Joseph II Habsburg-Lotharingen ^{1 2}

  General Notes:

Joseph II 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.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Acceded: Holy Roman Emperor, 1765.

Joseph married Isabella of Parma de Bourbon, daughter of Philip of Parma de Bourbon and Elizabeth de France. (Isabella of Parma de Bourbon was born on 31 Dec 1741 and died on 27 Nov 1763.)