Empress Dowager
In 1711, Wilhelmine Amalie became a widow, after Joseph died of smallpox, and her mother-in-law became the interim regent until her brother-in-law, the Archduke Charles, could return from Spain where he was the Austrian nominee for the Spanish throne during the War of the Spanish Succession. At the death of her spouse, the stress caused the venereal disease of Wilhelmine Amalie to return in full force after several years remission.
When Charles returned, he was elected as the new Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI.
His inability to produce male heirs irked Charles VI and eventually led to the promulgation of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, a document which abolished male-only succession and declared his lands indivisible. The new emperor favoured his own daughters over those of Joseph I and Wilhelmine Amalie, in the succession, ignoring the Mutual Pact of Succession he had signed during the reign of his father, Leopold I.
She as well as her mother-in-law was active in fighting for their daughter's right to the throne. By the secret pactum mutuae successionis of 1703, Leopold had made an agreement with his sons that the daughters of Joseph would be first in the line of succession, followed by those of Charles and Leopold, and though none of the empresses knew of the existence of the document, there had been talk of it, and Joseph had hinted about it to Wilhelmine Amalie. Baron Seilern apparently showed Wilhelmine Amalie the document before it was presented to the head of her family, the elector of Hanover. In 1712, the elector sent the famous Gottfried Leibniz to her to assist her in defending her daughters rights against Charles, and on 21 April 1713, Charles VI presented the Pragmatic Sanction in which he adjusted himself to the memorandum of Wilhelmine Amalie from the document of pactum mutuae successionis, after which she celebrated with a dinner for the empresses and archduchesses at the table of Empress Dowager Eleanore, where she was congratulated on her success and answered that she hoped the emperor would have a son. In 1715, however, her supporter Seilern died, and in 1717, Charles VI changed the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction to favor his daughters over hers. She did not approve, but did not openly protest.In 1722, after her daughters were married, Wilhelmine Amalie retired to a convent that she had founded earlier in 1717, the Salesianerinnenkloster auf dem Rennwege in Vienna. The convent did not mean a retreat from social life, as she was in fact very active as a dowager, regularly leaving the convent for family visits as well as representational visits. It was as an empress dowager that she had her greatest impact upon cultural life in Vienna. Her medical prescriptions in her care for the sick was recommended, and she founded a boarding school as well as one of Vienna's first orphanages for girls. She admired Francois de Sales and Jeanne Francoise Fremont de Chantal, and helped promote her canonisation. She was also a patron of the Catholic reformer Lodovico Antonio Muratori.
Wilhelmine Amalie got along very well with her mother-in-law Eleonore and her sister-in-law Elisabeth Christine as well as with the archduchesses, and the three empresses were described as supportive toward each other: Wilhelmine Amalie nursed Elisabeth Christine when she had smallpox, and Elisabeth Christine nursed Eleanor during her last illness.
In 1740, Charles VI died. During the War of the Austrian Succession, Wilhelmine Amalie initially supported her son-in-law, Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, in his pursuit of the imperial crown, but soon retired again to private life. In June 1741, Empress Maria Theresa visited her and asked her to act as a mediator between herself and her son-in-law the Bavarian elector, but she refused.
Wilhelmine Amalie outlived her spouse by more than 30 years, dying on 10 April 1742. She is buried in the Salesian convent in Vienna. Her heart is buried in the Imperial Crypt.
