Monumente zu Ehren Kaiser Josephs II. Ökonomisierung und Standardisierung im Denkmalkult
Monuments in Honour of Emperor Joseph II. Economization and Standardization in the Cult of Monuments. The Habsburg Emperor Joseph II (r. 1765–1790) was commemorated in the late 19th century in the Austrian hereditary lands, especially in Lower Austria, and in Bohemia, by means of numerous full-length monuments, whereby the ruler was held in high esteem above all because of his religious policy and the liberation of the peasantry he initiated. Most of the statues come from the Moravian foundry in Blansko and do not show elaborate iconographic programmes, but were intended to popularise the regent in the form of generally understandable, easily recognisable solutions. This production demonstrates on the one hand the economization of the cult of monuments directly linked to casting technology, and on the other hand the politicizing coding of entire regions characteristic of the late 19th century which – far from the major metropolises – became hotly contested sites of the Habsburg culture of remembrance.