In 1779, Emperor Joseph II was contemplating a second wave of land reform, removing certain burdens from the peasantry. Habsburg officials in Vienna conducted a survey among the empire’s official’s in the field, including Justus Moeser, who is, surely, among the counter-enlightenment’s greatest lights, along with his friend Friedrich von Gentz. Moeser was an administrator in Osnabrück, and responsible for the reforms there. Technically, Osnabrück was not a Habsburg territory, but Moeser had a reputation for understanding the incredibly complex structure of legal obligations that bound together the peasants and the masters in a relation of Horigkeit – dependence. Jonathan B. Knudson used the discovery of Moeser’s response in the state archive in his book about Moeser: ‘He states at the beginning: “serfdom (Leibeigenthum) is a notion which can be eradicated by a carefully conceived theory or better [which] can be regulated, so that it is beneficial to the state; and I have ventured to
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