The Empress’s cancelled birthday On 13 May 1757, Maria Theresa turned forty years old – an occasion that under normal circumstances would have been publicly celebrated. However, following the devastating defeat at Prague only a few days earlier, she refused any celebration of her birthday and did not accept even private congratulations from her children. Instead, the Empress withdrew to the small palace of Laxenburg, where she could hide herself from the compassionate – and perhaps also the less compassionate – glances at court.
Thus, when reading in Count Khevenhüller’s Tagebuch that on 13 May the Imperial couple dined at Hetzendorf, I was struck by a question. If the Empress chose to spend her birthday with one of her children, why not her favourite, Maria Christina, or Mimi, who after all shared the very same birth date with her mother? Why did she instead choose Marianne, the less beloved of her daughters? Did the visit reflect her beaten spirit? Or was it, in some unconscious way, a form of self-punishment?
These intriguing questions offer a glimpse into the Empress’s psyche from an unexpected angle – far too tempting for an author to leave out of the narrative.
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