Must dash again, as new work has unexpectedly appeared on the horizon, but here are some early results from my MT biography reading. Will repost them on a new post if you like, but in the meantime, enjoy:
So, random Maria Theresia related trivia and background stuff, with an eye to parallels and differences to certain Prussian siblings, or just because I found it interesting:
- like most royals and nobles in her century, her actual raising was done by nurses, governesses and later teachers; she had a respectful though distant relationship to both her parents, whereas she adored her nanny, Frau von Fuchs, whom she called "Mami" (which, yes, means Mom in German) and at times referred to as Füchsin, in a pun on her name (which means fox). As with Wilhelmine's Fräulein von Sonsfeld (aka "Sonsine"), "Mami" remained with MT for the rest of her life. MT had her buried in the Habsburg crypt, the sole non-Habsburg to be so. IF MT, the occasional temper outburst throughout her life, depression in old age and bigotry in same not withstanding, was emotionally balanced most of the time, this woman clearly deserves the credit.
- it's worth noting that neither MT (of course not, because ruler, but also because 18th century) nor Wilhelmine raised their daughters, either. When Friederike, Wilhelmine's daughter, is about to make her illfated marriage to Karl Eugen of Württemberg, Wilhelmine writers she's sad "because I have just begun to know her, and we were starting to get close". MT saw her kids four times a week on avarage during their childhood and early adolescence, which was regarded as sensationally much by the court. (In addition, she sat in on Joseph's school lessons and examinations every two months, but then he was the future emperor.)
- speaking of the Habsburg crypt - the famous "Kapuzinergruft" - , the tomb MT had comissioned for Franz Stefan and herself takes a common trope - the dead couple lying next to each other - and gives it a twist: both figures are turned towards each other, not towards heaven, and are looking at each other:
- the intimacy in this depiction also echoes another exception: MT and Franz Stefan shared a bedroom. The usual practice were separate bedrooms, sex ensued in one of them, and afterwards the husband (usually) buggered off, no pun intended. MT and Franz Stefan did have separate bedrooms but also a shared bedroom in between, which they used most of the time when both present. MT's advice (by letter) to her daughter Marie Antoinette was to share a bedroom and a bed with her husband as well, not just for sex but to sleep in together. This, she wrote, was one of the few ways to be truly alone together and outside of everyone's view, and it also created familiarity and a relationship. To her disappointment, Marie Antoinette didn't listen (or young Louis truly wouldn't go for it, which was Antoinette's explanation, because her mother could hardly blame her for obeying her husband); the French court, of course, found the mere idea of actually sleeping (as in sleep, not sex) together terribly degoutant and ridiculous.
- while we're talking sex, on the downside, one of MT's characteristics alienating both her contemporaries and posterity about her was that she tried to police everyone else's sex lives in a way not seen since Octavian/Augustus made adultery a crime in ancient Rome. (This had not been the case previously, when her father ruled, who otherwise had been more formal and old fashioned than her , more about this later. The Vienna MT grew up in was in fact famous for its sexual license. And would be again, because Joseph got rid of these laws as soon as she was dead.) Extramarital sex was strictly illegal, the police were encouraged to spy on offenders. This, of course, did not stop anyone. Contemporaries and biographers weren't slow to speculate the reason for this were less her religion and more projected resentment for Franz Stefan cheating on her which she couldn't direct at him. It's worth noting, though, that she honored his wishes regarding the most prominent of his mistresses after his death and gave her a pension (of the same amount as requested) instead of mistreating or just cutting the woman off. Her anti-extramarital-sex laws got worse after his death, though.
- on the other hand, MT also made an interesting exception for illegitimate mothers. This was because she could quickly see that if a woman was severely punished for unlicensed sex, and getting pregnant was the most glaring proof this had happened, it lead to either abortion or infanticide of newborn babies. So midwives and priests were indeed encouraged by law to keep the confidence of pregnant unmarried mothers and help them instead of reporting them.
- less successful was her attempt to end prostitution by putting prostitutes into work houses instead. The idea had been to give them "honest work" so they wouldn't starve once their job was illegal, but predictably (from our pov), this ended up with the women being terribly exploited as cheap labour. Joseph, all credit to him, during his many tours through his empire as a young co-ruler inspected enough of these places to come back with horrified reports and absolutely and passionately insisted the practice had to stop. This was one of the few times he won an argument with his mother.
- back to young MT: her first year or so in office when first Fritz and then everyone else invaded resulted in a lot of quite obscene caricatures, usually printed in the Netherlands, depicting a young woman getting stripped by a couple of men tearing her clothes from her (in national costumes indicating who represented which nation) , as more or less an overt gang rape, with verses to match. This was not done in sympathy for MT, mind, but as part of the general "well, it's a woman on the throne, she clearly needs to be fucked in every sense" feeling. However, once MT had persuaded the Hungarians to accept her as their Queen and fight for her, the fortunes of war changed to the point that Bavaria was counterinvaded which robbed her rival - the Wittelsbach Emperor - of his home base and later allowed her to blackmail his son Maximilian into not trying to succeed his father and instead voting for Franz Stefan as Emperor- the metaphor in caricatures was turned around; now MT (fully dressed) was depicted stealing the Wittelsbach Emperor's pants and wearing them.
- amazingly enough, her closest royal friend and pen pal was Maximilian's sister Antonia of Bavaria, later married to August the Strong's son and thus ruling Saxony, which put Antonia in a relatively good position for reporting on Fritz (a next door neighbour in terms of how close Saxony and Prussia were)
- even more amazingly, Franz Stefan, who'd met Fritz while doing his two year Grand Tour through Europe (he was present on Fritz' official engagement party, for example, not that this was a joyful occasion to our antihero), had actually be charmed by him (though when Fritz wrote his "dear FS, I'm totally respecting your (and your girl's) right on the Austrian heartlands and will vote for you as Emperor if you hand over Silesia, which by the time you're getting this letter I'm actually invading" message, he was horrified and told the Prussian ambassador so) and later periodically made attempts to persuade MT to maybe consider a reconciliation with Prussia over a French alliance (not least because he had an ongoing grudge against the French for first accepting his duchy Lorraine as a bribe to accept the Pragmatic Sanction, which meant he married MT essentially as a beggar, and then invading anyway), which were all met with a resounding "No, Franzl, NO".
- MT really was a hardcore worker, getting up around 4 am, 5 at the latest, while going to bed around 11 pm (going to bed here means removing herself from public sight, as we know these times from ambassadors reporting to their various masters; who knows whether she actually slept). As mentioned elsewhere, civil servants asking for more vacation time were met by an unsympathetic reminder she was up and about two days after childbirth, so what were they moaning about?
- this being said, she didn't just shrug off those births. After child No. 10, she wrote to Antonia - Marie Antoinette's godmother, btw - that she'd be grateful if that was it, because it pregnancy and birth was draining, she was getting fat and short of breath, and enough was enough (the dynasty was secure). As to why man-of-the-world Franz Stefan didn't have sex with her in a way that did not lead to more procreation and thus children 11 - 16? Neither of them ever said anything, but you can always speculate that it was for religious reasons on her part. After all, this is the woman who insisted on performing all the kneeling on a Good Friday when seven months pregnant, when every priest would have happily absolved her (not least because the health of the monarch and her unborn child were not a private matter).
- she had a keen sense of the performative part of being a monarch, all the more so because she needed to prove herself, a female ruler on the throne being unprecedented in the German speaking territories, and she was good in turning what was regarded as a weakness at the start - her being a wife and mother (if women per se were "the weaker vessel", you can imagine what a pregnant woman was at an age where a lot of them died in childbirth, not to mention that the traditional role of a wife obeying her husband directly conflicted with the idea of her as her husband's social superior) - as a strength: when she made her appeal to the Hungarian parliament, she emphasized her motherhood (though she did not, as legend would have it, newborn Joseph in her arms, Madonna fashion, during the appeal itself; she did have him brought to Hungary, though, since her finally having given birth to a son was a big plus in her favour) and turned into a "you brave and knightly men surely will protect me" thing, all flowing robes, tears in eyes and feminitity written all over her. (It worked.) Otoh, when the actual Hungarian coronation ceremony demanded for her to be on a horse (astride, male fashion), raising a sword (a real, heavy one) and turning thus, sword raised, with the horse in four directions, she did that, too. (MT turned out to be a good equestrarian in general and used the famous riding hall in Vienna for an all female big event in which solely women performed daring riding stunts not long after. Even the French, at the time still hoping their Bavarian ally would make it, were grudgingly impressed by the sheer spectacle.)
- but then, she had already started performing as a child (singing and dancing) at court events. (This was not unusual in the 18th century for royalty. No one had forgotten Le Roi Soleil and his ballet dancing. The nineteenth century had every different ideas about royal dignity, of course (more in line with FW's), but the first depiction we have of child Marie Antoinette is ballet dancing at a court event together with her sisters as well.)
- on the other end of the scale, MT's father Karl had been the ruler during whose lifetime the Habsburgs lost Spain to the Bourbons. After the last Spanish Habsburg (the famously inbred Charles) had died, the Austrian Habsburgs totally expected to inherit, but Louis XIV had other ideas (and put his grandson on the throne). Karl for a while held Northern Spain, though, and he was the Habsburg to bring Spanish Court Etiquette to the Austrian court. This meant, among other things, that anyone being presented to the Emperor or the Empress had to kneel down three times before approaching them, and then they had to kiss their hand. The other German princes resented that a lot. MT cut it down to one time kneeling down and one time hand kissing, and Joseph dispensed with the kneeling altogether. (His nephew Franz II, the reactionary, reintroduced it.) I'm still mulling whether or not MT would have been likely to demand it from Wilhelmine on her Bayreuth visit or whether she'd have been diplomatic and skipped it (knowing how much especially the Protestant German Princes resented it). She'd definitely demand it from Fritz on the fictional summit, though!
Maria Theresia Trivia
So, random Maria Theresia related trivia and background stuff, with an eye to parallels and differences to certain Prussian siblings, or just because I found it interesting:
- like most royals and nobles in her century, her actual raising was done by nurses, governesses and later teachers; she had a respectful though distant relationship to both her parents, whereas she adored her nanny, Frau von Fuchs, whom she called "Mami" (which, yes, means Mom in German) and at times referred to as Füchsin, in a pun on her name (which means fox). As with Wilhelmine's Fräulein von Sonsfeld (aka "Sonsine"), "Mami" remained with MT for the rest of her life. MT had her buried in the Habsburg crypt, the sole non-Habsburg to be so. IF MT, the occasional temper outburst throughout her life, depression in old age and bigotry in same not withstanding, was emotionally balanced most of the time, this woman clearly deserves the credit.
- it's worth noting that neither MT (of course not, because ruler, but also because 18th century) nor Wilhelmine raised their daughters, either. When Friederike, Wilhelmine's daughter, is about to make her illfated marriage to Karl Eugen of Württemberg, Wilhelmine writers she's sad "because I have just begun to know her, and we were starting to get close". MT saw her kids four times a week on avarage during their childhood and early adolescence, which was regarded as sensationally much by the court. (In addition, she sat in on Joseph's school lessons and examinations every two months, but then he was the future emperor.)
- speaking of the Habsburg crypt - the famous "Kapuzinergruft" - , the tomb MT had comissioned for Franz Stefan and herself takes a common trope - the dead couple lying next to each other - and gives it a twist: both figures are turned towards each other, not towards heaven, and are looking at each other:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Wien_-_Kapuzinergruft%2C_Maria-Theresia-Gruft_%281%29.JPG/1024px-Wien_-_Kapuzinergruft%2C_Maria-Theresia-Gruft_%281%29.JPG
- the intimacy in this depiction also echoes another exception: MT and Franz Stefan shared a bedroom. The usual practice were separate bedrooms, sex ensued in one of them, and afterwards the husband (usually) buggered off, no pun intended. MT and Franz Stefan did have separate bedrooms but also a shared bedroom in between, which they used most of the time when both present. MT's advice (by letter) to her daughter Marie Antoinette was to share a bedroom and a bed with her husband as well, not just for sex but to sleep in together. This, she wrote, was one of the few ways to be truly alone together and outside of everyone's view, and it also created familiarity and a relationship. To her disappointment, Marie Antoinette didn't listen (or young Louis truly wouldn't go for it, which was Antoinette's explanation, because her mother could hardly blame her for obeying her husband); the French court, of course, found the mere idea of actually sleeping (as in sleep, not sex) together terribly degoutant and ridiculous.
- while we're talking sex, on the downside, one of MT's characteristics alienating both her contemporaries and posterity about her was that she tried to police everyone else's sex lives in a way not seen since Octavian/Augustus made adultery a crime in ancient Rome. (This had not been the case previously, when her father ruled, who otherwise had been more formal and old fashioned than her , more about this later. The Vienna MT grew up in was in fact famous for its sexual license. And would be again, because Joseph got rid of these laws as soon as she was dead.) Extramarital sex was strictly illegal, the police were encouraged to spy on offenders. This, of course, did not stop anyone. Contemporaries and biographers weren't slow to speculate the reason for this were less her religion and more projected resentment for Franz Stefan cheating on her which she couldn't direct at him. It's worth noting, though, that she honored his wishes regarding the most prominent of his mistresses after his death and gave her a pension (of the same amount as requested) instead of mistreating or just cutting the woman off. Her anti-extramarital-sex laws got worse after his death, though.
- on the other hand, MT also made an interesting exception for illegitimate mothers. This was because she could quickly see that if a woman was severely punished for unlicensed sex, and getting pregnant was the most glaring proof this had happened, it lead to either abortion or infanticide of newborn babies. So midwives and priests were indeed encouraged by law to keep the confidence of pregnant unmarried mothers and help them instead of reporting them.
- less successful was her attempt to end prostitution by putting prostitutes into work houses instead. The idea had been to give them "honest work" so they wouldn't starve once their job was illegal, but predictably (from our pov), this ended up with the women being terribly exploited as cheap labour. Joseph, all credit to him, during his many tours through his empire as a young co-ruler inspected enough of these places to come back with horrified reports and absolutely and passionately insisted the practice had to stop. This was one of the few times he won an argument with his mother.
- back to young MT: her first year or so in office when first Fritz and then everyone else invaded resulted in a lot of quite obscene caricatures, usually printed in the Netherlands, depicting a young woman getting stripped by a couple of men tearing her clothes from her (in national costumes indicating who represented which nation) , as more or less an overt gang rape, with verses to match. This was not done in sympathy for MT, mind, but as part of the general "well, it's a woman on the throne, she clearly needs to be fucked in every sense" feeling. However, once MT had persuaded the Hungarians to accept her as their Queen and fight for her, the fortunes of war changed to the point that Bavaria was counterinvaded which robbed her rival - the Wittelsbach Emperor - of his home base and later allowed her to blackmail his son Maximilian into not trying to succeed his father and instead voting for Franz Stefan as Emperor- the metaphor in caricatures was turned around; now MT (fully dressed) was depicted stealing the Wittelsbach Emperor's pants and wearing them.
- amazingly enough, her closest royal friend and pen pal was Maximilian's sister Antonia of Bavaria, later married to August the Strong's son and thus ruling Saxony, which put Antonia in a relatively good position for reporting on Fritz (a next door neighbour in terms of how close Saxony and Prussia were)
- even more amazingly, Franz Stefan, who'd met Fritz while doing his two year Grand Tour through Europe (he was present on Fritz' official engagement party, for example, not that this was a joyful occasion to our antihero), had actually be charmed by him (though when Fritz wrote his "dear FS, I'm totally respecting your (and your girl's) right on the Austrian heartlands and will vote for you as Emperor if you hand over Silesia, which by the time you're getting this letter I'm actually invading" message, he was horrified and told the Prussian ambassador so) and later periodically made attempts to persuade MT to maybe consider a reconciliation with Prussia over a French alliance (not least because he had an ongoing grudge against the French for first accepting his duchy Lorraine as a bribe to accept the Pragmatic Sanction, which meant he married MT essentially as a beggar, and then invading anyway), which were all met with a resounding "No, Franzl, NO".
- MT really was a hardcore worker, getting up around 4 am, 5 at the latest, while going to bed around 11 pm (going to bed here means removing herself from public sight, as we know these times from ambassadors reporting to their various masters; who knows whether she actually slept). As mentioned elsewhere, civil servants asking for more vacation time were met by an unsympathetic reminder she was up and about two days after childbirth, so what were they moaning about?
- this being said, she didn't just shrug off those births. After child No. 10, she wrote to Antonia - Marie Antoinette's godmother, btw - that she'd be grateful if that was it, because it pregnancy and birth was draining, she was getting fat and short of breath, and enough was enough (the dynasty was secure). As to why man-of-the-world Franz Stefan didn't have sex with her in a way that did not lead to more procreation and thus children 11 - 16? Neither of them ever said anything, but you can always speculate that it was for religious reasons on her part. After all, this is the woman who insisted on performing all the kneeling on a Good Friday when seven months pregnant, when every priest would have happily absolved her (not least because the health of the monarch and her unborn child were not a private matter).
- she had a keen sense of the performative part of being a monarch, all the more so because she needed to prove herself, a female ruler on the throne being unprecedented in the German speaking territories, and she was good in turning what was regarded as a weakness at the start - her being a wife and mother (if women per se were "the weaker vessel", you can imagine what a pregnant woman was at an age where a lot of them died in childbirth, not to mention that the traditional role of a wife obeying her husband directly conflicted with the idea of her as her husband's social superior) - as a strength: when she made her appeal to the Hungarian parliament, she emphasized her motherhood (though she did not, as legend would have it, newborn Joseph in her arms, Madonna fashion, during the appeal itself; she did have him brought to Hungary, though, since her finally having given birth to a son was a big plus in her favour) and turned into a "you brave and knightly men surely will protect me" thing, all flowing robes, tears in eyes and feminitity written all over her. (It worked.) Otoh, when the actual Hungarian coronation ceremony demanded for her to be on a horse (astride, male fashion), raising a sword (a real, heavy one) and turning thus, sword raised, with the horse in four directions, she did that, too. (MT turned out to be a good equestrarian in general and used the famous riding hall in Vienna for an all female big event in which solely women performed daring riding stunts not long after. Even the French, at the time still hoping their Bavarian ally would make it, were grudgingly impressed by the sheer spectacle.)
- but then, she had already started performing as a child (singing and dancing) at court events. (This was not unusual in the 18th century for royalty. No one had forgotten Le Roi Soleil and his ballet dancing. The nineteenth century had every different ideas about royal dignity, of course (more in line with FW's), but the first depiction we have of child Marie Antoinette is ballet dancing at a court event together with her sisters as well.)
- on the other end of the scale, MT's father Karl had been the ruler during whose lifetime the Habsburgs lost Spain to the Bourbons. After the last Spanish Habsburg (the famously inbred Charles) had died, the Austrian Habsburgs totally expected to inherit, but Louis XIV had other ideas (and put his grandson on the throne). Karl for a while held Northern Spain, though, and he was the Habsburg to bring Spanish Court Etiquette to the Austrian court. This meant, among other things, that anyone being presented to the Emperor or the Empress had to kneel down three times before approaching them, and then they had to kiss their hand. The other German princes resented that a lot. MT cut it down to one time kneeling down and one time hand kissing, and Joseph dispensed with the kneeling altogether. (His nephew Franz II, the reactionary, reintroduced it.) I'm still mulling whether or not MT would have been likely to demand it from Wilhelmine on her Bayreuth visit or whether she'd have been diplomatic and skipped it (knowing how much especially the Protestant German Princes resented it). She'd definitely demand it from Fritz on the fictional summit, though!