Henriette Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
(1669-1753)
Henriette Christine of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (19 September 1669 - 20 January 1753) was a German princess. Among the younger of her parents' many children, she was installed as Abbess of Gandersheim following the death in 1693 of abbess Christina of Mecklenburg, her cousin. She and her successor as abbess, Elisabeth Ernestine Antonie, were well connected and great patrons of the arts: in the judgement of certain historians they presided over something of a golden age at Gandersheim. In 1712 Abbess Henrietta Christine made her place in the history books secure by giving birth. This put an end to her tenure.
Life
Provenance and early years
Henriette Christine was a daughter of Duke Anthony Ulrich of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and his wife, Juliane of Holstein-Norburg. Her father, whom Henriette Christine was said to resemble closely both in looks and in character, was a scholarly duke and a man of wide interests. On 9 November 1681 she became a probationary canon at the abbey. This would have been principally designed to provide her with a small independent income ("benefice"), though even by the standards of the time it would have been a little unusual to confer such an office on an eleven year old. On 2 November 1687, having achieved the necessary age, she was installed in her office with due solemnity in her father's presence, though at this stage she continued to live at the princely court with her family.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henriette Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.