Maria Dorothea von Württemberg

Maria Dorothea Luise Wilhelmine Karoline of Württemberg was born on November 1, 1797, in Carlsruhe, Silesia. She was the eldest daughter of Duke Ludwig Friedrich Alexander of Württemberg and his second wife, Henriette of Nassau-Weilburg. Among her siblings were Amalie, who later married Duke Joseph of Saxe-Altenburg; Pauline, the wife of King Wilhelm I of Württemberg; and Elisabeth, who married Duke Wilhelm of Baden. Her father’s first marriage also produced her half-brother Karl Wilhelm of Württemberg, who became an officer in the Russian army. Maria Dorothea grew up in a pietist, evangelical environment. On August 24, 1819, she married Archduke Joseph Anton Johann of Austria at Kirchheim unter Teck Castle. Since 1796, he had served as Palatine, or royal governor, of Hungary. The groom was 43 and had already lost two wives, both of whom had died of puerperal fever after giving birth to their first child. For the 22-year-old Maria Dorothea, this was the archduke’s third marriage and the beginning of her role as Hungary’s last Palatiness. From her arrival in Hungary, she showed an unusual closeness to the country. When a Hungarian parliamentary delegation welcomed her, she replied in Hungarian—something unprecedented among the women of the House of Habsburg. She and her husband lived in Buda, and she adopted his sympathy for the Hungarian people. The couple were warmly received on their journeys through the country, including a visit to Orosháza in 1821. The marriage produced five children. One daughter died in infancy, and their son Alexander Leopold died at the age of twelve. The surviving children were Elisabeth Franziska Maria, Archduke Joseph Karl Ludwig, and Archduchess Maria Henriette. Elisabeth Franziska Maria first married Ferdinand of Modena, who died in 1849, and later Archduke Karl Ferdinand of Austria-Teschen. Her daughter, Maria Theresia Henriette, later became Queen of Bavaria. Joseph Karl Ludwig became a cavalry general and, from 1869, commander-in-chief of the Royal Hungarian Honvéd. Maria Henriette married Leopold of Brabant and later became Queen of the Belgians as the wife of King Leopold II. Maria Dorothea’s evangelical faith caused tensions within the strictly Catholic Habsburg family. By papal order, her children had to be raised as Catholics, although she herself viewed the Viennese court’s rigid and conservative religious practices critically. At the same time, she raised the twins from her husband’s second marriage, Archduchess Hermine Amalie and Archduke Stephan, as if they were her own children. Stephan later also became Palatine of Hungary. As a committed Lutheran, Maria Dorothea devoted herself particularly to the evangelical church. Since there was initially no evangelical church in Buda Castle, she attended services at the Pest church on what is now Deák Square. In winter, however, crossing the Danube was often impossible. She therefore supported the construction of an evangelical church in Buda and founded the local evangelical congregation in 1844. She provided a foundation of 10,000 gulden for the construction of the church and parsonage. She was no longer free when the church was consecrated in September 1847. She also supported Scottish missionaries who worked among Jews in Hungary and later helped establish an English-speaking Protestant congregation. A major part of her work was devoted to welfare. From 1819, Maria Dorothea was patron of the Buda Benevolent Women’s Association. She arranged for a house to be established where poor and abandoned women could support themselves through knitting and spinning, and she founded five work schools for girls. She also helped establish an institution for the blind and supported Teréz Brunszvik’s first kindergarten, which the association later took over and maintained. During the cholera epidemic of 1830 and 1831, she arranged for money, food, firewood, and other necessities to be distributed. More than 1,000 families, comprising around 3,200 people, received assistance. In 1839, she also supported the founding of a children’s hospital in Pest, which later developed into a clinic of Semmelweis University. After her husband’s death on January 13, 1847, the Viennese court ordered her to leave Buda. Only a few days later, she was expelled from her Hungarian homeland and placed under compulsory residence in Vienna’s Augarten district. As a result, she was separated not only from her evangelical congregation but initially also from her three minor children. During the Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence of 1848–49, she sympathized with the Hungarian cause. In coded letters to her pastor, she expressed her views and subsequently tried to alleviate the repression directed against the Hungarians. She repeatedly intervened on behalf of persecuted Protestant clergy. She unsuccessfully sought a pardon for János Jeszenák, a government commissioner sentenced to death, but succeeded in having an edict directed against the Hungarian evangelical church rescinded. Her intercession also helped ease the imprisonment of several evangelical bishops. With her assistance, a banned work on the history and persecution of the Hungarian evangelical church was published abroad. Despite close surveillance, she remained connected with the Protestants and visited her Buda congregation three times, each time subjected to humiliating restrictions and controls. Maria Dorothea also cared for her widowed daughter Elisabeth Franziska Maria and her daughter, Maria Theresia Henriette. Since the girl’s father had died shortly after her birth, Maria Dorothea took temporary responsibility for raising her granddaughter. In 1835, she published the religious work “Anklopfen des Heilands.” At the beginning of 1855, she was officially permitted to travel to Buda once more to be with her pregnant daughter. During the visit, she also went to the evangelical church she had supported. After developing a severe cold, her condition deteriorated; she became bedridden and suffered paralysis. She died in Buda in March 1855. Following the funeral ceremonies, she was buried beside her husband, who had died in 1847, in the Palatine Crypt of Buda Castle. Her memory remained alive in Hungary. A street in central Budapest bears her name, and a bilingual memorial plaque commemorates her as the wife of the Palatine, Hungary’s last Palatiness, and a benefactor of the Hungarian people. The Buda evangelical congregation she founded and various evangelical educational institutions also preserve her memory. Her grave was severely damaged and looted in the 1970s, but was later restored with the involvement of anthropological experts.