Der Kaiser reist inkognito: Joseph II und das Europa der Aufklärung by Monika Czernin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Der Kaiser reist inkognito: Joseph II und das Europa der Aufklärung by Monika Czernin Joseph W. Moser Monika Czernin, Der Kaiser reist inkognito: Joseph II und das Europa der Aufklärung. Munich: Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, 2021. 383 pp. As the Habsburg monarchy's first Enlightenment-era monarch, Emperor Joseph II is well remembered for his twenty-five-year reign (1765–90), fifteen years of which he ruled alongside his mother Maria Theresia (1765–80). Most of his ambitious reforms were enacted in the ten years of his sole rule (1780–90)—he ultimately laid the foundation for the modern Austrian state administration during his reign. Of course, this raises the question how Joseph II was able to understand the complexities of his multicultural realm and the challenging changes on the European political landscape during his reign. Unlike his mother and previous Habsburg monarchs, Joseph II was an avid traveler attempting to understand his vast empire that had been recently enlarged by conquests gained from the Ottoman Empire. Monika Czernin provides answers to how Joseph II came to understand his empire in Der Kaiser reist inkognito: Joseph II und das Europa der Aufklärung. In this book, we get a picture of a ruler trying to understand the world he lived in, in order to preserve the monarchy he ruled over, rather than complacently letting time pass him by from his palace in Vienna, as had been his mother's practice. He traveled incognito across his empire and Europe, trying to avoid seeing fake displays of servility, which would have impeded him from acquiring an understanding of the various countries he ruled over. Traveling as "Count von Falkenstein," he didn't always succeed in concealing his identity, but he managed to rule Austria from afar on these trips with an efficient network of couriers supplying him with all the necessary correspondence. [End Page 109] Czernin based her book on Joseph II's original writings that are stored in the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna. While the book is not a scholarly text based exclusively on historical sources, Czernin does offer her readers an historically accurate picture of Joseph II's travels by citing correct dates as well as direct quotes from Joseph II's writings. Very little attention has hitherto been paid to Joseph II's travels, making this book a welcome contribution to Habsburg history. The book starts with Joseph II's trip to Frankfurt in 1764 for his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. This was an official trip (Hofreise) alongside his father Franz I, who died the following year during another official trip in Innsbruck. Joseph II decided to travel incognito in 1768 to visit the Banat region that had only recently been captured from the Ottoman Empire. Then in 1769 he traveled to Italy, many of whose northern states were still under Habsburg rule, but he went south to Rome and Naples as well. In the same year, he traveled in the opposite direction to meet his mother's nemesis, King Frederick II of Prussia, at the Neisse River. In 1771, he visited Bohemia and Moravia, which was suffering from a famine due to failed harvests and the troubling system of serfdom. Then, in 1773, he visited both Transylvania and Austrian Galicia in the same trip, much to the displeasure of his mother, who could not see any value in these itinerant endeavors. In 1777, he visited his sister Marie Antoinette in Paris, where he presciently observed that unreformed absolutist rule had no future in Europe. He visited the Austrian Netherlands in 1781, which had a complicated relationship with the Austrian mainland and in fact would not remain under Habsburg rule much beyond Joseph II's life. The final trip that Czernin chronicles is Joseph II's trip to Russia in 1787 to visit with Empress Catherine the Great, during which she showed off Russia's newest acquisitions in the South, including Crimea. Ultimately, the book is more than just a travel chronicle, because Czernin skillfully demonstrates the logistics of long-distance travel across the European continent in the second half of the eighteenth century but also the dire need for the emperor...