Maria Theresia

       This is me next to the auspicious portrait of Maria Theresia, also known as the mother in law of Europe. This nickname comes from the fact that she had sixteen children and married all of them off (at least the ones that lived to be old enough) to other countries in order to form political alliances and strengthen her empire. I love this fact because it sums up her ideology. At age twenty five when her father died, Maria assumed the throne and was immediately left with a hot mess to deal with. Her father had been losing wars on all sides, his widow took the remaining money from the treasury, and the government was unstable. She was thrown into the seven year war of Austrian succession. She fought battles, won, and slowly began to trust her advisors and establish her authority. She was pragmatic and wanted to help the people be happy so that their empire would flourish, her advisors, who were big into the enlightenment, helped her to make progressive changes to help the people.


    She was wildly important because she practically rebuilt the crumbling empire and made it strong and powerful. She was also pro-vaccine because she lost so many kids. One notable reform that we discussed was her educational reforms. She made education compulsory for six years of a child’s life, which is huge. Historically she did have some problems like being antisemitic and anti Protestant, but despite her staunch belief in her catholic faith, she did lessen the power of the Church, which is very interesting to me. Finally she is interwoven into the history of Europe because so many of her kids were married off. For example, Marie Antoinette was her daughter! Also a fun fact that I enjoyed was that in 1762 Mozart played his first concert for her, at age six!


    So yes she had a big influence and has been commemorated very well. She was never named empress but everyone knew who was in charge. She had the title of regent among others. She has a giant statue of her in between the national history and art museums, she has a school named after her because of her important educational reforms, and even the tour we went on today of their summer palace had so much information about her. She is certaintly not a woman in the shadows. So really she has been commemorated in notable ways and I know for sure that there are many other ways that I just don’t even know about.

Comments

  1. EleaseJune 3, 2024 at 10:23 PM

    Maria Theresia experienced so many obstacles. Many of those include being a woman in royalty and having to dedicate most of her life to having the "next heir to the thrown." She also received backlash for accepting vaccines in her country. These things still hamper woman today because many time woman are expected to have children and are not given the chance to be their own person.

    She helps us to understand Vienna and the things that Vienna feels is important. It also helps us to understand that Maria Theresia made so many great changes to Austria.

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