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Countess Palatine Leopoldine Eleonora of Neuburg

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Name
  
Countess Leopoldine

Countess Palatine Leopoldine Eleonora of Neuburg

Leopoldine Eleonora of Neuburg (Leopoldine Eleonora Josepha; 27 May 1679 – 8 March 1693), was by birth Countess Palatine of Neuburg and member of the House of Wittelsbach.

Born in Neuburg an der Donau, she was the youngest of seventeen children of Philip William, Duke of Neuburg, Berg and Julich, Elector Palatine of Neuburg and his wife Landgravine Elisabeth Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt.

Life

Leopoldine's oldest sister Eleanor Magdalene became in Holy Roman Empress in 1676 as the third wife of Leopold I; this even helped her numerous siblings to secured brilliant careers and marriages. After her father's death in 1690, Leopoldine was under the legal guardianship of her older brother Johann Wilhelm, who also supervised her education: in addition to language, religion and handicrafts, the young princess learned music from the Kapellmeister Sebastiano Moratelli.

In the summer of 1691 Leopoldine became ill after a difficult trip from Neuburg to Dusseldorf. It was there that, thanks to the care and affection of her sister-in-law Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, her condition improved again.

In March 1693 she was formally betrothed to Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, whose first wife Maria Antonia of Austria had died in December 1692. However, shortly after Leopoldine died in Dusseldorf aged 13, after seven days of fever.

She was buried in the Church of St. Andreas in Dusseldorf; however, her heart was placed in the Electoral crypt of Neuburg, and with the heart of his brother Philip William August (who died just one month later, on 5 April), where later placed in the coffin of their mother when she died in 1709.

Today, Leopoldine's coffin was in the Mausoleun of St. Andreas. In 2007 the coffin was opened for decontamination; the mummified remains of the princess where buried in silk stockings, a fact that suggest that she died of tuberculosis.

References

Countess Palatine Leopoldine Eleonora of Neuburg Wikipedia