Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

Joseph II, 1787

When Maria Theresa died, Joseph started issuing edicts, over 6,000 in all, plus 11,000 new laws designed to regulate and reorder every aspect of the empire. The spirit of Josephinism was benevolent and paternal. He intended to make his people happy, but strictly in accordance with his own criteria.

Joseph set about building a rationalized, centralized, and uniform government for his diverse lands, a hierarchy under himself as a supreme autocrat. The personnel of government was expected to be imbued with the same dedicated spirit of service to the state that he himself had. It was recruited without favor for a class or ethnic origins, and promotion was solely by merit. To further uniformity, the emperor made German the compulsory language of official business throughout the Habsburg Monarchy, which affected especially the Kingdom of Hungary.[9] The Diet of Hungary was stripped of its prerogatives, and not even called together.

As privy finance minister, Count Karl von Zinzendorf (1739–1813) introduced a uniform system of accounting for state revenues, expenditures, and debts of the territories of the Austrian crown. Austria was more successful than France in meeting regular expenditures and in gaining credit. However, the events of Joseph II's last years also suggest that the government was financially vulnerable to the European wars that ensued after 1792.[10]

The Emperor also attempted to simplify the administration of his dominions, often a patchwork of states united in personal union by the Habsburg monarch. As an example, in 1786 he abolished the separate administration of the Duchy of Mantua, merging it with the neighbouring Duchy of Milan. Local opposition to the change forced his successor Leopold II to reverse this measure and restore the duchy in 1791.

Joseph II depicted plowing a field near Slawikowitz in rural southern Moravia on 19 August 1769

The busy Joseph inspired a complete reform of the legal system, abolished brutal punishments and the death penalty in most instances, and imposed the principle of complete equality of treatment for all offenders. He lightened censorship of the press and theatre.

In 1781–82 he extended full legal freedom to serfs. Rentals paid by peasants were to be regulated by officials of the crown and taxes were levied upon all income derived from land. The landlords, however, found their economic position threatened, and eventually reversed the policy. Indeed, in Hungary and Transylvania, the resistance of the magnates was such that Joseph had to content himself for a while with halfway measures. Of the five million Hungarians, 40,000 were nobles, of whom 4,000 were magnates who owned and ruled the land; most of the remainder were serfs legally tied to particular estates.

After the collapse of the peasant revolt of Horea, 1784–85, in which over a hundred nobles were killed, the emperor acted. His Imperial Patent of 1785 abolished serfdom but did not give the peasants ownership of the land or freedom from dues owed to the landowning nobles. It did give them personal freedom. Emancipation of the peasants from the Kingdom of Hungary promoted the growth of a new class of taxable landholders, but it did not abolish the deep-seated ills of feudalism and the exploitation of the landless squatters. Feudalism in the Habsburg monarchy finally ended in 1848.[11]

To equalize the incidence of taxation, Joseph caused an appraisal of all the lands of the Habsburg monarchy to be made so that he might impose a single and egalitarian tax on land. The goal was to modernize the relationship of dependence between the landowners and peasantry, relieve some of the tax burden on the peasantry, and increase state revenues. Joseph looked on the tax and land reforms as being interconnected and strove to implement them at the same time.

The various commissions he established to formulate and carry out the reforms met resistance among the nobility, the peasantry, and some officials. Most of the reforms were abrogated shortly before or after Joseph's death in 1790; they were doomed to failure from the start because they tried to change too much in too short a time, and tried to radically alter the traditional customs and relationships that the villagers had long depended upon.

In the cities, the new economic principles of the Enlightenment called for the destruction of the autonomous guilds, already weakened during the age of mercantilism. Joseph II's tax reforms and the institution of Katastralgemeinde (tax districts for the large estates) served this purpose, and new factory privileges ended guild rights while customs laws aimed at economic unity. Physiocratic influence also led to the inclusion of agriculture in these reforms.

To produce a literate citizenry, elementary education was made compulsory for all boys and girls, and higher education on practical lines was offered for a select few. Joseph created scholarships for talented poor students and allowed the establishment of schools for Jews and other religious minorities. In 1784 he ordered that the country change its language of instruction from Latin to German, a highly controversial step in a multilingual empire.

By the 18th century, centralization was the trend in medicine because more and better-educated doctors were requesting improved facilities. Cities lacked the budgets to fund local hospitals, and the monarchy wanted to end costly epidemics and quarantines. Joseph attempted to centralize medical care in Vienna through the construction of a single, large hospital, the famous Allgemeines Krankenhaus, which opened in 1784. Centralization worsened sanitation problems, causing epidemics and a 20% death rate in the new hospital; the city nevertheless became preeminent in the medical field in the next century.[12]

Joseph's policy of religious "toleration" was the most aggressive of any state in Europe.

Probably the most unpopular of all his reforms was his attempted modernization of the highly traditional Catholic Church, which in medieval times had helped establish the Holy Roman Empire beginning with Charlemagne. Calling himself the guardian of Catholicism, Joseph II struck vigorously at papal power. He tried to make the Catholic Church in his territories the tool of the state, independent of Rome. Clergymen were deprived of the tithe and ordered to study in seminaries under government supervision, while bishops had to take a formal oath of loyalty to the crown. He financed the large increase in bishoprics, parishes, and secular clergy by extensive sales of monastic lands.

As a man of the Enlightenment he ridiculed the contemplative monastic orders, which he considered unproductive. Accordingly, he suppressed a third of the monasteries (over 700 were closed) and reduced the number of monks and nuns from 65,000 to 27,000. The Church's ecclesiastical tribunals were abolished and marriage was defined as a civil contract outside the jurisdiction of the Church.

A medal minted during the reign of Joseph II, commemorating his grant of religious liberty to Jews and Protestants

Joseph sharply cut the number of holy days to be observed in the Habsburg monarchy and ordered ornamentation in churches to be reduced. He forcibly simplified the manner in which the Mass (the central Catholic act of worship) was celebrated. Opponents of the reforms blamed them for revealing Protestant tendencies, with the rise of Enlightenment rationalism and the emergence of a liberal class of bourgeois officials. Anti-clericalism emerged and persisted, while the traditional Catholics were energized in opposition to the emperor.

Joseph's Patent of Toleration in 1781 was a major shift away from the inquisitive religious policies of the Counter Reformation that were previously predominant in the monarchy. Limited religious freedom of worship was given to major non-Catholic Christian sects, although conversion from Catholicism was still restricted. This was followed by the Edict of Tolerance in 1782, removing many restrictions and regulations on Jews.

The Secularization Decree issued on 12 January 1782 banned several monastic orders not involved in teaching or healing and liquidated 140 monasteries (home to 1484 monks and 190 nuns). The banned monastic orders: Jesuits, Camaldolese, Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, Carmelites, Carthusians, Poor Clares, Order of Saint Benedict, Cistercians, Dominican Order (Order of Preachers), Franciscans, Pauline Fathers and Premonstratensians, and their wealth was taken over by the Religious Fund.

His anticlerical and liberal innovations induced Pope Pius VI to pay him a visit in March 1782. Joseph received the Pope politely and showed himself a good Catholic, but refused to be influenced. On the other hand, Joseph was very friendly to Freemasonry, as he found it highly compatible with his own Enlightenment philosophy, although he apparently never joined a Lodge himself. Freemasonry attracted many anticlericals and was condemned by the Church.

Joseph's feelings towards religion are reflected in a witticism he once spoke in Paris. While being given a tour of the Sorbonne's library, the archivist took Joseph to a dark room containing religious documents and lamented the lack of light which prevented Joseph from being able to read them. Joseph put the man at rest by saying "Ah, when it comes to theology, there is never much light."[13] Thus, Joseph was undoubtedly a much laxer Catholic than his mother.

In 1789 he issued a charter of religious toleration for the Jews of Galicia, a region with a large Yiddish-speaking traditional Jewish population. The charter abolished communal autonomy whereby the Jews controlled their internal affairs; it promoted Germanization and the wearing of non-Jewish clothing.

Joseph II and his soldiers in 1787

The Habsburg Empire also had a policy of war, expansion, colonization and trade as well as exporting intellectual influences. While opposing Prussia and Turkey, Austria maintained its defensive alliance with France and was friendly to Russia though trying to remove the Danubian Principalities from Russian influence. Mayer argues that Joseph was an excessively belligerent, expansionist leader, who sought to make the Habsburg monarchy the greatest of the European powers.[14] His main goal was to acquire Bavaria, if necessary in exchange for the Austrian Netherlands, but in 1778 and again in 1785 he was thwarted by King Frederick II of Prussia, whom he feared greatly; on the second occasion, a number of other German princes, wary of Joseph's designs on their lands, joined Frederick's side.[15]

Joseph's travels through Russia in 1780 included a visit with the Russian empress Catherine, which started talks that would later lead to the Austro-Russian Alliance (1781), including an offensive clause to be used against the Ottomans. This was a significant diplomatic development, as it neutralised the previous Russian-Prussian alliance which had threatened the monarchy into peace during the War of the Bavarian Succession. The agreement with Russia would later lead Austria into the expensive and largely futile Austro-Turkish War (1787–1791) (1787–1791).[16] Joseph II travelled with only a few servants on horseback as "Count Falkenstein". He preferred to stop at a regular inn - forcing Catherine II to convert a wing of her palace, cajoling her gardener to act as inn-keeper.[17]

Joseph's participation in the Ottoman war was reluctant, attributable not to his usual acquisitiveness, but rather to his close ties to Russia, which he saw as the necessary price to be paid for the security of his people.[18] After initial defeats, the Austrians won a string of victories in 1789, including the capture of Belgrade, a key Turkish fortress in the Balkans. These victories however would not amount to any significant gains for the monarchy. Under the threat of Prussian intervention and with the worrying state of the revolution in France, the Treaty of Sistova of 1791 ended the war with only token gains.

The Balkan policy of both Maria Theresa and Joseph II reflected the Cameralism promoted by Prince Kaunitz, stressing consolidation of the borderlands by reorganization and expansion of the Military Frontier. Transylvania was incorporated into the frontier in 1761 and the frontier regiments became the backbone of the military order, with the regimental commander exercising military and civilian power. "Populationistik" was the prevailing theory of colonization, which measured prosperity in terms of labor. Joseph II also stressed economic development. Habsburg influence was an essential factor in Balkan development in the last half of the 18th century, especially for the Serbs and Croats.[19]

Europe at the time of Joseph's death in 1790. The red line marks the borders of the Holy Roman Empire.

Multiple interferences with old customs began to produce unrest in all parts of his dominions. Meanwhile, Joseph threw himself into a succession of foreign policies, all aimed at aggrandizement, and all equally calculated to offend his neighbors—all taken up with zeal, and dropped in discouragement. He endeavored to get rid of the Barrier Treaty, which debarred his Flemish subjects from the navigation of the Scheldt. When he was opposed by France, he turned to other schemes of alliance with the Russian Empire for the partition of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice. These plans also had to be given up in the face of the opposition of neighbors, and in particular of France. Then Joseph resumed his attempts to obtain Bavaria—this time by exchanging it for the Austrian Netherlands—and only provoked the formation of the Fürstenbund, organized by Frederick II of Prussia.

Nobility throughout his empire was largely opposed to his policies on taxes and his egalitarian and despotic attitudes. In the Austrian Netherlands and Hungary everyone resented the way he tried to do away with all regional government, and to subordinate everything to his own personal rule in Vienna. The ordinary people were not happy. They loathed the Emperor's interference in every detail of their daily lives. As it seems, Joseph was reforming the policies of the Habsburg empire based on his own criteria and personal inclinations rather than for the good of the people. From many of Joseph's regulations, enforced by the secret police, it looked to the Austrians as though Joseph were trying to reform their characters as well as their institutions. Only a few weeks before Joseph's death, the director of the Imperial Police reported to him: "All classes, and even those who have the greatest respect for the sovereign, are discontented and indignant."[20]

Portrait of Joseph II by Georg Decker

In Lombardy (in northern Italy), the cautious reforms of Maria Theresa enjoyed support from local reformers. Joseph II, however, by creating a powerful imperial officialdom directed from Vienna, undercut the dominant position of the Milanese principate and the traditions of jurisdiction and administration. In the place of provincial autonomy, he established an unlimited centralism, which reduced Lombardy politically and economically to a fringe area of the Empire. As a reaction to these radical changes, the middle-class reformers shifted away from cooperation to strong resistance. From this basis appeared the beginnings of the later Lombard liberalism.

In 1784, Joseph II attempted to make German an official language in Hungary after he had renamed the Burgtheater in Vienna the German National Theatre in 1776. Ferenc Széchényi responded by convening of a meeting and said there: "We'll see whether his patriotism also passes to the Crown." Julius Keglević responded with a letter in German to Joseph II: "I write German, not because of the instruction, Your Grace, but because I have to do with a German citizen." The "German citizen" Joseph II let them bring the Holy Crown of Hungary to Vienna, where he gave the keys of the chest in which the Crown was locked to the Crown guards Joseph Keglević and Miklos Nádasdy. Joseph refrained from staging a coronation, and Ferenc Széchényi pulled out of politics. The Austrian Civil Code, also called Joseph's Civil Code, the predecessor of the Civil Code of Austria, which applied to all citizens equally, was published on 1 November 1786 after 10 years working on it since 1776. § 1: "Every subject expects from the territorial prince security and protection, so it is the duty of the territorial prince, the rights of subjects to determine clearly and to guide the way of the actions how it is needed by universal and special prosperity."[21] It is a clear distinction between the rights of subjects and the duties of the territorial prince and not vice versa. "Territorial prince" (Landesfürst) does not mean "people's prince" (Volksfürst). In Hungary, there was no codified civil code until 1959.[22] The Crown was brought back to Hungary in 1790, on this occasion the people held a mass celebration.[23][24][25] One reason for his refusal to be crowned with the Holy Crown of Hungary might have been that Alcuin had written in a letter to Charlemagne in 798: "And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness."[26]

By 1790, rebellions had broken out in protest against Joseph's reforms in the Austrian Netherlands (the Brabant Revolution) and Hungary, and his other dominions were restive under the burdens of his war with the Ottomans. His empire was threatened with dissolution, and he was forced to sacrifice some of his reform projects. On 30 January 1790, he formally withdrew almost all his reforms in Hungary.

Joseph's image in popular memory has been varied. After his death there were many monuments to him built by the central government across his lands. The first Czechoslovak Republic tore down the monuments when it became independent in 1918. While the Czechs credited Joseph II with educational reforms, religious toleration, and the easing of censorship, they condemned his policies of centralization and Germanization that they blamed for causing a decline in Czech culture.[41]

The Budapest District of Józsefváros was named for the Emperor in 1777 and bears this name up to the present.

Like many of the "enlightened despots" of his time, Joseph was a lover and patron of the arts and is remembered as such. He was known as the "Musical King" and steered Austrian high culture towards a more Germanic orientation. He commissioned the German-language opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail from Mozart. The young Ludwig van Beethoven was commissioned to write a funeral cantata for him, but it was not performed because of its technical difficulty.

Joseph is prominently featured in Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus and the movie based upon it. In the film version, he is portrayed by actor Jeffrey Jones as a well-meaning but somewhat befuddled monarch of limited but enthusiastic musical skill, easily manipulated by Salieri; however, Shaffer has made it clear his play is fiction in many respects and not intended to portray historical reality. Joseph was portrayed by Danny Huston in the 2006 film Marie Antoinette.

Joseph also converted Vienna's defensive glacis into public park. The Linienwall defending Vienna's historic center were surrounded by a ditch and glacis about 500m wide, which were kept clear of vegetation and buildings for defensive purposes. Under Joseph the ditch was filled and carriage drives and walkways were built through the glacis, and the area planted with ornamental trees and provided with lanterns and benches. This green public space persisted until the second half of the 19th century, when the Ringstrasse and its associated buildings were built there.[42]

• Beales, Derek Edward Dawson (1987). Joseph II: Volume 1, In the Shadow of Maria Theresa, 1741–1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-24240-1. OCLC 13823416.
• Beales, Derek Edward Dawson (2009). Joseph II: Volume 2, Against the World, 1780–1790. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-24240-0. OCLC 13823416.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Joseph II". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 514–515.
• Padover, Saul K. (1934). The Revolutionary Emperor, Joseph the Second, 1741–1790.
• Szabo, Franz A. J. (March 2011). "Changing Perspectives on the "Revolutionary Emperor": Joseph II Biographies since 1790". The Journal of Modern History. 83 (1): 111–138. doi:10.1086/658104. ISSN 0022-2801. S2CID 144338172.