About the book: 2016 / In his early youth, Joseph II was “the most impolite, ill-mannered and uneducated prince in the entire civilized world.” The son of Maria Theresa, who was pious and kind by nature, grew up as a sickly, gloomy and irritable boy. And although mother and son loved each other dearly, they were separated by frequent quarrels and completely different views on life. The first thing Joseph did after the death of Maria Theresa was to refuse to recognize the long-standing constitutional guarantees of Hungary. He did not even bother to be crowned as the Hungarian king, but simply took away their relic from the Magyars - the crown of St. Stephen. But Joseph understood that he owed a lot to the Hungarians, who protected his mother from persecution by Prussia. The German writer Theodor Mundt tried to show the true face of the Prussian emperor, to whom flattering historians attributed too much of what was by no means characteristic of the enlightened reformer Joseph II.