Maria Josepha of Bavaria

Maria Josepha Antonia Walburga Felicitas Regula, Princess of Bavaria and Bohemia (* March 20, 1739 in Munich, † May 28, 1767 in Vienna) was the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor and Bavarian Elector Karl Albrecht and his wife Maria Amalia of Austria, a daughter of Emperor Joseph I. they eventually became Empress by marriage.

Biography

1765, when Maria Josepha was 26 years old, she married Joseph, a son of Emperor Franz Stephan and Maria Theresa of Austria. In the same year died the Emperor Franz Stephan, so Joseph was Joseph II as emperor and co-regent with his mother's new and Empress Maria Josepha.

The marriage of Joseph II to the two-year old Maria Josepha was not happy. Joseph did not want to get married after the untimely death of his beloved first wife Isabella of Bourbon -Parma and chose only to pressure from his mother Maria Theresa, the Bavarian Princess Maria Josepha, he with " ugly teeth " described as " small and thick shape ". He admitted, however, that Maria Josepha a " reproachful free woman " is that love him and he appreciated because of their good characteristics and that it upsets me that he can not love his second wife.

Probably the marriage of the two was never consummated. Joseph avoided the common bedroom and had even divide up the common balcony in Schönbrunn Palace, to his wife not to see. 1767, after two years of marriage, Maria Josepha died as its predecessor Isabella of smallpox. Her mother, Maria Theresa became ill with smallpox, but survived. Maria Josepha was buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna, Joseph II did not attend her funeral.

Only once played the unloved Empress for her husband Joseph II a role, as this 1778/1779 claims to large parts Kurbayerns rose and called, among other things his marriage to Maria Josepha of Bavaria, which eventually led to the War of Bavarian Succession, in the Habsburgs could only win the Bavarian Innviertel.