Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in Her Time by Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger

Abstract

Reviewed by: Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in Her Time by Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger Richard Butterwick Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara. Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in Her Time. Translated by Robert Savage. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ and Oxford, 2021. xviii + 1045 pp. Map. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Genealogical tables. Index. $39.95: £35.00. An English-language edition of Barbara Stollberg Rilinger's monumental biography of Maria Theresa has been eagerly awaited by many dix-huitièmistes and Central Europeanists since the publication of the German original (Maria Theresia. Die Kaiserin in ihrer Zeit) by C. H. Beck of Munich in 2017. The addition of just one word to the title alerts us to the challenge faced by the book in Anglophone markets. Maria Theresa reigned over many realms, duchies, counties and lordships, from Tournai to Transylvania, and from Lombardy to Lodomeria. This 'agglutination' (in R. J. W. Evans's memorable phrase) is collectively referred to by scholars as 'the Habsburg Monarchy'. In contemporary diplomatic parlance, the shorthand 'Austria' denoted this assemblage of territories and titles centred on the Viennese court — a usage continued by historians. Maria Theresa and her entourage referred to 'the monarchy' as a whole, but the original family seat of Hab(icht)sburg in the Aargau had long since been lost to the Swiss Confederation. The family name Habsburg was thus a less than welcome reminder of the relatively modest origins of the 'House of Austria'. And that 'Highest Archducal House' was destined, according to its acronym AEIOU, to rule the entire world. In 1740, Maria Theresa inherited her titles of Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Archduchess of Austria, and so on and so forth, from her father, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, although she had to make them good. She would add the title of Queen of Lodomeria and Galicia to her collection after participating in the first partition of Poland. Yet this mighty monarch only became an empress by virtue of her husband, Francis Stephen (who had exchanged his own ducal inheritance of Lorraine for Tuscany in 1738), being elected Holy Roman Emperor at the second attempt in 1745. After his death in 1765, Maria Theresa became dowager empress until her own demise in 1780. And yet for those thirty-five years, as well as the widower Joseph II's sole decade in power, Die Kaiserin had no need of a qualifying adjective (at least outside the Russian Empire). One of the author's principal tasks, therefore, is to enable her readers to distinguish between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, and to correct the false assumption that Maria Theresa was empress of a 'Habsburg Empire'. At the same time, the historian has to explain the many overlaps between 'the Empire' and 'the monarchy'. It is a task for which Stollberg-Rilinger, the Rhenish author of several influential works on the Old Reich, is well prepared. Perhaps she assumes rather too much foreknowledge of the Holy Roman Empire in the prologue, which introduces its heroine through a mixture of [End Page 760] monuments, historiography and gendered analysis, but she provides further explanations on p. 34. These are much expanded in the fascinating fourth chapter, titled 'Empress, Emperor, Empire'. As the author shows, 'ruling the Empire and ruling the hereditary lands were two quite different things. They followed different logics and demanded political strategies' (p. 171). Maria Theresa emerges as an experienced and skilful player of the game of imperial politics. That said, she and her family spoke of travelling 'to the Empire', an understandable usage when the various exemptions of the Habsburgs' hereditary lands within the Reich from imperial jurisdiction and taxation are considered (pp. 169–70). Maria Theresa's priority was never in doubt: 'imperial policy was a Habsburg domestic policy pursued with imperial means, not a policy directed at the Empire as a political whole' (p. 186). The position of Francis Stephen, however, remained ambivalent. Although his elevation to the imperial throne belatedly resolved many questions of etiquette and diplomatic protocol which had hitherto undermined his status, he seems to have been averse to conflicts and usually accepted his wife's political dominance. This subordination...