He was the son of the Imperial and Royal Privy Councillor Franz Hatzfeldt of Gleichen and Anna Charlotte, née Countess von Stadion of Warthausen.
[1] In 1737 Hatzfeldt entered the civil service of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation as an imperial chamberlain.
After the death of Charles VI in 1749, he remained in the service of the Habsburgs and, in 1741, moved to Prague as a Royal Bohemian appellate councillor.
In May 1765, Hatzfeldt was appointed President of the Court Chamber, succeeding Count von Herberstein, while retaining his previous offices.
[2] On 6 June 1768, Hatzfeldt presented the "peace and war system" for the reorganization of state finances, which was put into effect by Maria Theresa on 5 May 1769 after fierce resistance from Zinzensdorf.
[4] After his appointment as Supreme Chancellor of the Court Chancellery for Austria and Bohemia, Hatzfeldt handed over his other offices to Leopold Kolowrat in 1771.
In 1772 he requested the suspension of negotiations on the abolition of the death penalty and a year later he presented a draft for a system of government based on the retention of Catholicism as the state religion and viewed the feudal court and the wealth of the nobility as the source of national prosperity, where the preservation of the nobility was declared to be the main task of the government.