Maria Anna von Österreich

Maria Anna Josefa Antonia von Habsburg-Lorraine was born in Vienna on October 6, 1738, the daughter of Emperor Francis Stephen of Lorraine and Maria Theresa. She was the second eldest of the imperial couple’s sixteen children. After her older sister Maria Elisabeth died in childhood, Maria Anna was the eldest living child and therefore a possible heir to the throne until the birth of her brother Joseph in 1741. Within the family, she was usually called Marianna. Like her sisters, she was educated by governesses. From an early age, she showed exceptional talent in music, drawing, and painting. She danced excellently and had a beautiful soprano voice. She also possessed a good memory, sharp logic, a strong sense of humor, and considerable self-irony. By contrast, she was less able to pursue the humanities in depth, and her language skills were considered rather modest. Within the family, she often stood in the shadow of her siblings. Maria Theresa favored her son Joseph, the future heir to the throne, while other daughters received greater attention because of their beauty or their mother’s particular affection. Maria Anna repeatedly came into conflict with her sister Maria Christina. She felt this neglect from childhood and often tried to attract her mother’s attention. Maria Anna was physically delicate and prone to illness. In 1757, at the age of nineteen, she became seriously ill with pneumonia in the poorly heated, drafty Hofburg in Vienna. Her condition became so critical that she was given the last rites. She survived, but was left with bone tuberculosis. Her spine became deformed, and she suffered severe breathing difficulties for the rest of her life. Her physical disability made her lonely; she had to endure mockery even from relatives and siblings. A marriage appropriate to her rank consequently seemed almost impossible, and she remained unmarried and childless. After her recovery, Maria Anna developed an especially close relationship with her father. Francis Stephen treated her with great affection and included her in his scientific reading and research. This awakened her strong interest in minerals, rocks, and coins. In 1765, while traveling with her parents and siblings to Innsbruck for the wedding of her brother Peter Leopold, she visited the convent of the Elisabethines in Klagenfurt. Her encounter with the nuns shaped the rest of her life. She felt drawn to a community in which physical appearance was not decisive and where she would be protected from humiliation because of her body. On August 5, 1765, Peter Leopold married the Spanish Infanta Maria Ludovika of the House of Bourbon in Innsbruck. Only a few days later, on August 18, Francis Stephen died there of a stroke. Maria Anna, who had been especially close to her father, thus lost her most important confidant. On February 2, 1766, Maria Theresa appointed her daughter abbess of the noblewomen’s convent of St. Teresa, which Maria Theresa herself had founded on Prague’s Hradčany. The office provided a high income and only occasional official duties; in Bohemia, the abbess held the second-highest rank after the chancellor. Maria Anna never personally took up the responsibilities of the office. Nevertheless, its annual income of 20,000 gulden secured her financial independence. Against her mother’s wishes, she decided to move to Klagenfurt. The Viennese court architect Nikolaus Pacassi built a small palace for her there, directly beside the Elisabethine convent. The building was completed in 1776, but Maria Theresa did not allow her daughter to leave Vienna permanently until after her own death. During the long period of waiting, Maria Anna organized the extensive scientific collection she had inherited from her father. This collection later formed one of the foundations of the holdings of Vienna’s Natural History Museum. She also assembled her own collection of minerals and insects, assisted by the geologist Ignaz Born. She expanded her father’s coin collection as well. In 1782, she published an elaborately designed scholarly book about the commemorative coins minted during Maria Theresa’s reign. Her watercolors and drawings were recognized and praised in the art world. She became a member of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and was also elected to the Florentine Academy of Art. After Maria Theresa’s death on November 29, 1780, Maria Anna moved permanently into her Klagenfurt palace four months later. The Elisabethines welcomed her warmly, and she formed a close friendship with their abbess, Xaveria Gasser. Maria Anna generously supported the convent, allowing its hospital to be greatly expanded. Her personal physician also treated patients in the public hospital. Through donations and charitable work, she became actively involved in the welfare of Klagenfurt’s inhabitants. In Klagenfurt, she gathered a wide circle of nuns, artists, scholars, and high-ranking figures around her. Many of her acquaintances belonged to Masonic lodges. In 1783, the lodge “Zur wohltätigen Marianna” was founded in the city and named after her. Her scientific interests remained undiminished, and she later also turned to archaeology. She supported excavations in the area around Zollfeld with a donation of 30,000 gulden and even took part in the work herself. During the winter of 1788, her health steadily deteriorated. Her breathing difficulties worsened, and eventually she could move about only in a wheelchair. Maria Anna died in Klagenfurt on November 19, 1789, surrounded by her closest friends. She bequeathed her entire private fortune, worth more than 150,000 gulden, to the local Elisabethine convent. Her brother, Emperor Joseph II, waived the inheritance tax owed by the convent. Maria Anna’s Klagenfurt palace is still standing; after her death, it became the seat of the Diocese of Gurk.