This is a review-article discussing the problem of tolerance mirrored in two recent works published by the Austrian Society for Eighteenth Century Studies: Wolfgang Schmale, Renate Zedinger, Jean Mondot (Hg.), Josephinismus –eine Bilanz / Échecs et réussites du Joséphisme, Bochum, 2008; Harald Heppner, Peter Urbanitsch, Renate Zedinger (Eds.), Social Change in the Habsburg Monarchy. Les transformations de la société dans la monarchie des Habsbourg : l’époque des Lumières, Bochum, 2011. The proposed debate, referring to the Principality of Transylvania, is intended to be a reflection on a (quasi)absence, to use the interpretation of historian Winfried Eberhard, who discussed the “modernization through tolerance” and “modernization out of necessity”, namely the mode of integration of the Principality into the Josephine system of governance, or in other words, the extent to which the Eastern province of the Empire underwent a process of modernization as part of the Habsburg monarchy.