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Wilhelmine Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg

1673 – 1742 · Generation XV · Consort

Portrait of Wilhelmine Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg

Wilhelmine Amalie (1673 – 1742). Consort. Married Joseph in 1699. Wife of Joseph I. The youngest daughter of John Frederick, duke of Brunswick-Calenberg, she was raised a Catholic in France at the convent of Maubuisson and returned to Hanover only at twenty. Empress Eleonore chose her for her son in the hope that a pious bride, older than he, would curb his philandering; it did not. Joseph kept a string of mistresses, made Countess Marianne Pálffy his acknowledged favourite, and in 1704 infected his wife with a venereal disease that may explain why she bore no more children after her second daughter. Shut out of politics, she still cultivated ministers and advanced her Guelph family’s interests. Widowed in 1711, she fought, with Leibniz’s help, for her daughters’ place in the succession, only to see Charles VI revise it in favour of his own. From 1722 she lived at the Salesian convent she had founded in Vienna.

Place in the family

  • Wilhelmine Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg married Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor, an uncle of Maria Theresa.

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Life

  • 1673 — Born
  • 1699 — Married Joseph
  • 1742 — Died

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