Maximilian Ulrich von Kaunitz-Rietberg | |
|---|---|
Maxmilián Oldřich z Kounic-Rietbergu | |
 Portrait from 1698 by Hyacinthe Rigaud | |
| Born | March 27, 1679. |
| Died | September 10, 1746 (aged 67) Vienna, Archduchy of Austria, Holy Roman Empire |
| Title | Governor of Moravia |
| Term | 1721–1746 |
| Spouse |
Maria Ernestina Franziska von Cirksena-Rietberg
(m. 1699) |
| Children | 16, including Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg |
| Honours | Knight of the Golden Fleece |
Count Maximilian Ulrich von Kaunitz-Rietberg (Czech: Maxmilián Oldřich z Kounic-Rietbergu; 27 March 1679 – 10 September 1746[1][2]) was an Austrian diplomat and politician who served as governor of Moravia from 1720 until his death.[3] 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.
Maximilian Ulrich was born in Vienna[citation needed] to a wealthy Moravian noble family as the third son[1] of Count Dominik Andreas I von Kaunitz (1655–1705),[2] Baron of Šlapanice[citation needed] and Countess Maria Eleonora von Sternberg[1][2] (died 2 December 1706),[4] daughter of Count Adolph of Sternberg, the Supreme Burgrave of Bohemia.[citation needed] He was appointed an imperial chamberlain at a young age, and in 1706, he was made an imperial councillor.[1]
At least from the summer of 1716,[1] Maximilian Ulrich was active as imperial envoy to various German princely courts.[2] On 21 September 1720, he was named geheimrat, imperial secret councillor.[1] In 1721, he served as imperial ambassador to Rome, witnessing the papal conclave that elected Benedict XIII after the death of Innocent XIII.[2] In the same year he returned to the place of origin of his family, Moravia, becoming its governor.[1]
He laid claim to the ancestral lands of his wife, the County of Rietberg,[1] fighting a long and costly legal battle against the princely family of Liechtenstein and the king of Prussia.[2] After he had won the suit in 1718, he changed the name of his family to 'Kaunitz-Rietberg'[1] and was admitted to the Lower Rhine-Westphalian Imperial College of Counts.[2] 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.[1]
Maximilian Ulrich was a devoted governor[1] who established and oversaw many beneficial and charitable institutions,[2] among them the State Academy of Olomouc.[1] 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[1][2] and enacted a partial reform of the provincial administration.[3] He also introduced restrictions on the lives of the significant Jewish population of the region and ordered the expulsion of Romani people.[2]
On 6 August 1699, he married Prinzess Maria Ernestina Franziska von Cirksena-Rietberg[1][2] (1683[5]/1686–1758[1]), heiress of the House of Cirksena as the only child of Ferdinand Maximilian von Ostfriesland-Rietberg, Count of Rietberg[1] and Countess Johanna Franziska von Manderscheid-Blankenheim.[6] One source claims that the two had been betrothed in 1697 and that Maria was fourteen and Maximilian Ulrich seventeen,[5] while another states that the groom was twenty and the bride thirteen at the time of their wedding.[1] Maximilain Ulrich died in Vienna in 1746, aged sixty-seven.[2]
From his marriage, Maximilian Ulrich had sixteen children, eleven sons and five daughters:
