Joseph II

King of Germany (r. 1764-1790) and Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1765-1790)

• Born: March 13, 1741
• Birthplace: Vienna, Austria
• Died: February 20, 1790
• Place of death: Vienna, Austria

Joseph II contributed to the enlightened reform of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of the eighteenth century, enabling it to survive as a great power until the end of World War I.

Early Life

Joseph (YOH-zehf) II was born while the far-flung and relatively backward Habsburg monarchy was in deep crisis, its northern province, Silesia, invaded by Frederick the Great of Prussia, and its other borders threatened by hostile neighboring states. His father was Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine until 1736, when he became grand duke of Tuscany. Joseph’s mother was Maria Theresa, daughter of Charles VI, the Holy Roman Emperor, from whom she inherited, in 1740, the Habsburg dynastic lands if not the imperial title. Joseph grew to maturity while his mother was trying to unify the monarchy in order to repel its invaders and to recover Silesia.

As Francis Stephen and Maria Theresa’s oldest male child, Archduke Joseph was expected to succeed his mother as ruler and was accordingly prepared for the task. Much of his early instruction was too pedantic to arouse a love of learning. He became fluent, however, in Italian, Czech, and French. The study that most significantly touched him was natural law, as expounded by the noted Austrian jurist Karl Anton von Martini, whose disciple, Christian Beck, tutored the young archduke. Joseph adopted their enlightened idea that a ruler, the first servant of the state, should be governed by considerations of social utility. Martini and Beck also inclined Joseph toward religious toleration as well as toward the reform of the monarchy’s ecclesiastical institutions. Although the pious Maria Theresa insisted that Joseph receive rigorous instruction and training in the Roman Catholic religion, she neither alienated him from the Church nor turned him into a zealot. Joseph remained throughout his life a convinced, practicing Catholic.

To increase Austrian influence in Italy, Maria Theresa had her son marry Isabella of Parma in 1760. The marriage nevertheless became a love match. A slim, good-looking young man with remarkably blue eyes, Joseph was immediately attracted to the beautiful, intelligent, and well-educated young princess. Her early death after less than two years left Joseph despondent. The death of their young daughter and a second, brief marriage with a Bavarian princess whom he detested further dulled his affections. Henceforth, he remained cool and aloof toward people, reserving his emotional energies for the affairs of state.

Active, restless, and headstrong, Joseph learned the art of governing more through travel and practical experience in public affairs than through reading or academic training. In 1761, he began attending meetings of the state council. Crowned king of the Romans in 1764, he ascended the imperial throne the following year upon the death of Francis Stephen. Joseph’s new imperial responsibility was largely honorific, but it prompted Maria Theresa to give him the office of coregent and a share of her power.

Life’s Work

As coregent, Joseph was not permitted to carry out the radical, sweeping reform that he wished. Mistrusting her son’s judgment, Maria Theresa retained control of the government. Since he was expected to sign all state documents, however, he could sometimes insist successfully that his views be adopted. Convinced that the oppression of peasants by their lords was depriving the state of productive subjects, Joseph agitated with some success for reforms. In Bohemia, where the evils of serfdom brought the peasantry to the point of insurrection, Joseph was responsible for a law of 1775 reducing the peasants’ forced labor to a maximum of three days per week.

During the last several years of the coregency, tension between Maria Theresa and Joseph was aggravated by the issue of religious toleration. Although the Austrian Habsburgs had vigorously restored Catholicism in their dynastic lands during the Counter-Reformation, they had failed to eradicate Protestantism. In the kingdom of Hungary, Protestants formed a strong, legalized minority. Moreover, in Bohemia and Moravia, thousands of crypto-Protestants were drawn out into the open during the peasant unrest of the 1770’s. Joseph’s opposition to his mother’s decision to force these dissenters back into the Catholic Church caused an impasse that remained unresolved, until he became the sole ruler of the monarchy.

In military and foreign affairs, Joseph was active but usually unsuccessful. His model, as well as his chief opponent, was Frederick the Great of Prussia. Endowed with modest military talents, Joseph attempted to Prussianize the Austrian army. His improvements, however, fell far short of giving Austria an advantage over Prussia. When Joseph’s scheme to annex Bavaria provoked a brief war with Prussia in 1788, his army was unable to prevent the Prussians from occupying much of Bohemia. Pushing Joseph aside, Maria Theresa negotiated peace with Frederick in 1779, thereby restoring the prewar boundaries except for a small part of Bavarian territory that was given to Austria.

With Maria Theresa’s death on November 29, 1780, Joseph became the sole ruler of the Habsburg monarchy. He began his administration with uncharacteristic patience and good sense. He retained her chancellor, Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz, to advise him on key foreign and domestic issues. He also kept his mother’s system of government virtually intact, but he tried to make it work more efficiently.

During his first year in charge, Joseph issued the Edict of Toleration, one of the most lasting reforms of his reign. Lutherans, Calvinists, and Greek Orthodox Christians were allowed to form congregations, worship together, own property, enter the professions, and hold public office. About 150,000 persons in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria declared themselves Protestant, many more than had been expected, prompting strong protests from the Catholic hierarchy. Convinced that Catholicism should continue as the state’s religion, Joseph, in 1783, made leaving the Catholic Church more difficult. He also denied recognition to radical Protestant sects. The express purpose of the edict was to enable non-Catholics to become more useful subjects. A similar pragmatic concern moved Joseph to extend toleration to the Jews. Crafts and trades, including the army, were opened to Jewish subjects, and many obstacles to their assimilation into Austrian society were removed.

It seemed clear to Joseph’s utilitarian mind that the monastic system was grossly inefficient. Closing about one-third of the convents and monasteries, he reduced the number of nuns and monks from sixty thousand to forty thousand. With the money realized from the sale of confiscated monastic property, he greatly improved the parish ministry of secular priests by reforming seminary education, building new churches where they were needed, and assigning the parish clergy a significant role in enlightening the people. He also carried out a rational realignment of diocesan boundaries. Although these reforms provoked protests from some members of the Catholic hierarchy and prompted Pope Pius VI to travel to Vienna, the emperor continued to bring the Church securely under the control of the state and to make it an effective instrument of social improvement.

As sole ruler, Joseph quickly attempted to free the peasantry from bondage and oppression and to make them productive citizens of the state. In 1781, he decreed the abolition of serfdom in Bohemia, Moravia, and the Austrian duchies. He devised a new system of taxation of land, based on Physiocratic principles (that is, the principles that governments should not interfere with natural economic laws and that all wealth had its ultimate source in the land). The new system shifted the heaviest tax burden from the peasants to the landowners who could afford to bear it. Joseph’s scheme included commuting the peasantry’s forced labor into cash payments. These remarkable measures, however, were frustrated by the resistance of the privileged classes and by financial pressures of war at the end of his reign.

Often thwarted by concerted domestic opposition, Joseph undermined his own reform program with several unsuccessful ventures into European power politics. In 1784, he tried in vain to force the Dutch to lift the blockade that had closed the port of Antwerp in the Austrian Netherlands. The next year, his plan to exchange the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria was frustrated by the coalition of German princes organized by Frederick. These failures further alienated the population of the Austrian Netherlands, who were already disturbed by Joseph’s ecclesiastical and administrative reforms. Joseph nevertheless joined Catherine the Great of Russia in a plan to dismember the Ottoman Empire. The war that broke out in August of 1787 went badly for Austria at first. Joseph, who personally commanded the army, was blamed for its humiliating defeat.

During the last two years of his reign, Joseph had to acknowledge the failure of much of his program of reform. The revolt in the Austrian Netherlands ended his rule there. The Hungarian nobility forced him to revoke all the reforms except the abolition of serfdom and the Edict of Toleration. Ravaged by tuberculosis, Joseph died disillusioned and alone, his life’s work apparently in ruins.

Significance

Joseph II is generally regarded as the enlightened despot who most consistently attempted to apply reason and humanity to the administration of a major European state. His reforms were so sweeping as to be justly considered a revolution from above. They might have failed in any case, since he underestimated the resistance of the vested interests that they upset. He also lacked the well-trained, disciplined bureaucracy that was needed to carry out the reforms. Their failure was ensured by the breakdown of Joseph’s health and by the severe economic repercussions of his unfortunate war with the Turks.

Not all was lost, however. Begun by his mother and extended by Joseph, the public educational system survived. Moreover, his eclectic economic policies contributed to the rapid growth of industry in Austria and Bohemia. His religious toleration led to the establishment of two Protestant denominations in the western parts of the monarchy and the gradual assimilation of a large Jewish minority. As limited as it was, Joseph’s toleration was remarkably enlightened by contemporary standards. While some of his reforms of the Catholic Church, such as the state-controlled seminaries, were revoked, the improved parish ministry survived. In time, as the shortcomings of the man receded from public consciousness, a mythical Joseph II, “The People’s Emperor,” took hold in the popular imagination and influenced the growth of liberalism in Austrian politics in the nineteenth century.

Bibliography

Beales, Derek. In the Shadow of Maria Theresa, 1741-1780. Vol. 3 in Joseph II. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. General study of Joseph’s life and work up to 1780. A second volume in preparation will complete the study. A serious scholarly work, it is the first major interpretation of Joseph to appear in English. Contains a bibliographical essay, abundant footnotes discussing documentary sources and secondary literature, and a bibliography listing Beales’s archival and printed sources. Beales’s aim is to redraw the conventional picture of the coregency.

Bernard, Paul P. Joseph II. New York: Twayne, 1968. Brief but dependable survey of the monarch’s life. He is represented as an autocrat whose primary concern was to centralize the state and make it run more efficiently. Contains a short selected bibliography.

Blanning, T. C. W. Joseph II. London: Longman, 1994. In his second book on Joseph, Blanning focuses on the emperor’s struggles to transform his multinational empire into a unified state.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Joseph II and Enlightened Despotism. New York: Longman, 1970. Contains an analysis of the monarch’s reign, a representative selection of documentary material, and a comprehensive bibliography. Presents Joseph as a pragmatic despot who was Catholic as well as enlightened.

Ingrao, Charles W. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618-1815. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Examines the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that enabled the Habsburg empire to become a major military and cultural power in the eighteenth century. Includes genealogical tables and bibliography.

O’Brien, Charles H. Ideas of Religious Toleration at the Time of Joseph II: A Study of the Enlightenment Among Catholics in Austria. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1969. Devoted to the sources and the principal features of Joseph’s policy of religious toleration. Contends that Joseph viewed the Edict of Toleration as a genuine reform of the Catholic church as well as a measure making Protestants more useful to the state. Analyzes Joseph’s policies toward Jews and radical Protestant sects.

Padover, Saul K. The Revolutionary Emperor: Joseph II of Austria. Reprint. London: Jonathan Cape, 1967. The most popular biography of the monarch in English, it has strongly influenced subsequent biographies. Its main point is that Joseph is an outstanding product of the Enlightenment. Draws evidence and illustrations uncritically from the numerous contemporary fables about Joseph.

Temperley, Harold. Frederic the Great and Kaiser Joseph: An Episode of War and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth Century. 2d ed. London: Frank Cass, 1968. Valuable study contrasting the personalities, achievements, and significance of the two German monarchs. Focuses particularly on their conflicts over Bavaria. Includes bibliographical notes.

Wangermann, Ernst. The Austrian Achievement, 1700-1800. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. An excellent brief description of Josephism, the concept of government which was embodied in the monarch’s reforms, especially those dealing with the relationship between church and state. Pays particular attention to social and economic forces that influenced political changes in the monarchy.