Maria Karolina von Österreich

Maria Carolina of Austria was born in Vienna on September 17, 1748, as the tenth child and seventh daughter of Archduchess Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis Stephen of Lorraine. At the time, her mother ruled Austria and would later become Queen of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia; her father became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire as Francis I. Maria Carolina was thus born into one of Europe’s most important ruling families. Despite her increasing physical exhaustion, Maria Theresa had once again been unable to reconcile her tenth pregnancy with her political and ceremonial duties. On the day before the birth, she still attended public engagements in Vienna, bade farewell to a Turkish envoy, visited her mother, and went to the opera in the evening. On September 17, her daily schedule initially proceeded as planned, with a church service followed by consultations at Schönbrunn Palace. The birth began seemingly normally but became difficult because the child was delivered feet first. As the little archduchess was extremely weak, the midwife immediately performed an emergency baptism. It was of the utmost importance to Maria Theresa that her daughter be baptized while still alive, because according to contemporary Catholic belief, unbaptized children could not enter Heaven and would remain eternally in limbo. Maria Theresa’s personal physician, Gerard van Swieten, assured the empress that the girl was still alive at the time of the baptism. Nevertheless, many members of the court doubted whether the baptism had taken place in time. Maria Carolina died in Vienna on the day of her birth. As was customary for newborn children of the family, her body was initially laid out in the Summer Room of Schönbrunn Palace. Relatives and members of the court could convince themselves there that the child appeared normal and was not deformed, although there was no formal public display. The following day, her body was taken to the Hofburg. That same evening, Maria Carolina was buried in the Capuchin Church. She was given her name in honor of an older sister of the same name who had died in childhood. Maria Carolina was buried as the third member of the House of Habsburg, or Habsburg-Lorraine, in the Maria Theresa Crypt of Vienna’s Imperial Crypt. She had fifteen siblings in total. Two of them also died in childhood, while three others died of smallpox as teenagers. Her better-known older siblings included Joseph II, Maria Christina, Maria Amalia, and Leopold II. Among her younger siblings were Ferdinand, Duke of Breisgau; Maria Antonia, later known as Marie Antoinette; and Maximilian Francis. Since Maria Carolina died immediately after her birth, she left no political or personal impact of her own; her brief life is remembered chiefly in connection with Maria Theresa’s large family and with the medical and religious beliefs of the eighteenth century.