From 1772 to 1803 he was the last prince-archbishop to govern the small and sovereign principality of Salzburg as head of state: Hieronymus Graf Colloredo. In a good 30 years, the archbishop modernized his small and rich principality. The first Salzburg cadastre was started under him.

He cleared out the pomp of the Baroque

He significantly improved healthcare and education. And instead of ecclesiastical pomp and pomp, he wanted better pastoral care. In return, Colloredo also cleared out the baroque festival calendar and abolished public holidays. He belonged to the Illuminati, a secret brotherhood – similar to those of the Freemasons, of which Mozart was a member.

Reinhard Gratz from the Salzburg Cathedral Museum reports that the baroque exuberance of his predecessor was a thorn in the side of this archbishop and distorted the core of Christian teaching: “He abolished about 20 of the 95 public holidays up to then. That didn’t work at all in the country. The farmers undeterred kept their public holidays.”

New impetus for gold mining in Gastein

After the times of crisis, Colloredo intensified gold mining in the Hohe Tauern from the end of the late Middle Ages – albeit more hesitantly than his direct predecessor Sigismund von Schrattenbach. The ruins of the Hieronymus house of the miners (at 1,950 meters above sea level) on the Radhausberg near Bad Gastein still bear witness to this time. And he had the Altböckstein gold mining settlement at the end of the Gastein valley expanded and modernized.

“Mozart works too little for Salzburg”

Colloredo’s relationship with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was not a good one. At the time, Mozart was kicked out of the archbishop’s service because, in Colloredo’s opinion, he wrote too little for Salzburg, says Thomas Mitterecker from the archive of the Archdiocese of Salzburg: “Mozart is a court servant. He is paid for work at court and for the court – and not for trips to Paris and Italy. The kick is an ideal one and probably also positive for both sides – especially for Mozart, because he can then develop very well in Vienna and Prague.”

Kick for Mozart to say goodbye

At the same time, Salzburg was still open to the world at the time of Colloredo. Intellectuals, especially from Bavaria, fled to the small principality on the Salzach, says Reinhard Gratz from the Cathedral Museum: “Lorenz Hübner, who previously published the Munich state newspaper, was a prominent figure. The Bavarian government made life impossible for him. He fled to Salzburg. Here there was a much more liberal press censorship and newspaper policy.”

And today’s Salzburg Residence Gallery also had a forerunner under Colloredo, as director Andrea Stockhammer from Domquartiert explains: “It was already in this place back then. The gallery still has stocks from that famous period today.”

A Nesselthaler picture, for example, is one of 13 works from Colloredo’s collection that have remained in Salzburg. All pictures can be seen until the end of May in the Domquartier at the exhibition about Salzburg’s last princely rulers.