General Notes

Joseph II (1741-90), Holy Roman emperor (1765-90), who tried unsuccessfully to
reform and unify the Austrian Habsburg domains.
The eldest son of Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa, Joseph was born
in Vienna on March 13, 1741. He became emperor and coruler of the Austrian
lands with his mother when Francis died in 1765. During this period he worked
with state chancellor W. A. von Kaunitz to expand Habsburg power, acquiring
Galicia from Poland (1772) and Bukovina from Turkey (1775). His attempt to
annex Lower Bavaria, however, was thwarted by Frederick II (the Great) of
Prussia.
As sole ruler after Maria Theresa's death in 1780, Joseph embarked on a
thorough reform of church and state in accordance with the rational principles
of the 18th-century Enlightenment. He granted religious toleration to
Protestants, ended discriminatory laws against Jews, and drastically
reorganized the predominant Roman Catholic church, closing many monasteries,
subjecting the education of priests to state control, and limiting the power
of the pope to intervene in Austria. Joseph eliminated most forms of
censorship, freed the serfs, separated the executive from the judiciary, and
promulgated a new law code. To unify the administration of the various
Habsburg realms, he abolished numerous organs of local government and tried to
impose the German language on his Hungarian and Slavic subjects. In foreign
affairs Joseph maintained close ties with Russia.
Joseph's reforms met with resistance in many quarters, and before his death in
Vienna on February 20, 1790, he was forced to rescind many of them.