Antonia of Württemberg (24 March 1613 – 1 October 1679) was a princess of the

Duchy of Württemberg The Duchy of Württemberg (german: Herzogtum Württemberg) was a duchy located in the south-western part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was a member of the Holy Roman Empire from 1495 to 1806. The dukedom's long survival for over three centuries ...

, as well as a literary figure, patroness, and Christian Kabbalist.

Life

Born in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

in 1613, Princess Antonia was the third of nine children from the marriage of Duke Johann Frederick of Württemberg and

Barbara Sophie of Brandenburg Barbara Sophia of Brandenburg (16 November 1584 – 13 February 1636) was duchess of Württemberg by marriage to Duke John Frederick of Württemberg and acted as regent of the Duchy of Württemberg for their minor son, Duke Eberhard III of Würt ...

, the daughter of the Elector

Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg Joachim Frederick (27 January 1546 – 18 July 1608), of the House of Hohenzollern, was Prince-elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg from 1598 until his death. Biography Joachim Frederick was born in Cölln to John George, Elector of Brande ...

. Highly educated and generous, she was the sister of Duke Eberhard III of Württemberg, who more than his father played an important role in the

Thirty Years War The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, most destructive conflicts in History of Europe, European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an es ...

.Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg,
Archivale des Monats
" , March/April 2005 During the course of the war many churches in Württemberg were looted and became stripped of their ornaments, especially following the battle of Nördlingen in 1634. Antonia made it her mission to establish foundations to repair and restore the churches. Her charity, piety, gift for languages and all-encompassing scholarship were widely praised, and she became celebrated as "Princess Antonia the learned", and "the

Minerva Minerva (; ett, Menrva) is the Roman goddess of wisdom, justice, law, victory, and the sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. Minerva is not a patron of violence such as Mars, but of strategic war. From the second century BC onward, the Roma ...

of Württemberg". Wherever possible she dedicated herself to the arts and sciences, together with her two sisters the princesses Anna Johanna and

Sibylle Sibylle is a given name. It may refer to: *Anna Sibylle of Hanau-Lichtenberg (1542–1580), eldest surviving daughter of Count Philipp IV and Countess Eleonore of Fürstenberg *Duchess Magdalene Sibylle of Prussia (1586–1659), Electress of Saxony ...

She became a close associate of the evangelical Protestant theologian and mystical symbolist Johann Valentin Andreae, and later was on friendly terms with the founder of the

Pietism Pietism (), also known as Pietistic Lutheranism, is a movement within Lutheranism that combines its emphasis on biblical doctrine with an emphasis on individual piety and living a holy Christian life, including a social concern for the needy and ...

movement,

Philip Jacob Spener Philipp Jakob Spener (23 January 1635 – 5 February 1705), was a German Lutheran theologian who essentially founded what would become to be known as Pietism. He was later dubbed the "Father of Pietism". A prolific writer, his two main works, '' ...

. In addition to painting, her interests were above all in the realm of philosophy and languages, with a special preference for

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, and the study of the Jewish

Kabbalah Kabbalah ( he, קַבָּלָה ''Qabbālā'', literally "reception, tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline and Jewish theology, school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ( ''Məqūbbāl'' "rece ...

. Her specifically Christian expression of this tradition found its culmination in the unique large Kabbalistic triptych painting designed and commissioned by Princess Antonia and her academic teachers in 1652, installed in 1673 in the small town church of Holy Trinity at

Bad Teinach-Zavelstein Bad Teinach-Zavelstein is a town in the district of Calw, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. History The township of Bad Teinach-Zavelstein was formed on 1 January 1975 by the merging of Bad Teinach, Zavelstein, and the towns of Emberg, Rötenbach ...

in the

Black Forest The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...

, a personal witness of faith. Princess Antonia died in 1679, having never married. Her body was buried in the Collegiate Church in Stuttgart; but she directed that her heart should be buried in the wall of Trinity Church in Bad Teinach, behind her painting.

Hebrew scholar

An increased interest in the Hebrew language among Christian scholars was one of the effects of the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

in Germany, and royal and noble families included it sometimes even in the curriculum of their daughters' education. In the seventeenth century many German women attained to quite a considerable knowledge of Hebrew. Antonia of Württemberg has become one of the best known. She acquired a remarkable mastery of Hebrew; and according to contemporary evidence was also well versed in rabbinic and Kabbalistic lore. Based on M. Kayserling (1897)
A Princess as Hebraist
'' Jewish Quarterly Review'' Vol. 9, No. 3 (Apr., 1897), pp. 509-514 Esenwein, dean of Urach and later professor at Tübingen, wrote in July 1649 to

Johannes Buxtorf Johannes Buxtorf ( la, Johannes Buxtorfius) (December 25, 1564September 13, 1629) was a celebrated Hebraist, member of a family of Orientalists; professor of Hebrew for thirty-nine years at Basel and was known by the title, "Master of the Rabbis" ...

at Basel that Antonia, "having been well grounded in the Hebrew language and in reading the Hebrew Bible, desires to learn also the art of reading without vowels," and three years later he wrote to Buxtorf that she had made such progress that she had "with her own hand put vowels to the greatest part of a Hebrew Bible". Philipp Jacob Spener, another pupil of Buxtorf, during his temporary stay at Heidelberg, was on friendly terms with the princess, and they studied Kabbalah together. Buxtorf himself presented her with a copy of each of his books. There is a manuscript extant in the Royal Library of Stuttgart, entitled ''Unterschiedlicher Riss zu Sephiroth'' which is supposed to have been written by Antonia. It contains kabbalistic diagrams, some of which are interpreted in Hebrew and German. Her praise was sung by many a Christian Hebraist; one poem in twenty-four stanzas with her

acrostic An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fre ...

, in honour of the "celebrated Princess Antonia", has been preserved in Johannes Buxtorf's collection of manuscripts.

The Kabbalistic ''Lehrtafel'' at Bad Teinach

The Kabbalistic ''Lehrtafel'' ("teaching painting") ''of Princess Antonia'' at Bad Teinach stands over six metres tall and five metres wide, dominating the area to the right of the altar in the small church. Planned in 1652 by the princess with a circle of court academic advisors, it was executed in 1659-1663 by Johann Friedrich Gruber, the court painter at Stuttgart, and installed in 1673 at Bad Teinach, where the ducal family used to take holidays in summer, and where Antonia's brother Duke Eberhard had established the church as a private family chapel, built in 1662-1665.Eva Johanna Schauer (2006)
Jüdische Kabbala und christlicher Glaube. Die Lehrtafel der Prinzessin Antonia zu Württemberg in Bad Teinach
In: ''Freiburger Rundbrief. Zeitschrift für christlich-jüdische Begegnung'' 13. 2006, pp. 242–255. The painting is in the form of a triptych. The two outside panels depict the procession of the soul as the mystical bride of Christ. These open to reveal in two flanking panels a daytime scene of the

finding of Moses The Finding of Moses, sometimes called Moses in the Bullrushes, Moses Saved from the Waters, or other variants, is the story in chapter 2 of the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible of the finding in the River Nile of Moses as a baby by the daughte ...

in the Nile, and a night-time scene of the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt; and in the centre an immensely detailed ''systema totius mundi'' - a depiction of a philosophical system of the whole world. The central panel finds a woman holding in her right hand a flaming heart (charity), with in her left an anchor (faith) and a cross (hope), standing at the threshold of a garden enclosed by a hedge of

roses A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be e ...

. In the middle of the garden is Jesus, and around him a circle of the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. Beyond them hovers a female figure, in front of a richly decorated temple with an onion dome. Arranged in the composition on and around the temple are nine female figures representing the sephirot, according to their places in the traditional

tree of life The tree of life is a fundamental archetype in many of the world's mythological, religious, and philosophical traditions. It is closely related to the concept of the sacred tree.Giovino, Mariana (2007). ''The Assyrian Sacred Tree: A History ...

of the Kabbalah. The tenth of the sephirot, Malchut (kingdom), is represented by the figure of Christ himself. Everywhere in the execution there is more and more intricate detail, symbol upon symbol, meaning upon meaning.

Ancestry

References

External links

* Eva-Johanna Schauer (2006)
Jüdische Kabbala und christlicher Glaube: Die Lehrtafel der Prinzessin Antonia zu Württemberg in Bad Teinach
* Adam McLean (1981)

From the ''

Hermetic Journal The ''Hermetic Journal'' was a quarterly journal dedicated to the Hermetic tradition, edited by Adam McLean, and published by Megalithic Research Publications of Edinburgh. The first issue was released in August 1978 and publication continued un ...