Franz Joseph I of Austria

1830 – 1916 · Generation XX · Emperor of Austria (r. 1848–1916) · Habsburg-Lorraine

Franz Joseph I (1830–1916) was Emperor of Austria for almost sixty-eight years, from the revolutions of 1848 into the third year of the First World War. He was born at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna on 18 August 1830, the eldest son of Archduke Franz Karl and Sophie of Bavaria. His uncle, Emperor Ferdinand, was unfit to govern and his father had no taste for it, so Sophie brought the boy up to rule. By sixteen he was studying fifty hours a week, much of it on the languages of the monarchy, and from his thirteenth birthday, when he was made colonel of a dragoon regiment, he dressed as a soldier for the rest of his life.

In 1848 revolution drove the court from Vienna to Olmütz in Moravia. There, on 2 December, Ferdinand abdicated, Franz Karl waived his own right, and the eighteen-year-old archduke became emperor, adding Joseph to his name to recall the reforming Joseph II. Liberal hopes were soon disappointed. With an army lent by Tsar Nicholas I he crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1849, and executions and martial law followed. The constitution he had granted that spring was revoked at the end of 1851, and he governed as an absolute monarch. In 1853 a Hungarian journeyman tailor, János Libényi, stabbed him in the neck on a Vienna bastion. The stiff collar of his uniform saved him, and the Votivkirche was built in thanks.

Absolutism did not survive defeat. Austria’s neutrality in the Crimean War cost it the friendship of Russia. In 1859 Franz Joseph took command in person at Solferino, lost, and gave up Lombardy. In 1866 the Prussian victory at Königgrätz ended Habsburg leadership in Germany, and Venetia passed to Italy. Forced to bargain with the Hungarians, he agreed to the Compromise of 1867, which turned the empire into Austria-Hungary: two states, each with its own government and parliament, sharing a monarch, a foreign policy and an army. He was crowned King of Hungary in Buda on 8 June 1867, and that December sanctioned a constitution for the Austrian half that lasted until 1918. Even so he kept the right to fill the chief offices of state, to veto laws and to command the army.

On 24 April 1854 he had married his first cousin Elisabeth of Bavaria, known as Sisi, seven years his junior, choosing her over the elder sister his mother had intended for him. He loved her devotedly. She found the court unbearable and spent more and more time away from it. They had four children: Sophie, who died in infancy, Gisela, Rudolf and Marie Valerie. His private life became a sequence of bereavements. His brother Maximilian was shot in Mexico in 1867, Crown Prince Rudolf killed himself at Mayerling in January 1889, and in 1898 Elisabeth was assassinated in Geneva by an Italian anarchist. From 1885 he had the companionship of the actress Katharina Schratt, a friendship the empress herself encouraged.

In old age he was the fixed point of a quarrelsome empire. He rose as early as half past three, washed in cold water, and worked through files at his desk at Schönbrunn, regarding himself as the first official of his state. His ministers could not solve the rivalries of the nationalities, and loyalty to the monarchy came to mean loyalty to the old gentleman himself. The annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, thirty years after Austrian troops had occupied it, soured relations with Serbia. On 28 June 1914 his nephew and heir Franz Ferdinand, with whom he had been on poor terms since the archduke’s morganatic marriage, was shot at Sarajevo. A month later Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the alliances of Europe did the rest. His biographers still disagree about how clearly the emperor, then almost eighty-four, saw what he was setting in motion.

Franz Joseph died of pneumonia at Schönbrunn on 21 November 1916, aged eighty-six, in the plain bed that visitors are still shown, and was buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna. His great-nephew Charles inherited the crowns. The empire outlasted him by two years.

Place in the family

Franz Joseph I of Austria was a great-great-grandson of Maria Theresa.
Franz Joseph I of Austria was the eldest of 3 children of Archduke Franz Karl of Austria and Princess Sophie of Bavaria recorded in this archive.

Images

Franz Joseph in white uniform, painted by Johann Ranzi in 1851, three years into his reign. (Johann Ranzi, public domain)
The emperor in the uniform of an Austrian field marshal, by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1865. (Franz Xaver Winterhalter, public domain)
Franz Joseph and Elisabeth at their coronation as King and Queen of Hungary in Buda on 8 June 1867, in a copy by Edmund Tull of Eduard von Engerth’s painting. (Edmund Tull, after Eduard von Engerth, public domain)
Silver five-corona coin of 1908 bearing the emperor’s portrait. (Windrain, CC BY-SA 4.0)

One of 24 people of Habsburg-Lorraine (from 1736) in this archive. Maria Theresa’s marriage carried the inheritance into a new name, which its heirs still bear.

Parents

Archduke Franz Karl of Austria (1802 – 1878)
Princess Sophie of Bavaria (1805 – 1872)

Siblings

Maximilian I of Mexico (1832 – 1867)
Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria (1833 – 1896)

Partners

Married Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837 – 1898) in 1854 — one child together

Children

Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria (1858 – 1889)

Life

1830 — Born
1854 — Married Elisabeth
1916 — Died

Sources

Franz Joseph I of Austria · Wikipedia
Franz Joseph I (biography and chapters on his reign, marriage and family) · The World of the Habsburgs (Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.)
Franz Joseph’s Bedroom · Schönbrunn Palace
Emperor Franz Joseph’s Study · Schönbrunn Palace