Anna Maria of Mecklenburg-Schwerin

Anna Maria of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Anna Maria of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Duchess of Saxe-Weissenfels. Engraving by Johannes Frentzel, 1654
Spouse(s)	Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels
Noble family	House of Mecklenburg
Father	Adolf Frederick I, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Mother	Anna Maria of Ostfriesland
Born	1 July 1627(1627-07-01) Schwerin
Died	11 December 1669(1669-12-11) (aged 42) Halle
Burial	Neu-Augustusburg Castle in Weissenfels

Anna Maria of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Schwerin, 1 July 1627 – Halle, 11 December 1669) was a German noblewoman, a member of the House of Mecklenburg and by marriage Duchess of Saxe-Weissenfels.

She was the fourth child and second daughter of Adolf Frederick I, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin by his first wife Anna Maria, daughter of Enno III, Count of Ostfriesland.^[1] In older historiography she appears with a third name, Dorothea,^[2] but modern historians have discarded it.

Life

The wars involving Mecklenburg forced her father to send Anna Maria and her two older brothers, Christian Louis and Karl, first to Sweden and shortly afterwards to Denmark, to the court of Dowager Queen Sophia (born Duchess of Mecklenburg-Güstrow). In 1629 Anna Maria was sent to Saxony with Dowager Electress Hedwig, to the latter's dower state, Castle Lichtenberg near Prettin, where she was educated. After Hedwig's death in 1642, Anna Maria returned to Schwerin, where she was reunited with her father, her mother having died in 1634. She also probably then met for the first time her stepmother, Marie Katharina of Brunswick-Dannenberg, and her three surviving half-siblings. Anna Maria was her father's favorite child of her father, as demonstrated by the cordial, even affectionate tone of the letters that they wrote to each other.

On 23 November 1647, in Schwerin, Anna Maria married Augustus, second surviving son of Johann Georg I, Elector of Saxony, and moved with her husband to Halle, the main city of his domains as Administrator of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg. During her marriage, she bore twelve children, including three daughters who died in infancy in 1663.

On 22 April 1657 her husband, by the terms of his father's will, received the towns of Weissenfels and Querfurt as his own Duchy, and hence Anna Maria became Duchess consort of Saxe-Weissenfels.

Anna Maria died on 11 December 1669 in Halle and was buried in a magnificent coffin in the Schloss Neu-Augustusburg in Weissenfels. Her three infant daughters who had been buried in the Halle Cathedral were reinterred with her.

Ancestry

Bibliography

• Dirk Schleinert. "Anna Maria von Mecklenburg (1627-1669) und August von Sachsen (1614-1680) und die Begründung des Hauses Sachsen-Weißenfels. Dynastische Beziehungen zwischen Mecklenburg und Kursachsen im 17. Jahrhundert", in Mecklenburgische Jahrbücher 123 (2008), 123-157.
• Klaus Gondermann. Die Mitglieder der Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft 1617-1650: 527 Biographien. Leipzig 1985.
• 300 Jahre Schloß Neu-Augustusburg, 1660–1694 - Residenz der Herzöge von Sachsen-Weißenfels. Festschrift. Weissenfels (1994).
• Johann Christoph Dreyhaupt. Beschreibung des ... Saal-Creyses, insonderheit der Städte Halle. Halle 1749/1751 (so-called Dreyhaupt-Chronik).

References