Khlesl as administrator of the Diocese of Wiener Neustadt. Because of losing some powerful supporters such as Leonhard IV von Harrach in Vienna and Adam von Dietrichstein at the imperial court in Prague and the governor Archduke Ernst by the end of the decade the “Religionsreformation” was losing support more and more against the opposition in the government in Vienna. Even the intervention of Emperor Rudolf II didn’t help. The opposition, above all that from the chancellor Wolfgang Unverzagt, who was regarded as all powerful in the government of Archduke Matthias in Vienna, was too strong. Unverzagt proposed making Khlesl Bishop of the small run-down Bishopric of Vienna which was intended to take the wind out of his sails. Khlesl’s allies in Prague, the privy councillors Wolf Rumpf and Paul Sixt III von Trautson, could not do anything against it. To avoid political unimportance, Khlesl sought to be named to an influential position on the staff of Archduke Matthias, but he was unsuccessful. In 1598 Archduke Maximilian III, who presided over the Hungarian diet at Bratislava for his brother Matthias, announced Khlesl’s nomination as Bishop of Vienna. After a sensation, provoked by Khlesl himself, who announced, that he would run the bishopric with hard hand and in opposition to the government in Vienna, the nomination was withdrawn. But in 1602 he was installed as the nominated bishop after his demands for economic support for the bishopric were fulfilled. Klesl was named Bishop of Vienna, a diocese which was spiritually and materially in a state of degradation. On 30 Mar 1614, he was consecrated bishop by Placido della Marra, Bishop of Melfi e Rapolla. He received the purple from Paul V in 1616. His appointment as bishop of Vienna took place in a phase of high hopes in Prague, Vienna and Graz, that the catholic House of Austria will reassert its position against the protestant oppositions in the Lands of Habsburgmonarchie. Khlesl favored a confronting course against the opposition. At the same time the “Bruderzwist” (the struggle between the emperor Rudolf II and his brothers for the succession in the Habsburgmonarchie and the Roman-German Empire) sharpened. Specifically the ambition of Matthias to become emperor himself, offered Khlesl the opportunity to increase his influence at the court in Vienna. He tried to thread a marriage of Matthias to the Bavarian Princess Magdalena, for getting the Dukes of Bavaria as catholic allies in