The Emperor Incognito

Joseph II's Journey through Enlightenment Europe
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-1-914979-43-9
Verlag: Haus Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten, UK Royal, Format (B × H): 228 mm x 151 mm, Gewicht: 560 g

The first complete account of Emperor Joseph II’s undercover journey through his kingdom

It is the middle of the eighteenth century, and across Europe signs of crisis are everywhere. Travelling incognito, and without the customary pomp and entourage, the young emperor Joseph II journeys through the Holy Roman Empire and his Habsburg lands to see with his own eyes how his subjects live, suffer, and starve.

Moving between the world of kings and queens and that of ordinary people in their hospitals and factories, he is persuaded by Enlightenment ideas of progress and liberty. Visiting his sister, Marie Antoinette in Versailles, he senses the French Revolution looming and realises that reform is imperative if he is to build a modern state.

The Emperor Incognito tells the story of an extraordinary man in an age of great upheaval, who spent a quarter of his twenty-five-year reign on the road. The result of his radical ambition and titanic efforts, despite his own admission (as inscribed on his tombstone) that he ‘failed in everything he undertook’, was the foundation of a more modern Austrian monarchy, in a Europe in which progress would no longer be determined solely by its rulers.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Czernin, Monika

Weitere Mitwirkende

Lieven, Dominic

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface xi

Prologue 1

1764 Frankfurt: No more courtly travels 13

1768 The Banat: Countless petitioners change one’s outlook 33

1769 Italy: A Marcus Aurelius of the Enlightenment 57

1769 Neisse: The first summit between enlightened rulers 93

1771 Bohemia and Moravia: Famine and serfdom 119

1773 Transylvania and Galicia: Increasingly unfamiliar, increasingly different 143

1777 France: ‘The revolution is going to be terrible’ 183

1781 The Austrian Netherlands: Impatience makes one blind 221

1787 Russia: A Mephistophelian pact 251

Epilogue 265

Acknowledgements 273

Chronology 277

A Note on Sources 285

Notes 295

Index 313

Über Autor(innen)

Monika Czernin is an internationally renowned author and filmmaker. She has a special interest in the key figures and turning points of European history, and her most recent book, Anna Sacher and Her Hotel, spent many weeks on the bestseller lists.

Dominic Lieven is currently a visiting professor in the Department of International History at LSE, London. His most recent book is Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia.

Jamie Bulloch is a historian and has worked as a professional translator from German since 2001. He has been shortlisted for the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translation from the German six times, winning in 2014 for Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast and in 2023 for Arno Geiger’s Hinterland.