Family Matters. Female Dynastic Agency and Correspondence

In Austria and far beyond, everyone probably knows Empress Maria Theresa, who ruled the Habsburg Monarchy in the 18th century and exerted great influence on European politics. But have you ever heard of her grandmother Eleonora Magdalena? As the mother of two emperors reigning for almost 40 years, Joseph I and Maria Theresas father Charles VI, she was deeply involved in the politics of her time. How come she is completely unknown to most people today? The presumed lack of archive material on women in this period has led to very little research on her person so far. Luckily that has now changed: In Munich, more than 1,000 letters have were discovered that the Empress wrote to her father, Elector Philipp Wilhelm of the Palatinate, and to her brother Johann Wilhelm of the Palatinate, in which she commented on politics, family and everyday life. These letters form the basis of a more intensive study of the empress and her political as well as her role in the dynasty, the princely family. Thus, for the period between 1676, the year of her marriage to Emperor Leopold I, and 1716, the year of her brother`s death, it is now possible to understand very precisely how she lived and which political goals she pursued. In her endeavours she collaborated with numerous people located in Vienna, Düsseldorf, Neuburg on the Danube, but also in Cologne, Madrid and Rome. Investigating political processes, it interesting to see in whose favour she took sides. She supported her numerous siblings as well as her own children, namely she was involved in several of her brothers becoming bishops and thus princes of the Holy Roman Empire. Eleonora Magdalena prepared the marriages of her sisters, who married to Spain, Portugal, Poland and Italy. All the siblings corresponded with each other throughout their lives, supporting each other and playing a role in European politics in different ways. The princely family, i.e. the dynasty, was an important framework of action for all of them, both women and men, and the strengthening the House of Palatinate-Neuburg as well as the House of Habsburg was Eleonora Magdalena`s goal. The project has three aims: Firstly, we want to make the empress`s many letters available online so that anyone interested can look at the exchanges and cooperation within the family. Secondly, we will search for more of the empress`s letters in order to broaden our knowledge about her and the ways in which she acted. And finally, we are investigating the arguments and strategies she used to realise her goals in a time when, at first glance, women seemed to have no independent means of political action.

The project's focus were the letters from the Holy Roman Empress Eleonora Magdalena of Palatine-Neuburg (1655-1720) sent between 1677 and 1716 to her father Philipp Wilhelm of Palatine-Neuburg and her brother Johann Wilhelm, both Electors Palatinate in their respective lifetimes. This collection consists of 1,152 autograph letters from the Empress, 56 draft letters from her father and 381 draft letters and letter copies from her brother. Predating Maria Theresa, the famous grand-daughter of our respective Empress, there is no larger collection of letters of a Habsburg princess than that of Eleonora Magdalena. This archival collection held at the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München (Munich, Germany) was transcribed using the TRANSKRIBUS software and processed into a digital edition available at https://kaiserin-eleonora.oeaw.ac.at/ (online since June 2024). The letters provide a fascinating insight into the political thinking of a Habsburg empress and reveal how and in what context Eleonora Magdalena in particular became politically active. They act as testimonies of everyday life at the Viennese court from the great plague epidemic of 1680 through the second Turkish siege in 1683 to the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. On top of that, they substantially illuminate the close ties between the Empress's two families, the Palatine Wittelsbachs and the Austrian Habsburgs, in which she played a key role. In the project, this last aspect was given priority attention. To this end, additional research was conducted in various European archives to locate further letters written by the Empress. Our new archival findings from Karlsruhe, Wolfenbüttel, Parma and Minsk made it possible to map more accurately Eleonora Magdalena's European correspondence network. In addition, the letters were used to examine two major aspects of the Empress's actions in more detail: First, a study was conducted on the aspect of dynastic loyalty, showing how she represented, combined and negotiated the political interests of both her family of origin in Düsseldorf and Heidelberg and that of the Austrian Habsburgs into which she married. Second, it was possible to highlight the considerable influence the Empress exerted on the appointment of bishops in the Holy Roman Empire. In doing so, she represented the political interests of both her dynasties and gained lasting influence in imperial politics. In the present continuation project, the contentual exploration of the letters will be completed and the personal networks of the Empress further examined - we will keep you posted at https://kaiserin.hypotheses.org/.