Archduke Anton Victor of Austria

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-Elector of Cologne (and Duke of Westphalia) and Prince-Bishop of Münster before those territories were secularised in 1803.

Life

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 , centred 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 (, , "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.

Anton Victor became Grand Master of the Teutonic Order in 1804. The order's German lands, centred on Mergentheim, were secularised in 1809, but Anton remained its Grand Master until his death. Between 1816 and 1818 he was Viceroy of the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia.

Ancestry