Joseph II., emperor of Germany, son of Francis I. and Maria Theresa (q.v.), was born 13th March 1741. He early gave proof of excellent abilities. In 1764 he was elected king of the Romans, and after the death of his father (1765) emperor of Germany; but until the death of his mother in 1780 his actual share of power amounted to little more than the chief command of the army and the direction of foreign affairs. Although he failed in his object of adding Bavaria to the Austrian dominions (1777-79 and again in 1785), which he hoped to obtain in exchange for the Low Countries, he acquired Galicia, Lodomeria, and the county of Zips, at the first partition of Poland in 1772; and in 1780 he appropriated great part of the bishoprics of Passau and Salzburg. He was a zealous reformer; but having imbibed, like Frederick the Great, the principles of absolute rule which prevailed in that age, he attempted his reforms too rashly, and too much by the exercise of mere authority. As soon as he found himself in full possession of the government of Austria he proceeded to declare himself independent of the pope, and to prohibit the publication of any new papal bulls in his dominions without his placet. The continued publication of the bulls 'Unigenitus' and 'In Cœna Domini' was prohibited. Besides this, he suppressed no fewer than 700 convents, reduced the number of the regular clergy from 63,000 to 27,000, prohibited papal dispensations as to marriage, and on 15th October 1781 published the celebrated Edict of Toleration, by which he allowed the free exercise of their religion to the Protestants and Non-united Greeks in his dominions. Pope Pius VI. thought to check this course by a personal interview with the emperor, and for that purpose made a visit to Vienna in 1782, but was unsuccessful in his object. Joseph's other important reforms were the abolition of serfdom and the reorganisation of the system of taxation on a juster basis. He also curtailed the feudal privileges of the nobles. In 1788 he engaged in a war with Turkey, in which he was unsuccessful; and the vexation caused by this, and by the revolts in his own dominions, in Hungary, Tyrol, and the Netherlands, and the necessity under which he felt himself of revoking many of the edicts by which he had sought to promote the welfare of his people, especially in Hungary, hastened his death, which took place on 20th February 1790. He founded many valuable educational and scientific institutions, and did much to promote the progress of arts, manufactures, and commerce in Austria.
See works by Brunner (1868-85), Lustkandl (1881), and Nosinich and Wiener (1885); also Léger's History of Austro-Hungary (Eng. trans. 1890).