Archduke Anton Victor of Austria
| Archduke Anton Victor | |
|---|---|
Archduke Anton of Austria
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| Born |
31 August 1779 Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany |
| Died | 2 April 1835 (aged 55) Vienna, Austrian Empire |
| Burial | Imperial Crypt, Vienna |
| House | Habsburg-Lorraine |
| Father | Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor |
| Mother | Maria Luisa of Spain |
Anton Victor, Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia (full German name: Anton Viktor Joseph Johann Raimund von Österreich, 31 August 1779 – 2 April 1835) was an Archduke of Austria and a Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights. He was also briefly the last Archbishop and Elector of Cologne and Prince-Bishop of Münster before those territories were secularised in 1803.
Anton Victor was the son of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, and Maria Luisa of Spain. He was born in Florence and died in Vienna. He never married and died without issue.
After the death of his uncle, Maximilian Franz, Archbishop and Prince-Elector of Cologne and Prince-Bishop of Münster, Anton Victor was chosen on 9 September 1801 as Prince-Bishop of Münster and on 7 October as Archbishop and Prince Elector of Cologne. The Electorate’s Rhenish territories had been occupied by the French in 1794 and had in 1800 become part of France (in Cologne’s case as sub-prefecture of the new département de la Roër, based on Aix-la-Chapelle)/Aachen, this state of affairs preventing Anton from taking his seat in Cologne Cathedral (which had in any case been reduced by the revolutionaries to the status of a parish church, a status which it had up till then never possessed, but which it retained even after reinstatement of the Archdiocese in 1821 until very recently) and leaving him in control only of the Duchy of Westphalia, as well as of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster. His reign was to prove a short one - in the reorganisation of the Holy Roman Empire as provided by its law of 1803 (at the time of writing still nameless) enacting the so-called Reichsdeputationshauptschluss (recte: Recès principal de la délégation extraordinaire d’Empire ‘Hauptschluß der außerordentlichen Reichsdeputation’, ‘chief recommendation of the select committee of the Reichstag’), the archiepiscopal electorates of Cologne and Trier were abolished and Anton’s remaining territories secularised, Münster being partitioned between the Prussians and various minor princes and Westphalia claimed by the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt.
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