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

Duchy of Württemberg The Duchy of Württemberg () was a duchy located in the south-western part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was a Imperial Estate, state of the Holy Roman Empire from 1495 to 1803. The dukedom's long survival for over three centuries was mainly du ...

, as well as a literary figure,

patron Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows on another. In the history of art, art patronage refers to the support that princes, popes, and other wealthy and influential people ...

ess, and Christian Kabbalist.

Life

Born in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

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 Wür ...

, the daughter of the Elector Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg. 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, fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died from battle, famine, or disease, whil ...

.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 (; ; ) is the Roman goddess of wisdom, justice, law, victory, and the sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. She is also a goddess of warfare, though with a focus on strategic warfare, rather than the violence of gods such as Mars. Be ...

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

She became a close associate of the evangelical Protestant theologian and mystical symbolist

Johann Valentin Andreae Johannes Valentinus Andreae (17 August 1586 – 27 June 1654), a.k.a. Johannes Valentinus Andreä or Johann Valentin Andreae, was a German theologian, who claimed to be the author of an ancient text known as the ''Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Ro ...

, 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 Christianity, Christian life. Although the movement is ali ...

movement,

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

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

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

, and the study of the Jewish

Kabbalah Kabbalah or Qabalah ( ; , ; ) is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. It forms the foundation of Mysticism, mystical religious interpretations within Judaism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ...

. 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 ( ) is a large forested mountain range in the States of Germany, 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 th ...

, a personal witness of faith. Princess Antonia died in 1679, having never married. Her body was buried in the

Collegiate Church In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons, a non-monastic or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, headed by a dignitary bearing ...

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, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major Theology, theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the p ...

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 ''The Jewish Quarterly Review'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering Jewish studies. It is published by the University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (University of P ...

'' 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 () (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". His massive tome, '' ...

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 A Christian Hebraist is a scholar of Hebrew texts who approaches the works from a Christian perspective. The main area of study is the Hebrew text of the Bible (known as the Old Testament to Christians and as the Tanakh to Jews), but Christians ha ...

; 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 The bride of Christ, or the lamb's wife, is a metaphor used in number of related verses in the Christian Bible, specifically the New Testament – in the Gospels, the Book of Revelation, the Epistles, with related verses in the Old Testament. ...

. 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 Bulrushes", "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#Biblical narrative, Mo ...

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 Sefirot (; , plural of ), meaning '' emanations'', are the 10 attributes/emanations in Kabbalah, through which Ein Sof ("infinite space") reveals itself and continuously creates both the physical realm and the seder hishtalshelut (the chained ...

, according to their places in the traditional

tree of life The tree of life is a fundamental archetype in many of the world's mythology, mythological, religion, religious, and philosophy, philosophical traditions. It is closely related to the concept of the sacred tree.Giovino, Mariana (2007). ''The ...

of the Kabbalah. The tenth of the sephirot,

Malchut Malkuth (; "kingdom"; Ashkenazi: ''Malkhus'' ), Malkhut, Malkhuth, or Malchus, is the tenth of the sefirot in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Description In the ''Zohar'', an important Kabbalistic text from late al-Andalus, Malkuth sits at th ...

(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