On this 24th of December, of course, there was nothing to indicate that the little person who was soon to see the light of day had an unusual life ahead of her. Nor was it a special service that the three ministers had to perform on Christmas Eve of all days in Duke Maximilian's palace in Ludwigstraße. It was merely a matter of certifying the birth of another member of the House of Wittelsbach, which was part of their official duties. The twenty-nine-year-old head of the house, Duke Maximilian Joseph in Bavaria, became a father for the fourth time in these hours. Two sons and a daughter had already been given to him — although the second of his sons had died in his first year. Now his wife Ludovika was once again in labour. She had actually wanted to spend the hours of the gift-giving with her mother on this Christmas Eve, but her doctor had forbidden it. He suspected that the labour pains would begin on that very evening — and he was right.
The ministers had been waiting for over an hour when Ludovika — or Louise, as the twenty-nine-year-old was also called in the family circle - went through the final stage of her fourth delivery. The birth took place in Ludovika's “white boudoir”. For her emotional support, she was assisted by four women who were also her closest confidants: her mother, the widowed Queen Caroline of Bavaria; her former governess, the now Obersthofmeisterin Countess Auguste of Rottenhan; her half-sister Duchess Auguste of Leuchtenberg, twenty years her senior, who resided in the nearby Palais Leuchtenberg, and her daughter Eugenie, wife of the Hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen. Ludovika's two ladies-in-waiting kept themselves ready in the adjoining rooms. Their task was to be at the service of their mistress's high relatives as soon as they left the boudoir of the woman in childbirth.
Ludovika's appartment directly adjoined the ceremonial rooms of the ducal palace, which also included the reception salon with its mythological frescoes. The ministers waiting here assumed that the birth would not take much longer; otherwise they would not have been brought to the palace — especially on Christmas Eve. In cases like this, they were never notified after the first onset of labour.
Exactly one hour and thirteen minutes after the ministers arrived at the Palais, their wait came to an end: the second daughter of Duke Maximilian and Duchess Ludovika saw the light of day. Now the ministers were called to the boudoir of the duchess, where the midwife presented the newborn to them. The fact that Duchess Ludovika was resting on the chaise longue in her nightdress and dressing gown after the strains of childbirth and that neither her clothes nor her hair were in a condition to receive foreign visitors, indeed that a woman of royal blood never received or had to receive gentlemen in her boudoir anyway — all this was overlooked. After all, the court regulations had to be complied with. And these demanded that a newborn child be presented to the responsible high state officials immediately after birth. This was to ensure that a child whose name was entered on the birth certificate as a legitimate member of the House of Wittelsbach actually had the mistress of the house as its mother. Incidentally, this was also the reason why the ministers had to wait near the woman giving birth. The child's ducal origin and its rightful affiliation to the Wittelsbach dynasty were to be guaranteed beyond doubt. At least the duchess was spared the presence of official witnesses during the delivery. Unlike at the British royal court, Ludovika did not have to go through the intimate act of birth in front of the ministers, protected only by a kind of mobile screen that covered the lower half of the woman's body but exposed her upper body to the gaze of family strangers.
The official act of witnessing was done quickly. After seeing the baby and offering the obligatory congratulations, Sebastian Freiherr von Schrenk, Ludwig Ritter von Wiesinger and Freiherr von Gise left the boudoir. They noted in the birth protocol that another princess had been born to the House of Wittelsbach at exactly ten o'clock and forty-three minutes on the evening of 24 December 1837. They had thus fulfilled their duty and could hurry home to their families.
The newborn girl was given the name Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie. The godmother was an older sister of Ludovika — Elisabeth Ludovika of Prussia, who would become Queen of Prussia three years after the birth of her godchild. The little princess was given her second name, Amalie, in honour of her godmother's twin sister, later Queen of Saxony. Finally, the third name Eugenie referred to the cousin who had assisted Ludovika in her labour. Two days after her birth, Elisabeth was baptised in the collegiate church of St. Kajetan, the court church in Munich called “Theatinerkirche”.
Winkelhofer, Martina (2021). Sisis Weg: Vom Mädchen zur Frau – Kaiserin Elisabeths erste Jahre am Wiener Hof (Translation done by DeepL. Please keep in mind that in a machine translation a lot of nuance may/will be lost)
ON THIS DAY, IN 1837, DUCHESS ELISABETH AMALIE EUGENIE IN BAVARIA WAS BORN. She was the fourth child and second daughter of Duke Maximilian in Bavaria and his wife, Princess Ludovika of Bavaria. At 16 years-old she married her cousin Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria and became the second to last Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary.
