Maria Theresia reworked a palace and the role of royal widow, too.

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Just As She Pleased
by Brady Huggett

In the patriarchal eighteenth century, a woman of royalty who had lost her husband basically snuffed her social life. These widows often became nuns or hid themselves away and quietly lived in seclusion. But if the royal widow in question happened to be the empress of the Habsburg Dynasty by family lineage, she pretty much did as she pleased.

At least that is what Michael Yonan thinks. Yonan is a Ph.D. candidate in the art department at UNC-CH, specializing in eighteenth-century art and architecture. He spent the last scholastic year abroad as a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, studying Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria, and researching how Empress Maria Theresia molded it to suit her needs following the death of her husband.

If you've ever been to Vienna, chances are you know the palace, since it is the crown jewel in a city filled with architectural gems. It is a golden, creamy yellow, fills the skyline, and is a reminder of a time when rulers had ludicrous amounts of money and weren’t afraid to show it. Hide and seek? A child would have died of starvation before being found in this place.

Schoenbrunn housed Maria Theresia, her husband, her children, and the entire court—a swarm of people associated with the empress in some way. There were officials who took care of state duties, officials in charge of foreign policy, and so on, down to the kinds of jobs that exist only where there is tremendous wealth.

“It’s hard for us to imagine, but there might be one person in the kitchen who only mixes dough,” Yonan says. “They have a specific name in the court, and their job is to stand around and wait until dough needs to be mixed.”

When Emperor Karl VI died, it marked the end of the male line in the Habsburg Dynasty and left only Maria Theresia to succeed him. She married Franz Stephen, but it was never any question that the power over the Habsburg lands lay with her, not her husband, and when he died in 1765, she became a prototype.

“The notion of an empress in power while being a widow is new,” Yonan says. “What happened previously is that empresses would serve by their husbands, and after they died, the empresses would find a palace, enter nunneries, or be sent off and live out their days without any real political activity. Since Maria Theresia is the one that the family line passes through, the death of her husband does not cause power to automatically go to her son.”

Maria Theresia was a ruler with much personality—she overshadowed her husband their entire time together—so her position as a ruling widow didn’t faze her. She simply made adjustments.

“She tried to combine a palace and widow’s retreat into one building,” Yonan says. “She turned the palace into a place where she could sequester herself from society, be very private, be removed from the activities of state, but when she needed to, let affairs of state happen there.”

Yonan’s dissertation scrutinizes the changes Maria Theresia made in Schoenbrunn following her husband’s death. The Millions Room, which exuded power, was originally an audience room for receiving dignitaries and officials—an act that might be as simple as accepting a message from a foreign ruler or giving an official welcoming to the city. The design then was very eighteenth century, and the room was thick with mirrors. These hundreds of small mirrors created the illusion of infinite space; when people entered the room they saw themselves reflected over and over.

Maria Theresia turned this space into a coffee-and-cards room as well as a place to receive guests. She pulled down the mirrors and replaced them with three larger ones. She had the room’s interior constructed with precious rosewood and installed gold rococo frames surrounding miniature Mughal paintings. She could still use the room for official duties, but now it also met her need for relaxation.

The Vieux Laque room—the name is French and literally means “the room with old lacquered wood”—backs Yonan’s theory as well. The room had been the emperor’s private space, a place where he could shut the door, be by himself and get away. Maria Theresia turned it into another reception room and adorned the walls with three portraits. One was of her deceased husband, another was of her two eldest sons in Rome. This portrait announced the prominence of her sons—one was the Holy Roman Emperor, and the other was the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The third portrait was of her second son’s wife and their eldest children.

These portraits speak volumes of Maria Theresia; they proudly refer to her fertility. They state she has been a good wife and mother, she has “produced an heir and a spare,” says Yonan, as well as future generations of rulers through the children of her son. It is a shrine both to her family—she had sixteen children—and to herself, as she is the one link between them all.

Yonan worked for access to Schoenbrunn. At first, the palace’s administration granted him just a couple of visits. With some persistence and the help of the Fulbright program, he convinced them that he needed to be there frequently, studying things, backtracking through rooms, really taking the time to get a feel for the palace. They relented, and Yonan got to experience Schoenbrunn as few people ever do.

“They allowed me unrestricted access to the palace, anywhere that it was safe to go,” Yonan says. “I could go in, for instance, in January, when there weren’t any tourists, and just sit in these rooms, virtually alone, and spend two hours taking notes, sticking my nose right up against the works of art without anyone bothering me.”

Taking a tour of Schoenbrunn and its interior is overpowering; the intricate work and decoration just blows people away. But tours must end, and before customers know it, they are in the gift shop and the rooms are a shining, blurred memory. Yonan says he will always cherish the opportunity he had.

A year on a Fulbright scholarship is educational for two reasons: the research and the foreign-culture immersion. Yonan rented a room from an elderly Austrian woman who pulled him under her wing.

“She made me her surrogate grandson and I couldn’t stop it,” Yonan says. “She cooked for me. She critiqued my entire existence, especially what I wore. But she was fascinating because she was eighty years old and had lived through both the Nazi and Russian occupation of Austria. She was a walking history book.”

Occasionally—and it was always her idea—she would drive him outside the city to view other palaces, other fine works of art and architecture.

“The joke was that this Austrian woman was the reincarnation of Maria Theresia, and I was actually living with my dissertation topic,” Yonan says.

Yonan is still living with it—back at home now and writing daily. He has finished one of the chapters and started on another, and feels positive about its direction.

“American art historians haven’t really looked at this,” Yonan says. “So it makes it a little harder for me because I am dealing with something that doesn’t have a lot of precedence. But it also means that the potential for it being a useful project for people is pretty high.”

Yonan hopes his work will interest a wide audience. If you are sifting through an academic library and stumble across his dissertation, don’t try to flip through it then. Best to check it out and find a nice, quiet room with a good atmosphere and sit down for a while.

Article by Brady Huggett
© Copyright 2000 Endeavors magazine, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.

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