Background
Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz was born on December 11, 1702. He was the son of a general in the Saxon army, whose estates were, however, situated in Silesia, then Austrian.
Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz was born on December 11, 1702. He was the son of a general in the Saxon army, whose estates were, however, situated in Silesia, then Austrian.
Haugwitz, as a student of the Austrian cameralist, Wilhelm von Schröder, learned hostility towards the wealthy estates.
In 1725 Haugwitz entered the provincial government of Silesia, where his talents and industry soon attracted attention. Haugwitz instituted a separation of judicial matters from political and fiscal matters by instituting a new High Court (Oberste Justizstelle). Regional courts functioned directly beneath the Empress with each departmental chief supervising his own affairs.
Maria Theresa had established the Theresianum to train noble children for civil service. Through this institution, Haugwitz planned to bring about economic modernization. To catalyze this modernization and establish Vienna as a place of economic discourse, Haugwitz brought Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi to Vienna, first to teach German as the language of administration and later to train students according to both German Kameralism and modern economic theories and practices. Society was not prepared for modern economic thought because of the traditionally Jesuit nature of scholarship and the division of the Habsburg economy into various regional and local economies.
In 1746, under the direction of Haugwitz, in an attempt to bring about economic centralization, the Directorium was established as a central agency to supervise the lands in the monarchy and make recommendations about economic improvements. In 1749, the government established Representationen und Cammern as local offices of the Directorium chiefly as mechanisms for supervising tax policy.Because of this economic centralization, Haugwitz provided Emperor Joseph II with an unprecedented amount of information about the economies of the states over which he would reign. Such a report was unprecedented because it would traditionally have been viewed as an intrusion in the affairs normally reserved to the estates. All of these reforms helped to bring about the eventual peak of mercantilism in the 1760s.
Military reforms complimented Haugwitz’s economic initiatives. Haugwitz contributed to military reform in both funding and the development of a standing army. To protect the monarchy, Haugwitz recommended a standing army of 108,000 supported by contributions by the estates of 14 million gulden. To avoid the previous issues in estates' withholding of contributions, or the tedious process of frequent appeals to the estates, Haugwitz instituted the Ten Years’ Recess. Under this program, despite the resistance of the estates, the estates would guarantee payment for ten years. This period abolished the previous fluctuations in finances. Previously, when taxes were levied from the estates, the estates disagreed amongst themselves over the amount levied, divided the sum among the various estates, collected taxes from the peasantry, deducted from these taxes and then distributed the remainder to the monarchy. In this reform, Representationen und Cammern collected the taxes in order that the greatest portion of the levy would be distributed to the monarchy.
In addition to these military finance reforms, Haugwitz instituted reforms within the military. A policy quite close to conscription was established. Uniform dress was required of soldiers in order to foster national spirit. Haugwitz advocated the usage of Prussian fighting tactics. A training school was founded to train officers in these tactics.
The beginning of the Seven Years’ War in 1757 thwarted the development of many of the reforms. In false defense of his failing policies, Haugwitz argued that the reforms "were only for peacetime". Eventually, Haugwitz’s Directorium was stripped of its military and financial functions and renamed the Bohemian and Austrian Court Chancellery.
In the summer of 1765 he moved to one of his castles in Miroslavské Knínice, where his health worsened because of dysentery. Later, he died on 30 August 1765.
Haugwitz was also an admirer of the reforms and new administration in the Prussian province of Silesia. He intended to change economic and administrative institutions through compartmentalization of government functions, education, centralization of the economy and provision of economic information to the monarchy.