The Holy Roman Empress Elisabeth Christine was born on 28 August 1691. In the annals of history, only the fact that she was Maria Theresa’s mother has spared her from complete obscurity. Born to the Protestant Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, she was chosen to wed Catholic Archduke Charles, future Emperor Charles VI. Surprisingly, it took the […]
Archduchess Maria Elisabeth, the daughter of Emperor Leopold I and long-time governess of the Austrian Netherlands, died on 26 August 1741. With her, the dynasty lost a talented political leader and administrator. In 1715, after the defeat in the War of the Spanish Succession, Austria received the Spanish Netherlands as compensation. Due to widespread hostility […]
Stéphanie, Countess Lónyay, died on 23 August 1945. Despite her modest title, she was born a Princess of Belgium and, through her marriage to Rudolf, son of Emperor Francis Joseph, became Crown Princess of Austria-Hungary. The extremely unhappy marriage produced one daughter and ended with Rudolf’s scandalous suicide at Mayerling in 1889. For the 25-year-old […]
Rudolf, the son of Emperor Francis Joseph and Empress Elisabeth (Sisi), was born on 21 August 1858. His unusual name, recalling the 13th-century Habsburg emperor Rudolf I, was chosen to emphasise continuity with the dynasty’s past. Francis Joseph granted his only son the title of Crown Prince to distinguish him from the other archdukes. The […]
It is time to commemorate another Habsburg ‘wedding of the century’ — this time the one that belonged to the 15th century: Duchess Mary of Burgundy and Archduke Maximilian, the son of Emperor Friedrich III, were married on 19 August 1477. Mary was young, beautiful and immensely wealthy, and she had grown up at the […]
Emperor Francis Joseph was born on 18 August 1830. At birth, he was not a member of the main line and thus not the heir apparent to the Imperial throne. On the other hand, there was hardly a wide choice of candidates, as the incumbent monarch, the epileptic Ferdinand, was fit neither to rule nor […]
Archduchess Anna, the eldest daughter of Charles II of Inner Austria and Maria Anna of Bavaria, was born on 16 August 1573. Her parents were closely related, being uncle and niece. She grew up among a large horde of siblings under the loving care of her parents and received a strict Catholic education. As the […]
The Archduchesses Maria Elisabeth and Maria Karolina were born on 13 August, in 1743 and 1752 respectively. They were the fifth and tenth daughters of Maria Theresa and Francis Stephan. Due to the considerable age gap, the two sisters neither played together nor shared tutors or lesson programmes. Apart from their common birthday, they had […]
Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia was born on 12 August 1566. She was the eldest surviving daughter of Philip II of Spain from his third marriage to Elisabeth of Valois, the daughter of Henry II of France. Despite the early loss of their mother, Isabella Clara and her sister Catalina Michaela enjoyed a safe and loving […]
Archduchess Maria Christina and Sigismund Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, were married on 6 August 1595. For a long time, the Principality of Transylvania had been a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire. Its political life was a bewildering tangle of local noble ambitions, rival cousins, religious conflicts, extravagant conspiracies, and secret assassinations. In the early […]
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