Margarita Theresa von Spanien

Margarita Teresa of Austria and Habsburg was born on July 12, 1651, in the Royal Alcázar of Madrid, and died on March 12, 1673, in Vienna. She was a Spanish infanta and later Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. Her parents were King Philip IV of Spain and his niece Mariana of Austria; her younger brother became Charles II, the last Habsburg king of Spain. Margarita Teresa thus belonged to both major branches of the House of Habsburg and was also a central figure in the dynastic politics linking Spain and Austria in the seventeenth century. Her birth was celebrated at the Spanish court because she was the first child of Philip IV’s second marriage. Her parents had married after the death of the heir to the throne, Balthasar Charles, since the Spanish Crown still required a male successor. Margarita Teresa descended from several generations of close-kin marriages within the House of Austria. This dynastic endogamy shaped the family and was associated with the high child mortality that also affected her siblings. Of her parents’ five children, only Margarita Teresa and her brother Charles reached adulthood. Margarita spent her childhood in the queen’s apartments in the Alcázar of Madrid. She grew up under the strict ceremonial rules of the Spanish court and received a careful education. Her position in the line of succession changed several times. At first, she stood behind her older half-sister Maria Theresa, whose recognition as a possible heir was temporarily requested by the Spanish Cortes because there was no male successor. With the birth of her brother Philip Prospero in 1657, Margarita moved further down the line. Philip Prospero nevertheless died as a young child in 1661, just days before the birth of Charles II, who was physically frail and later died without issue. Margarita Teresa consequently regained considerable dynastic importance. After Philip IV’s death in September 1665, her mother Mariana became regent for the four-year-old Charles II. The late king’s will also regulated what would happen if Charles died without an heir. The French line descended from Maria Theresa and her husband, Louis XIV, was expressly excluded because Maria Theresa had renounced her Spanish inheritance rights. Priority was instead to be given to Margarita Teresa’s descendants from a union with the Austrian Habsburg line. If that line also became extinct, the will provided for further claims by the descendants of Philip’s sister Maria Anna and ultimately by the House of Savoy. These provisions reflected the desire to keep the Spanish Crown within the dynasties traditionally connected to the House of Austria. Margarita Teresa had been promised as a bride to Emperor Leopold I since childhood. The planned alliance was intended to strengthen relations between the courts of Madrid and Vienna while also reinforcing Leopold’s possible claims to the Spanish succession. Several imperial envoys conducted the negotiations. The engagement was announced in April 1663, and the marriage contracts were signed in December of the same year. Despite occasional rumors of a possible marriage to Leopold’s younger brother, Margarita remained committed to the emperor. Philip IV and Mariana strongly supported the match, while Leopold saw in it both a way to secure the continuity of the Habsburg dynasty and the prospect of an heir. The marriage by proxy took place on April 25, 1666, in the Royal Chapel of Madrid. Shortly afterward, Margarita began her long journey to Vienna. Her entourage traveled through Dénia, Barcelona, Finale, Milan, and Rovereto, then continued through the Habsburg hereditary lands. On November 25, Leopold received her personally at Schottwien; on December 5, she made her ceremonial entry into Vienna. The marriage was politically significant, but it also appears to have been marked by personal closeness. Accounts and surviving private letters portray the family life of the couple as harmonious and describe Leopold’s deep affection for his wife. In Vienna, Margarita preserved her Spanish identity, continuing to surround herself mainly with Spaniards and maintaining her language, customs, and fondness for Spanish music and theater. The marriage produced four children: Ferdinand Wenceslaus, Maria Antonia, John Leopold, and Maria Anna Antonia. Three of the children died very young; only Maria Antonia survived childhood. She later married the Bavarian elector Maximilian II Emanuel and became the mother of Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria, whom Charles II named heir to the Spanish monarchy in his will of 1696. Maria Antonia herself was long considered a possible heir and was intended to become Charles II’s future wife. These plans were abandoned, however, in favor of Charles’s marriage to Maria Louise of Orléans, after Spain sought to improve its relations with France. During her years in Vienna, Margarita Teresa was pregnant seven times. Four pregnancies ended in births and two in miscarriages. The repeated pregnancies and losses progressively weakened her health. After the birth and death of her youngest daughter, she became pregnant again. In early March 1673, she initially fell ill with catarrhal symptoms, but her condition rapidly deteriorated. She died on March 12 at the age of only twenty-one. An examination revealed that she had been carrying a son who had also died. Her remains were buried in the Capuchin Crypt in Vienna. Leopold I was deeply shaken by her death and withdrew for several days. Beyond her political role, Margarita Teresa was preserved in public memory through art. Diego Velázquez portrayed her several times; most famously, he depicted her as a young girl in “Las Meninas,” surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting and other members of the Spanish court. After her arrival in Vienna, she continued to be represented frequently, now as empress and mother of a possible Habsburg line of succession. Another major cultural event of her years in Vienna was the lavish performance of Antonio Cesti’s opera “Il pomo d’oro” in 1668. Her short life therefore combined the political importance of a Habsburg princess with the enduring image of one of the best-known figures of European Baroque art.