Körmöczi Katalin szerk.: Historical Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum 3 - From the End of the Turkish Wars to the Millennium - The history of Hungary in the 18th and 19th centuries (Budapest, 2001)

ROOM 10. Hungary in the 18th Century (Gábor Németh)

21. The "Hungarian Versailles": the Esterházy palace at Fertőd, 1791 Copper engraving Watteau attire (Fig. 23), which once belonged to the Majthényis. Maria Theresia's Enlightenment-inspired endeavours culminated in the social, political, religious, and cultural reforms of her son Joseph II (1780-90), in what is known as the Josephinist period of enlightened absolutism. These political and cultural reforms (the decree on censorship, the Edict of Toleration) and the measures to modernize society (the serf decree, the ordering of a census, the plan to tax the nobility) were accompanied by doubts about the country's "constitution" and its separate governance. In the exhibition J. F. Beer's copperplate engraving "Allegory of Joseph II's Edict of Toleration" shows the entire series of decrees. The granting of free practice of religion to the Protestants and the ending of religious coercion were commemorated in medal form. Joseph II's 1784 language decree, which made German the language of the state in Hungary, served his policy of fusing his domains into one entity, and the same was true of his dividing the country into ten districts in order to break the opposition of the counties. These endeavours were met by a strengthening of resistance and national feeling. The seals connected with his administrative reforms and Joseph II ducats are arranged opposite seals of the counties. Looking at Hungary, it was because of the duality of the positive and negative deci-