Maximilian II (jul 27, 1564 – oct 12, 1576)

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son of Ferdinand I and Anne of Bohemia.
Emperor Ferdinand I was in fact to have been succeeded by Charles V’s son King Philip II. However, this intention had to be relinquished when the princes of the Holy Roman Empire, some of whom were Protestants, refused to accept a Catholic Spaniard as emperor.
However, Maximilian was always sympathetic to Protestants and strove to ensure peace and to act impartially in the field of politics and religion. This had concerned his Catholic family, who had married him off to his cousin Mary (Charles V's other daughter), a strict and pious Catholic, and sent to Spain.
Maximilian's rule was shaped by the confessionalization process (areas cementing into Protestant or Catholic) after the 1555 Peace of Augsburg. Though a Habsburg and a Catholic, he approached the Lutheran Imperial estates with a view to overcome the denominational schism, which ultimately failed. He also was faced with the ongoing Ottoman–Habsburg wars and rising conflicts with his Habsburg Spain cousins.
Maximilian died on 12 October 1576. On his deathbed he refused to receive the last sacraments of the Church.
By his wife Maria he had a family of nine sons and six daughters. He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Rudolf, who had been chosen king of the Romans in October 1575. Another of his sons, Matthias, also became emperor; three others, Ernest, Albert and Maximilian, took some part in the government of the Habsburg territories or of the Netherlands, and a daughter, Elizabeth, married Charles IX of France.

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