Amélie von Leuchtenberg

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Portrait of Amélies von Leuchtenberg by an unknown painter, after 1839

Amélie Auguste Eugénie Napoléone von Leuchtenberg (born July 31, 1812 in Milan , † January 26, 1873 in Lisbon ), full name Amélie Auguste Eugénie , also known as Amelia and Amalia, was through her marriage to Emperor Peter I from 1829 to 1831 Empress of Brazil .

After her husband's abdication, she went with him first to France , then to Portugal and held the title of Duchess of Braganza .

She outlived her husband by almost 40 years and, although only 22 years old when he died, never married again. The widow commuted between Portugal and Bavaria and spent the last years of her life - especially after the very painful death of her only child Maria Amalia  - completely withdrawn in the palace of Janelas Verdes near Lisbon.

family

Amélie with her daughter Maria Amalia, colored lithograph by Friedrich Dürck , around 1840

Amélie was the fourth child and youngest daughter of Eugène de Beauharnais , adoptive son from Napoleon's first marriage, and Princess Auguste of Bavaria , daughter of the Bavarian King Maximilian I , born in Milan. Her full name was Amélie Auguste Eugénie Napoléone de Beauharnais . She was the granddaughter of the former Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais and also a member of the Bavarian royal family.

In 1829 she married the Brazilian Emperor Peter I, the former King Peter IV of Portugal . The connection gave her the title of Empress of Brazil (as a wife, not as a regent in her own right). The marriage resulted in a daughter: Maria Amalia .

Life

Childhood and youth

Amélie spent the first years of her life in Milan, where her father resided as Viceroy of Italy . After Napoleon's abdication and the end of the First Empire , the family went to Bavaria and sought refuge with Amélie's grandfather. On November 14, 1817, he made her father Duke of Leuchtenberg and Prince of Eichstätt , so that the family had a livelihood. At the same time, the parents dropped the name Beauharnais in order to hide their connection to the disgraced Napoleon, and moved with their children to the Palais Leuchtenberg in Munich (today the Bavarian State Ministry of Finance, for Regional Development and Homeland ), where Amélie spent the rest of her childhood spent.

Amélie's mother knew how to marry off her daughters despite the flaw of Napoleonic descent: in 1823 Amélie's eldest sister Josephine had married the Swedish King Oskar I , and the second oldest Leuchtenberg daughter, Eugénie , had been married to Prince Konstantin Hohenzollern-Hechingen since 1826 . Then, in 1827, when the widowed Emperor Pedro I of Brazil, who had lost his first wife, the Habsburg Princess Maria Leopoldine of Austria , a year earlier , sent the Marques von Barbacena to Europe to look for a second wife Amélie's great hour. Because of his extramarital escapades, especially with his mistress , Domitília de Castro Canto e Melo , Margravine of Santos ( Portuguese: Marquesa de Santos ), it was not the best for Pedro's reputation . According to many, his first wife had died out of grief over it. For this reason the Marques von Barbacena had received rejections at all European royal courts with regard to his request. To make matters worse, the Emperor of Austria , Franz I , boycotted the search for a new bride for Pedro. He wanted to prevent possible sons from a second marriage of his son-in-law from taking the Brazilian throne instead of Leopoldine's son. Finally Barbacena went to see Amélie's grandmother Joséphine. After lengthy negotiations, the marriage contract was finally signed in Canterbury on May 30, 1829 . Among other things, he obliged the emperor to part with his previous mistress. Amélies honorary guardian King Ludwig I ratified the treaty on July 25, 1829 in Munich.

Empress of Brazil

Wedding of Amélie von Leuchtenberg and Emperor Peter I in 1829, watercolor by Jean Baptiste Debret

At the age of 17, just two days after her birthday, married Amélie per procurationem on August 2, 1829 in the chapel of the Palais' Leuchtenberg Pedro I of Brazil. The groom was represented at the ceremony by Amélie's favorite uncle, Prince Karl Theodor of Bavaria . On the occasion of his wedding to Amélie, Pedro founded the Order of Roses , the motto of which is "love and loyalty". In order to have a splendid wedding celebration in Munich, Pedro I. had a large sum of money sent to Bavaria, but the bride insisted on a simple celebration and used the surplus to set up a charitable foundation .

Two days after the wedding, the newly crowned Empress of Brazil left her hometown to visit her husband in South America. At noon sharp, a train of eight carriages and two baggage cars left Munich. Amélie was accompanied on the trip by her brother Auguste . Via Augsburg , Ulm and Ostend we went to Portsmouth , where the first meeting with Maria da Glória , the eldest daughter from Pedro I's first marriage, took place. Amélie was just seven years older than her stepdaughter. From Portsmouth it went on to Brazil on August 30th of that year. On the journey there, Amélie was prepared for life in her new homeland by the scientist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius , a recognized Brazil expert, by teaching her interesting facts about the country, her new subjects and about the customs and traditions while the Brazilian Countess of Itapagipe was responsible for teaching her new empress the Portuguese language during the crossing .

The ship arrived in the port of Rio de Janeiro on October 16, 1829. Even before Amélie set foot on the Brazilian mainland, she met her husband for the first time on the ship. It did not officially move into the capital until the following day, to the great cheering of the Brazilian population. On the afternoon of October 17, 1829, the Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro , José Caetano da Silva Coutinho, celebrated a second wedding ceremony in the imperial chapel, during which a Te Deum was sung, which Emperor Pedro I himself had composed. After the ceremony, further celebrations took place in the city ​​palace of the imperial family. Further receptions and festivities followed, with which the first months after the wedding of the imperial couple were filled. Together with Amélies, they moved four stepchildren to the official imperial residence Paço de São Cristóvão . There Amélie was a very caring mother to them and lovingly took care of the half-orphans. She supervised the upbringing of her stepdaughters herself, but she refused to allow her husband's illegitimate children to be brought up at court with his former mistress Domitília. Beloved dearly by her stepchildren, her reputation among the Brazilian courtiers was not so good. Although she had removed the clique of Domitília de Castro Canto e Melo from the imperial court, but then installed her own Bavarian favorites. In addition, she replaced the rather loose customs in the palace with the rigid etiquette of European courts and introduced French as the court language, which led to extreme alienation among the Brazilians. They gave her the contemptuous nickname "the stranger".

Exile in France

Portrait of Amélies by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Various financial and political problems forced Pedro I to abdicate on April 7, 1831 in favor of his son Pedro II. That same night, Amélie and her husband and their eldest daughter Maria da Glória left the imperial residence in secret to board a British warship that was moored in the port of Rio de Janeiro. This brought her to Europe, where she initially resided in London as the Duke and Duchess of Braganza . The crossing turned out to be very difficult for Amélie because she was four months pregnant. Since life in the British capital became too expensive in the long run, the couple went to Paris , where they stayed with Louis-Philippe and his wife Maria Amalia from Naples-Sicily . In the French capital, on December 1, 1831, Amélie gave birth to her only child, daughter Maria Amalia, who was sponsored by the French royal couple.

Shortly afterwards, her husband left for Portugal to go to war against his brother Michael . This had usurped the Portuguese throne , and Pedro was preparing to recapture it for the rightful ruler, his daughter Maria da Glória, in the so-called Miguelistenkrieg , which he also succeeded. Amélie followed her husband to Portugal in September 1833, where the couple moved into the Palácio Nacional de Queluz near Lisbon . Severely marked by tuberculosis , Pedro died there on September 24, 1834, leaving Amélie as a 22-year-old widow with a young daughter.

Living in Portugal and Bavaria

The ex-empress had to cope with another stroke of fate in March 1835. Her beloved brother Auguste, who had married Amélie's stepdaughter Maria da Glória, who was now Queen of Portugal as Maria II, just four months earlier, died of the Spanish flu . She then withdrew to the palace of Janelas Verde (today Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga ) and devoted herself exclusively to the upbringing of her daughter Maria Amalia. She did not even take part in the second wedding of Mary II to Ferdinand von Sachsen-Coburg and Gotha . From 1838 Amélie stayed in Bavaria and met her family there again. Seeon in the Bavarian Chiemgau , whose castle was the seat of the Leuchtenbergers from 1852 to 1933, was one of her whereabouts .

The Duchess of Braganca intended to betroth her 20-year-old daughter to Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph Maria of Austria , brother of the Emperor of Austria, when Maria Amalia also showed signs of tuberculosis. Her mother moved with her to Funchal on Madeira in August 1852 because of the mild climate , but Amélie's daughter died on February 4, 1853 of the same disease as her father. The Duchess then founded a hospital to care for tuberculosis patients in memory of her daughter.

The ex-empress in later years

After the death of Amélie's step-daughter Maria II, with whom contact was gradually broken, Maria's son Peter V ascended the Portuguese throne. He and his wife Stephanie von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen had a close relationship with Amélie and visited her regularly, but the ex-empress also lost these two loved ones through a premature death. Peter V died in 1861 just two years after losing his wife. This stroke of fate and a heart disease ensured that Amélie no longer left her apartments in the palace of Janelas Verde and lived completely secluded. One of the few distractions in the last years of her life was the reunion in the middle of 1871 with her stepson Pedro II, who was on a trip to Europe with his wife Teresa Maria Cristina from Naples-Sicily .

In March 1872, Amélie was so seriously ill that she did not recover from it. She died in the company of a handful of very close friends on January 26, 1873 at the age of 61 in Lisbon. Her only surviving sister, Joséphine, was the sole heir. In addition, Amélie had given her will to around 30 charitable organizations across Europe and determined that all of her documents relating to her husband's rule and the history of Brazil should be brought to Rio de Janeiro. Thanks to this decision, the Imperial Museum of Petrópolis has an extensive archive on the first emperor of Brazil.

Amélie von Leuchtenberg was first buried in the Bragan family crypt Panteão da Casa de Bragança in the São Vicente de Fora monastery in Lisbon, before her remains were transferred to Brazil in 1982 to be kept in a crypt under the Independence Monument in Ipiranga , a district of São Paulo to be buried at the side of her husband and his first wife.

literature

  • Top secret mission. Amélie von Leuchtenberg becomes Empress of Brazil. In: Topicos. Vol. 49, No. 1, 2010, ISSN  0949-541X , p. 37 ( PDF ; 1.8 MB).
  • Adalbert Prince of Bavaria : The heart of the Leuchtenberg. Prestel, Munich 1963, especially pp. 33-65.
  • Ivanir Calado: Imperariz no fim do mundo. Memórias dúbias de Amélia de Leuchtenberg . Ediouro, Rio de Janeiro 1997, ISBN 85-00-01037-1 .
  • Mary Del Priore: Amor e fidelidade num casamento imperial: Dom Pedro I e Dona Amélia . In: Gazeta Imperial . Vol. 16, No. 189, August 2011, pp. 8–9.
  • Richard Diener: The Russian dukes Leuchtenberg in Stein an der Traun and in Seeon and their prehistory (= collective sheet . Volume 101). Historischer Verein Eichstätt, Eichstätt 2009, ISSN  0936-5869 , pp. 26–42.
  • Lígia Lemos Torres: Imperatriz Dona Amélia . Elvino Pocai, Sao Paulo 1947.
  • Mauricio Paranhos da Silva: Amélie de Beauharnais, impératrice du Brésil . In: Bulletin de la Société Suisse des Américanistes . No. 15, March, 1958, pp. 16-30 ( PDF ; 1.7 MB).
  • Guilherme Pereira, Esteves e Rodrigues: Portugal. Diccionario Historico, Chorographico, Biographico, Bibliographico, Heraldico, Numismatico e Artistico . Volume 4, 1909.

Web links

Commons : Amélie von Leuchtenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Imperatriz Dona Amélia do Brasil é destaque de exposição em Munique , accessed on November 23, 2012.
  2. ↑ M. Paranhos da Silva: Amélie de Beauharnais, impératrice du Brésil , p. 16.
  3. ↑ a b c Leaflet Top Secret! Amélie von Leuchtenberg becomes Empress of Brazil , p. 2 (PDF; 3 MB).
  4. ↑ M. Paranhos da Silva: Amélie de Beauharnais, impératrice du Brésil , p. 17.
  5. ↑ Top secret leaflet ! Amélie von Leuchtenberg becomes Empress of Brazil , p. 3 (PDF; 3 MB).
  6. ↑ Top secret leaflet ! Amélie von Leuchtenberg becomes Empress of Brazil , p. 5 (PDF; 3 MB).
  7. ↑ M. Paranhos da Silva: Amélie de Beauharnais, impératrice du Brésil , p. 18.
  8. ↑ a b M. Paranhos da Silva: Amélie de Beauharnais, impératrice du Brésil , p. 19.
  9. ↑ a b c Claudia Thomé Witte: A outra noiva do imperador. O casamento com D. Pedro I e toda a trajetória no Brasil da princesa bávara Amélia de Leuchtenberg. In: Revista de História da Biblioteca Nacional. September 6, 2010, ISSN  1808-4001 ( online ( memento of November 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive )).
  10. ↑ Top secret leaflet ! Amélie von Leuchtenberg becomes Empress of Brazil , p. 8 (PDF; 3 MB).
  11. ^ Roderick J. Barman: Citizen Emperor. Pedro II and the Making of Brazil, 1825-1891 . Stanford University Press, Stanford 1999, ISBN 0804744009 , pp. 25-29 ( online ).
  12. ↑ a b c Thea Leitner: Fates in the House of Habsburg. Piper, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-492-23980-3 , p. 196.
  13. ^ Roderick J. Barman: Citizen Emperor. Pedro II and the Making of Brazil, 1825-1891 . Stanford University Press, Stanford 1999, ISBN 0804744009 , p. 26 ( digitized version ).
  14. ^ Thea Leitner: Fates in the House of Habsburg. Piper, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-492-23980-3 , p. 195.
  15. ↑ M. Paranhos da Silva: Amélie de Beauharnais, impératrice du Brésil , p. 21.
  16. ↑ M. Paranhos da Silva: Amélie de Beauharnais, impératrice du Brésil , p. 26.
  17. ↑ M. Paranhos da Silva: Amélie de Beauharnais, impératrice du Brésil , p. 28.
  18. ↑ Amélie of Leuchtenberg on worldhistory.de , access on 25 November 2012 found.
predecessor Office Successor
Maria Leopoldine of Austria Empress of Brazil
1829 to 1831 		Teresa Maria Cristina of Naples-Sicily
personal data
SURNAME Leuchtenberg, Amélie von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leuchtenberg, Amalia von; Leuchtenberg, Amelia von; Beauharnais, Amélie Auguste Eugénie Napoléone de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Empress of Brazil
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1812
PLACE OF BIRTH Milan , Italy
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1873
Place of death Lisbon , Portugal