Emperor Incognito Joseph II's Journey through Enlightenment Europe
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
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.
Emperor Incognito Joseph II's Journey through Enlightenment Europe
<p>Czernin's descriptions of [his] journeys, long stretches of which read almost like adventure stories, allow the reader to travel far and wide throughout the empire. A panorama of Europe during the Age of Enlightenment.” Die Zeit</p>
<p>“Czernin confidently and vividly traces Joseph II’s expeditions, smoothly interweaving them with a biography of one of the key figures of the Habsburg dynasty [...].” Deutschlandfunk<br />
<br />
</p>
<p>A vivid portrait of the eighteenth century.” ORF</p>
The first complete account of Emperor Joseph II’s undercover journey through his kingdom
It is the end of the eighteenth century, and the European royal houses are beginning to falter. Incognito, and without the usual pomp and entourage, the young Habsburg emperor Joseph II travels through the vast Holy Roman Empire to see with his own eyes how his subjects live, suffer, and starve. As well as kings, queens, and the European political and social elite, Joseph engages with and observes ordinary people and their hospitals and factories, eagerly soaking up Enlightenment ideas of progress and liberty. Visiting his sister, Marie Antoinette, in Versailles in 1777, he sees the French revolution looming and realises that reform is inevitable.
Written in Monika Czernin’s vivid style, The Emperor Incognito tells the story of an extraordinary man, far ahead of his time and in an age of great upheaval, who spent a quarter of his twenty-five-year reign on the road in search of insights that would help him build a modern state. The result of his titanic efforts, despite his own admission (as inscribed on his tombstone) that he ‘failed in everything he undertook’, was the foundation of the modern Austrian state, in a Europe in which progress was no longer determined by its rulers.
<p>Czernin's descriptions of [his] journeys, long stretches of which read almost like adventure stories, allow the reader to travel far and wide throughout the empire. A panorama of Europe during the Age of Enlightenment.” Die Zeit</p>
<p>“Czernin confidently and vividly traces Joseph II’s expeditions, smoothly interweaving them with a biography of one of the key figures of the Habsburg dynasty [...].” Deutschlandfunk<br />
<br />
</p>
<p>A vivid portrait of the eighteenth century.” ORF</p>
The first complete account of Emperor Joseph II’s undercover journey through his kingdom
It is the end of the eighteenth century, and the European royal houses are beginning to falter. Incognito, and without the usual pomp and entourage, the young Habsburg emperor Joseph II travels through the vast Holy Roman Empire to see with his own eyes how his subjects live, suffer, and starve. As well as kings, queens, and the European political and social elite, Joseph engages with and observes ordinary people and their hospitals and factories, eagerly soaking up Enlightenment ideas of progress and liberty. Visiting his sister, Marie Antoinette, in Versailles in 1777, he sees the French revolution looming and realises that reform is inevitable.
Written in Monika Czernin’s vivid style, The Emperor Incognito tells the story of an extraordinary man, far ahead of his time and in an age of great upheaval, who spent a quarter of his twenty-five-year reign on the road in search of insights that would help him build a modern state. The result of his titanic efforts, despite his own admission (as inscribed on his tombstone) that he ‘failed in everything he undertook’, was the foundation of the modern Austrian state, in a Europe in which progress was no longer determined by its rulers.
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
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.