Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor

Maximilian II of the Habsburg dynasty was born in 1527 at Vienna and died in 1576 in Regensburg. Maximilian was king of Bohemia from 1562, king of Hungary from 1563 and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire from 1564 until his death.

His father and predecessor was Ferdinand I, his uncle the Emperor Charles V. Philip II of Spain, son of Charles V, was ahead of him in the line of succession, but under a 1553 agreement Maximilian displaced Philip as heir to the Imperial throne.

Maximilian's policies of religious neutrality and peace in the Empire afforded its Roman Catholics and Protestants a breathing-space after the first struggles of the Reformation. His sympathies for Lutheranism had caused frictions in the House of Habsburg and his father had threatened him with exclusion from the succession. Officially he remained a Catholic.

He disappointed the German Protestant princes by his refusal to invest Protestant administrators of bishoprics with their imperial fiefs. Yet on a personal basis he granted freedom of worship to the Protestant nobility and worked for reform in the Roman Catholic church, including the right of priests to marry. This failed because of Spanish opposition.

The Turks continued to be a threat to the empire and after an unsuccessful campaign against them he had to continue paying tribute to the sultan as the price of peace in the western and northern areas of the Hungarian kingdom still under Habsburg control. His attempt (1570) to gain control over the army was rejected by the German Protestant princes, who feared that his demand for a veto over foreign forces on German soil was intended to prevent them from seeking Protestant help abroad.

In 1573, Maximilan was elected to be King of Poland in opposition to Stephan IV Bathory, but he did not manage to become widely accepted there.

Maximilian II was a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

He married Maria, daughter of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor on 13 September 1548. Their children included: