Maximilian Ulrich von Kaunitz


Count Maximilian Ulrich von Kaunitz-Rietberg was an Austrian diplomat and politician who served as governor of Moravia from 1720 until his death. He was the father of the powerful state chancellor of Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress and Queen Regnant of Bohemia and Hungary, Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg.

Early life

Maximilian Ulrich was born in Vienna to a wealthy Moravian noble family as the third son of Count, Baron of Šlapanice and Countess Maria Eleonora von, daughter of Count Adolph of Sternberg, the Supreme Burgrave of Bohemia. He was appointed an imperial chamberlain at a young age, and in 1706, he was made an imperial councillor.

Career

At least from the summer of 1716, Maximilian Ulrich was active as imperial envoy to various German princely courts. On 21 September 1720, he was named geheimrat, imperial secret councillor. In 1721, he served as imperial ambassador to Rome, witnessing the papal conclave that elected Benedict XIII after the death of Innocent XIII. In the same year he returned to the place of origin of his family, Moravia, becoming its governor.
He laid claim to the ancestral lands of his wife, the County of Rietberg, fighting a long and costly legal battle against the princely family of Liechtenstein and the king of Prussia. After he had won the suit in 1718, he changed the name of his family to 'Kaunitz-Rietberg' and was admitted to the. As part of the Rietberg inheritance, he and his descendants also assumed the lordship of Esens, Stederdorf, and Wittmund in East Frisia, despite these lands being under Prussian occupation.

Governor of Moravia

Maximilian Ulrich was a devoted governor who established and oversaw many beneficial and charitable institutions, among them the State Academy of Olomouc. He worked on making the river Morava navigable and had a road built between Brno and Olomouc; he regularised the tax system of Moravia, increasing royal income and enacted a partial reform of the provincial administration. He also introduced restrictions on the lives of the significant Jewish population of the region and ordered the expulsion of Romani people.

Personal life

On 6 August 1699, he married Prinzess, heiress of the House of Cirksena as the only child of, Count of Rietberg and Countess Johanna Franziska von Manderscheid-Blankenheim. One source claims that the two had been betrothed in 1697 and that Maria was fourteen and Maximilian Ulrich seventeen, while another states that the groom was twenty and the bride thirteen at the time of their wedding. Maximilain Ulrich died in Vienna in 1746, aged sixty-seven.

Issue

From his marriage, Maximilian Ulrich had sixteen children, eleven sons and five daughters:
  • Maria Johanna Franziska ;
  • Dominika Josepha ;
  • Maria Josepha Agnes ;
  • Maria Antonia Josepha Justine, who married Count Johann Adam in 1738 and had no issue, naming named their nephew as their heir, thus founding the line of Kaunitz-Rietberg-Questenberg;
  • Johann Dominik I ;
  • Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg, state chancellor to Maria Theresa from 1753 and prince of the Holy Roman Empire from 1764. On 6 May 1736, he married Countess Maria Ernestine von Starhemberg and had issue, among them Dominik Andreas II from whom the Kaunitz-Rietberg-Questenbergs descend;
  • Maximilian Joseph ;
  • Franz Leopold ;
  • Johann Wilhelm ;
  • Franz Thaddäus ;
  • Karl Joseph ;
  • Emanuel Joseph ;
  • Ludwig Joseph ;
  • Maria Eleonore, married Count Rudolph Pálffy;
  • Johann Joseph Alois ;
  • Rudolph Joseph.

Honours