ABSTRACT
Maria Kunigunde was born in 1740, November 10 in Warsaw as the fifteenth child of the King of Poland and elector of Saxony, Friedrich August II and of his wife Maria Josepha of Austria. Her down-to-earth behavior, which was not seen as fitting for a princess, may have accentuated this image and may have irritated her contemporaries. When princess-abbess Franziska Christine of Pfalz-Sulzbach had died in Essen on July 17, 1776, Maria Kunigunde could take office in Thorn and Essen. During her rule, which lasted nearly 30 years, Maria Kunigunde, who had never been a member of the college in Essen or Thorn, spent only a few months in Essen. Actually, there are many parallels between reforms in Trier and Essen. Maria Kunigunde's effort at reform began in the early 1780s. Just as in other ecclesiastical states, for example Cologne, Mainz, Speyer and Fulda, the first point was to reform the judicial system.
