Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia (9 November 1723 – 30 March 1787) was an early modern German composer and music curator who served as princess-abbess of Quedlinburg.

[citation needed] Amalia's childhood was overshadowed by her father: described as an uneducated, unpolished and spartan soldier, he was an alcoholic whose favourite hobby was smoking pipes with commoners, an extremely pious and narrow-minded Calvinist[4] who loved his wife and was faithful to her, but behaved violently towards his whole family, courtiers, and anyone who upset him.

[6] On the other hand, Queen Sophia Dorothea was a well-educated and ambitious woman who enjoyed theatre and balls and loved French culture and fashion.

[citation needed] She was first taught by Crown Prince Frederic with the support of their mother, and learned to play the harpsichord, the flute, and the violin.

[citation needed] The king was especially cruel to the crown prince as he considered his passion for music, literature and French culture unmanly.

Their brother King Frederick thought that Louisa Ulrika was too ambitious to be a good queen in a relatively powerless monarchy[11] as Sweden was then in the Age of Liberty (1720–1772), a period of parliamentary governance.

[11] In 1755, after the death of the previous abbess, Duchess Marie Elisabeth of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp (1678–1755), Amalia was elected princess-abbess of the Free Secular Imperial Abbey of Quedlinburg (German: Kasierlich Freie Weltliche Reichsstift Quedlinburg),[12] which made her a wealthy and influential woman with the right to sit and speak in the Imperial Diet.

[citation needed] She achieved modest fame and is most known for her chamber music, including trios, marches, cantatas, songs, and fugues.

[citation needed] Her favourite among her own compositions was the passion cantata Der Tod Jesu ("The Death of Jesus"), based on a poem by Karl Wilhelm Ramler.

[citation needed] More compositions by her may surface as a result of the 2000 discovery of the archives of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin in Kyiv which had been lost since World War II.