Prince Johann I von Liechtenstein
1760–1836
Johann Baptist Lampi (1751–1830), Portrait of Prince Johann I von Liechtenstein (1760–1836), before 1816
Predecessor
Prince Alois I von Liechtenstein
Successor
Prince Alois II von LiechtensteinPrince Johann I von Liechtenstein acquitted himself with distinction in the Coalition Wars against revolutionary France and in the Napoleonic Wars, his abilities earning him the respect of Napoleon. As a consequence, the French leader admitted the Principality of Liechtenstein to the Confederation of the Rhine founded on his initiative in 1806. The sovereignty thus gained for the principality was subsequently confirmed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. From 1807 Johann I. transferred the princely paintings gallery to the Garden Palace in the Rossau. In 1811 he completed the landscape garden at Eisgrub (Lednice) and Feldsberg (Valtice), also creating another large-scale landscaped park around Liechtenstein Castle, the ancestral seat to the south of Vienna that he had bought back for the family in 1807.
The younger son of Franz Josef I (1726–1781) and his wife Leopoldine, Johann I was born in Vienna on 27 June 1760. He married Landgravine Josepha Sophie zu Fürstenberg-Weitra (1776–1848) on 12 April 1792. The couple had thirteen children, including Johann’s successor Alois II (1796–1858). Johann I died in Vienna on 20 April 1836.
Military Achievements
At the age of twenty-two Johann I began his military career as a lieutenant in the imperial army. He was rapidly promoted, fighting at the rank of colonel just eight years later in the Second Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792). During the Napoleonic Wars he served in Holland between 1792 and 1794, subsequently taking part military action in Germany at the rank of major general in 1796/97.
It may be attributed to Napoleon’s chivalrous recognition of Johann I's achievements that the Principality of Liechtenstein was admitted – albeit without his official consent – to the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, thus attaining full sovereignty.
His military actions were marked by decisiveness, daring and valour. Contemporary accounts vied with each other in their enthusiasm for the military achievements of the prince, who was soon hailed as one of Napoleon’s ablest adversaries. In June 1799 he took part in the battle of the Trebbia, which resulted in victory for the allied Austro-Russian coalition, and in 1799 he defended the fortress of Cuneo, though was ultimately unable to prevent its fall. In 1800, having meanwhile been promoted to lieutenant field marshal, the prince was once again serving on the front in Austria. However unsuccessful the campaigns against Napoleon were from the Habsburg point of view, they nonetheless afforded Johann I several opportunities to distinguish himself on the battlefield. In 1801, in recognition of his many services, Johann I was invested with the Grand Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa, the highest military honour of the House of Habsburg.
It may be attributed to Napoleon’s chivalrous recognition of Johann I's achievements that the Principality of Liechtenstein was admitted – albeit without his official consent – to the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, thus attaining full sovereignty. In accordance with the terms of the treaty, Prince Johann I formally ceded governance of the small country on the Rhine to his youngest son Karl Johann, then still a minor, until 1813. Two years later he joined the German Confederation founded at the Congress of Vienna. In the part he played at the negotiation table the prince also had a considerable influence on the fate of Austria. In 1805 he played an important role in bringing about the relatively favourable treaty of Pressburg (Bratislava) following the battle of Austerlitz (Slavkov u Brna, Czech Republic), and led the negotiations – albeit less successfully – that led to the treaty of Schönbrunn after the catastrophic defeat of the Austrian army at the battle of Wagram in 1809. He ended his military career with the rank of field marshal in 1810.
CONTINUATION AND A NEW START
From then on, like his brother Alois I (1759–1805), he devoted himself to other interests: agriculture and forestry on the family estates, and art. Early on at Loosdorf, the estate he had received in compensation when his brother Alois I became head of the family, he attempted to set up a model estate, shaping the landscape on new principles. He was then able to continue this work in another form and scale after he himself had become head of the family in 1805. Johann I carried on where his brother had left off, completing not only the landscape garden between Eisgrub (Lednice) and Feldsberg (Valtice) but also acquiring many other demesnes which he transformed into small paradises on earth, often at huge expense.
One of these was the region around the ancestral castle of the Liechtensteins on the far side of the hill known as the Kalenderberg near Maria Enzersdorf, south of Vienna. The family managed to reacquire it around five centuries after it had been lost by inheritance. Around the castle he created an artificial Mediterranean landscape with plantings of pine seedlings that had to be laboriously kept alive for years by watering and regular applications of soil.
Prince Johann I managed to reacquire the Liechtenstein ancestral castle in Maria Enzersdorf five centuries after it had been lost by inheritance.
The building activity pursued with such enthusiasm by Alois I was also continued here with the erection of the Husarentempel, a landmark visible from miles around, together with many other structures scattered around the pine-clad hills. Johann I laid out a similar landscape park on the Danube to the west of Vienna around Greifenstein in Hadersfeld. There too the design was based on the idea of a Mediterranean landscape.
THE COLLECTIONS ARE OPENED TO THE PUBLIC
Prince Johann I also continued his brother’s work in the Princely Collections. Alois I had very likely considered uniting the holdings of pictures in the Garden Palace in the Rossau. In the last years of his life he had transferred paintings from various properties, including the Garden Palace, to the Reigning Prince’s residence on Bankgasse. In the 1790s the prince’s director of building Joseph Hardtmuth (1758–1816) began adapting the Garden Palace as a gallery. He had most of the windows walled up in the gallery rooms, as well as the originally open-arched wall between the Hercules Hall and the Great Gallery beyond it, in order to gain more hanging space for paintings. From 1807 the gallery was gradually transferred from Bankgasse to the Rossau, and finally in 1810 the museum thus created was opened at fixed times to the general public upon payment of an admission fee. The paintings were not hung according to schools but on aesthetic principles, densely arrayed in strict symmetry, as documented in the record of the hanging arrangements drawn up by Joseph Bauer in 1815.
Moreover, work continued on the transformation of the park extending from the north side of the palace into a landscape garden. An additional attraction there was the Belvedere designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656–1723) from the time of the palace’s construction under Prince Johann Adam Andreas I, with grottos and hothouses that were regularly extended over the years.
In 1810 the gallery was opened to the public at fixed times upon payment of an admission fee.
The removal of the gallery and transferral of the ceiling paintings by Antonio Bellucci (1654–1726), which had constituted a major part of the original Baroque decor in the Reigning Prince’s residence on Bankgasse, to the Garden Palace in the Rossau quarter had more or less devastated the City Palace, parts of which were let out during this time. Plans for a complete remodelling of the Reigning Prince’s residence in neoclassical style had already been considered during Johann I's reign: these had included covering over the courtyard with a massive cupola as a sort of pantheon for the Liechtenstein family and the architectonic centre of the new design. However, these plans were never implemented.
OF OLD MASTERS AND RECORDS OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE
Containing 840 pictures at the beginning of Johann I's reign, its holdings had grown to 1,613, that is, almost double in number. The prince acquired major works from all the main epochs in the Collection, all of which are still part of the holdings, but also played an important role as patron in commissioning works from contemporary artists.
The former group featured names such as Sellaio, Garofalo, Raphael, Solari, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Rubens, Pagani and Ricci, while among the contemporary masters were Lampi, Füger, Krafft, Rebell, Petter and Runk. Outstanding examples among the Old Masters include Raphael’s “Portrait of a Man” and Sebastiano Ricci’s “Rape of the Sabine Women” and “The Battle of the Romans and the Sabines”; he also helped to establish the special standing of Dutch painting in the Princely Collections.
Johann I acquired major works from all the main epochs, all of which are still part of the holdings, but also played an important role as patron in commissioning works from contemporary artists.
Johann Baptist Lampi (1751–1830) painted a compelling portrait of the prince showing him gazing keenly out of the picture in the uniform of an Austrian field marshal.
Heinrich Friedrich Füger (1751–1818) painted the prince’s children, engaged in playing with pet birds or poring over engravings. Johann Peter Krafft (1780–1856) recorded the greatest military event in the prince’s life, the defeat of Napoleon at Aspern in May 1809, in a monumental version for an army veterans’ institution in Vienna and a smaller one executed for the prince. In 1815 Ferdinand Runk (1757–1828) was commissioned to document all the princely estates in gouaches. These delicate paintings are an important record of buildings that have long since vanished and also convey an impression of the picturesque life on the princely estates.
