Karolina von Österreich

Maria Anna Karolina Pia of Austria, usually called “little Anna” or “Ännchen” within her family, was born in Vienna on October 27, 1835. She was the fourth child and only daughter of Archduke Franz Karl of Austria and Sophie of Bavaria. She therefore came from a junior Habsburg line that played an important role in the Austrian succession: after Emperor Ferdinand’s childless abdication in 1848, this family rose to the head of the imperial house. Her father, Franz Karl, was a son of Franz of Austria, who had ruled as the last emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the first emperor of Austria. Her mother, Sophie, was a daughter of Maximilian I Joseph, the first king of Bavaria, and his second wife, Karolina of Baden. Maria Anna was named after her aunt, Maria Anna Karolina Pia, who had become empress in March 1835, just a few months before Maria Anna’s birth. Maria Anna grew up with four brothers. Her eldest brother, Franz Joseph, born in 1830, later became Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. He married Elisabeth of Bavaria, who became widely known by her nickname “Sisi.” Her second brother, Maximilian, later ascended the Mexican throne as Emperor Maximilian I. Her third brother, Archduke Karl Ludwig, and her younger brother, Ludwig Viktor, did not attain comparable political importance. The archduchess’s childhood was overshadowed by a serious illness. Maria Anna suffered from epilepsy and died in Vienna on February 5, 1840, at only four years of age. She succumbed to a seizure around midday. Her early death occurred before her brothers’ political rise and before the events of 1848 made the Habsburg junior line Austria’s directly ruling family. Maria Anna was buried in Vienna’s Capuchin Crypt, the traditional burial place of the Habsburgs. Her final resting place is in the Ferdinand Crypt, grave number 11. Although she lived for only a few years and could not assume a political role herself, she remained part of the history of the Austrian imperial house as the only daughter of Franz Karl and Sophie and the sister of two future emperors.