Franz Stadion, Count von Warthausen

Franz Stadion, Graf von Warthausen (27 July 1806 – 8 June 1853), was an Austrian nobleman and a statesman, who served the Austrian Empire during the 1840s.

Early life Franz was born in Vienna, into the Stadion-Warthausen line of the House of Stadion, as a son of the Austrian diplomat Count Johann Philipp von Stadion-Warthausen and his wife and cousin, Countess Maria Anna von Stadion-Thannhausen (1777–1841).

Biography From 1841 he was Governor of the Austrian Littoral (with its capital at Trieste), from 1847 to 1848 Governor of Galicia (where he freed the peasants from labor duties), and from 1848 to 1849 he was Interior Minister and Minister of Education. He advocated constitutional government, decreed the Imposed March Constitution in March 1849 which was never enacted, and in 1849 promulgated the Gemeinde (municipality) legislation that granted governmental autonomy to all municipalities in the Austrian empire. Lewis Namier, in 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (p. 18), calls him "one of the most enlightened and efficient Austrian administrators."