicitas, who married the Duke of Modena, and Henriette Marie, who never married. Wilhelmina was given a Catholic education by her great-aunt Louise Holladine at the convent of Maubuisson, and did not return to Hanover until she was 20 years old, in 1693. Early on, the Holy Roman Empress Eleonor Magdalene of the Palatinate-Neuburg decided that Wilhelmina Amalia would be her daughter-in-law.

Marriage and issue

As a result, on 24 February 1699, she married Eleonor's son, Archduke Joseph, the heir of Emperor Leopold I. At their wedding, the opera Hercule and Hebe by Reinhard Reiser (1674–1739) was performed. Upon Joseph's election as Emperor in 1705, she became Empress of the Holy Roman Empire.

She bore her husband three children:

• Maria Josepha of Austria (8 December 1699 – 17 November 1757); she married August III ("the Saxon")
• Archduke Leopold Joseph of Austria (29 October 1700 – 4 August 1701)
• Maria Amalia of Austria (22 October 1701 – 11 December 1756); she married Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor

Wilhelmina Amalia was described as beautiful but also as religious and serious. Her relationship with her husband was initially described as happy, but it soon deteriorated. Joseph had a long line of mistresses, both servants and nobles, such as Dorothea Daun. He had several illegitimate children, but no surviving male heir with his spouse. In 1704, Joseph contracted syphilis, and gave the disease to his wife. It has been suggested that this condition was the reason for the failure of the Empress to produce more children after the birth of her second daughter. Without male heirs, a crisis developed in regards to the imperial succession. In 1711, Wilhelmina Amalia was widowed, and her mother-in-law became the interim regent until her brother-in-law, the Archduke Charles, could return from Spain where he was the Austrian nominee for the Spanish throne during the War of the Spanish Succession. Upon his return, he was proclaimed as the new Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI.

Succession

His wife's inability to produce male heirs irked Charles VI and eventually led to the promulgation of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, a document which abolished male-only succession (hitherto effective in all the Habsburg realms) and declared his lands indivisible. The new Emperor favoured his own daughters over those of Joseph I and Wilhelmina Amalia, in the succession, ignoring a decree he had signed during the reign of his father, Leopold I.

After her daughters were married, Wilhelmina Amalia in 1722 withdrew to a convent that she had founded earlier in 1717, the Salesianerinnenkloster auf dem Rennwege in Vienna.

Charles VI died in 1740. In the struggle that ensued over the succession, Wilhelmina Amalia initially supported her son-in-law, Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, in his pursuit of the imperial crown, but soon retired again to private life.

Wilhelmina Amalia outlived her spouse by more than 30 years, dying on 10 April 1742. She is buried in the Salesian convent in Vienna. Her heart is buried in the Imperial Crypt.

Ancestry

References

• This page is a translation of its German equivalent.

External links

• Wilhelmina Amalia at Find-A-Grave