Princess Mária Antónia | |
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Princess Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Duchess in Saxony |
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Princess Mária Antónia von Koháry
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Spouse(s) | Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha |
Noble family |
House of Koháry ' House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Koháry |
Father | Prince Ferencz József Koháry de Csábrág |
Mother | Maria Antoinetta Josefa von Waldstein-Wartenburg |
Born |
Buda |
2 July 1797
Died | 25 September 1862 Vienna |
(aged 65)
Buried | Friedhof am Glockenberg , Coburg |
Religion | Roman Catholicism |
Princess Mária Antónia von Koháry (2 July 1797 – 25 September 1862) was a Hungarian noblewoman and the ancestor of several European monarchs. She was the heiress of the Koháry family and one of the three largest landowners in Hungary.
She was born in Buda, as Countess Maria Antonia Koháry de Csábrág et Szitnya, the second child of Franz Josef, Count Koháry and his wife, Countess Maria Antoinetta Josefa von Waldstein-Wartenburg. Her older brother Franz died, aged two, on 19 April 1795. This left Antónia, from the moment of her birth, as the sole heir to the vast fortune of the House of Koháry.
She inherited over 150000 hectares of land in Lower Austria, Hungary and Slovakia, including estates, forests, mines and factories. According to a list of assets appended to the marriage contract of her son, Prince August, at the time of his marriage to Princess Clémentine of Orléans in 1843, the Koháry properties included the enormous Palais Koháry in the center of Vienna and several Viennese manors, a summer home and lands at Ebenthal, Lower Austria, estates in Austria at Velm, Durnkrut, Walterskirchen, Bohmischdrut and Althoflein, as well as a dozen manors in Hungary, the domaine of Kiralytia, and a mansion at Pest. As late as 1868, when Antónia's grandson Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Alencon, married, it was estimated that he and his three siblings stood to inherit a total of a million francs just from their share of their late grandmother's estate. Until the first world war, her descendants, the Koháry branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, were among the three largest landowners in Hungary.