The year 1765 made its mark on the history of the monarchy in bold letters. In August, Emperor Francis I suffered a heart attack while returning from the opera in Innsbruck and fell into the arms of his eldest son, Archduke Joseph. Not long after, he drew his final breath. Ironically, he had not originally wanted to go to Innsbruck at all, but the planned wedding of his younger son Leopold with the Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain temporarily relocated the whole family and the court there. For Empress Maria Theresa, the death of her beloved husband brought life to an end. She covered herself with a black widow’s veil, put on a dark mourning gown, lay aside all her jewellery and gave away her colourful wardrobe. From 1765 onwards, the monarch was depicted on all coins and medals with her widow’s veil. Some coin denominations even continued to be struck with the year 1765, a year when time seemingly stood still for her, until her death in 1780.
Joseph II was elected King of the Romans in 1764, while his father Francis Stephen of Lorraine was still alive, and was crowned in Frankfurt in the same year.
An extremely rare medal from 1765, commemorating the assumption of the imperial title and the co-reign with the widowed Empress Maria Theresa, will soon appear in our auction under lot 275. The author of this exceptional and highly artistically valuable medal is Anton Wideman, the court medallist of the Vienna Mint. The highly collectible specimen offered at the auction, in excellent collector’s condition, comes from a French nobleman’s estate. The Viennese court was also linked to the French one by the marriage of Joseph II’s sister, Marie Antoinette. This marriage ultimately turned out to be fatal, when she found herself under the guillotine during the French Revolution, not long after her husband, King Louis XVI of France.
Joseph II ascended the throne in 1765 as a well-prepared and confident co-regent. The period of his co-rule with the heartbroken Maria Theresa was not without conflict. Joseph II’s Enlightenment philosophy clashed with his mother’s Catholic religiosity and conservatism. After the death of Maria Theresa in 1780, he continued to rule independently until his own death in 1790. In any case, Joseph II went down in history as the most reformist monarch. During his lifetime he issued more than 6,000 patents. The abolition of serfdom, the patent of tolerance, the creation of the first cadastre and the obligation to adopt fixed hereditary surnames are just a few of the most noteworthy examples.
GOLD MEDAL 1765 (10 DUCATS) ON ASSUMING THE TITLE OF ROMAN EMPEROR AND BECOMING CO-REGENT WITH MARIA THERESA
