1600–1809

The political culture of the cities was promoted by Renaissance, Humanism and Reformation—also in Graz. In the course of Counter-Reformation, however, the city’s independence was defeated by the absolutist princely state of Charles and Ferdinand. The land-owning (Catholic) nobility gained in importance, the Protestant forces were pushed back violently. The free election of city councillors in town meetings was completely abolished.

The specifically urban political understanding of the guild-master bourgeoisie gradually disappeared in the 18th century. The central state of Maria Theresa and Joseph II turned the self-determined town citizens into citizens of the state. The citizen as state citizen was to become the fundament of a militarily and economically successful state, whereas the influence and the possessions of the previously (tax-)privileged nobility and clergy were diminished.

Unsettled by famine, epidemics, and wars, the society of the 16th and 17th century reached its climax of misogyny with the “witch-hunt”. One hundred years later, Enlightenment broke with the “God-given” rule of the nobility and the clergy, and changed the gender relationships with its reforms. Compulsory education, which was introduced by Maria Theresia in 1774, applied to “beyderley Geschlecht“ (both sexes).

The French Revolution strengthened the self-confidence of women. Austria’s first women’s newspaper was published in Graz. Women citizens established political clubs, and claimed women’s suffrage even though civic and human rights were written exclusively for men. Even though all Civil Law Codes formulated the principle of legal equality of the sexes but they also set out the husband as head of the family and guardian of his wife, who had to subordinate herself because of her allegedly weak and unreasonable nature.

In the early Modern Age urban diversity included only limited religious diversity in Graz. People of different faith were persecuted as “enemies”, “heretics” or “witches. This affected in particular Jews, Turks and Protestants. Emperor Ferdinand II, who was born in Graz, tried to enforce Catholicism with violence when he was King of Bohemia and thus unleashed the disastrous Thirty Years’ War in 1618—it was Joseph II who first granted the Protestants free practice of religion with his Patents of Toleration. The clashes between the Hapsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire were stylized as a religious war of “Cross against Crescent”. And since their expulsion in the late 15th century, Graz remained a city without Jews until 1867.

With the Age of Enlightenment, the pursuit of equality and freedom began, but at the outbreak of the French Revolution and the beginning Napoleonic Wars, Austria adopted a reactionary stance.

The recatholisation of Styria found expression in church buildings, columns of the Virgin Mary and palaces of the Catholic nobility. Italian architects and artists were popular—the city was given monumental buildings in the Renaissance and Baroque styles. Many houses were demolished outside the city gates to create defence fields against the Ottomans. Its residents then moved to the west, to the historical Murvorstadt.

After Joseph II had dissolved monasteries in the 18th century, a “General Hospital” and a “Madhouse” were built on former monastery grounds east of the Schlossberg. Further establishments for education, social disciplining, and welfare followed. The enlightened monarch declared Graz—extremely early in a European comparison—an “open city” in 1784: the city gates remained open; the fortifications were not renewed. In front of the southern gate, a new Vorstadt was created: The Josephstadt, the later district of Jakomini.