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.