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| Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia in riding costume (or more likely fancy dress), by Antoine Pesne, before 1757. |
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| Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, studio of Antoine Pesne, after 1744. |
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Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia (9 November 1723, Berlin – 30 March 1787, Berlin), daughter of Frederick William I of Prussia and sister of Frederick the Great, a composer and music curator, who served as princess-abbess of the Free Secular Imperial Abbey of Quedlinburg. She was a princess of Prussia as the twelfth child and seventh daughter of King Frederick William I and his wife, Princess Sophia Dorothea of Hanover. She had thirteen siblings, ten of whom survived infancy. She was musically inclined, like her brother Frederick, but her formal instruction was only possible after the death of their emotionally and physically abusive father. Secretly, though, she was first taught by her brother - with the support of their mother - and learned to play the harpsichord, the flute, and the violin. She was sixteen when her father died and her brother succeeded him. Three years later, she and her elder sister Louisa Ulrika were put forward as possible brides for the heir to the Swedish throne; her sister was chosen and she would remain unmarried. In 1755, at the age of thirty-two, she was elected princess-abbess of the Quedlinburg Abbey -
Kasierlich Freie Weltliche Reichsstift Quedlinburg - which made her a wealthy and influential woman with the right to sit and speak in the Imperial Diet. She was known for her intelligent and disciplined leadership, managing the abbey's finances, overseeing its estates, and protecting the abbey’s independence during political disputes. Apparently, though, she still spent most of her time in Berlin devoting herself to music, becoming known as a composer, but also as a great patron. She achieved modest contemporary fame in the former role and was best known for her chamber music. Only a few of her works have survived, though, as she described herself as very self-critical, and is believed to have destroyed many of her own compositions. She was also an important collector of music, preserving over six hundred volumes by Bach, Handel, Telemann, Carl Heinrich Graun, and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, among others. Her library was split between East and West Germany after World War II, but reunited after the German reunification. Today it is housed in the Berlin State Library. She died at the age of sixty-three and was buried in the Berlin Cathedral.
