Karl von Hardenberg

German politician and diplomat

• Born: May 31, 1750
• Birthplace: Essenrode, Hanover (now in Germany)
• Died: November 26, 1822
• Place of death: Genoa, Kingdom of Sardinia (now in Italy)

A leader in the Prussian reform movement, Hardenberg also directed the foreign policy of his country during the eventful years 1810-1822 and played a pivotal role in forming the coalition of powers that defeated Napoleon. He was the spokesperson for Prussia at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which determined the political fate of Europe for the next fifty years.

Early Life

Karl August von Hardenberg (HAHR-dehn-behrk) was the son of Christian and Charlotte von Hardenberg. His father, the scion of an old Hanoverian family, had a distinguished military career. Hardenberg’s parents determined that he should pursue a career in government service, and they sent him to Göttingen University in 1766, to study law and political science. He also studied briefly at the University of Leipzig in 1768. He completed his studies in 1770, having returned to Göttingen. Upon graduation he entered the Hanoverian bureaucracy in the department of justice.

In 1775, Hardenberg made an unfortunate marriage to the Countess Juliana von Reventlow, after which Hardenberg was appointed as the Hanoverian minister to England. His wife became involved in a sordid affair with the Prince of Wales, which, when it became a public scandal in 1781, forced Hardenberg’s recall from England and ultimately his resignation from service. Hardenberg managed to find a new post in the Brunswick bureaucracy in 1782, serving for more than a decade. His service in Brunswick was also terminated by a scandal when, after securing a divorce from Juliana, he married a divorcée. Leaving Brunswick in 1792, Hardenberg obtained a position in the Prussian bureaucracy as minister for several newly acquired provinces.

Life’s Work

Hardenberg quickly displayed to his new monarch unusual ability both in internal administration and in foreign affairs. In domestic affairs, he was entrusted with the reorganization of the Prussian administrations of finance, justice, education, and transportation. In foreign affairs, Frederick William II made him plenipotentiary to conclude a territorial settlement with the revolutionary government of France in 1795. Through his adroit handling of the negotiations resulting in the Peace of Basel, Prussia actually emerged stronger than before, despite having fared poorly in the War of the First Coalition. Hardenberg continued to grow in favor, and in 1804 Frederick William III appointed him foreign minister of Prussia.

As minister for foreign affairs, Hardenberg openly advocated a policy of territorial aggrandizement, contending that the Prussian government should seize every opportunity to acquire new territory. He pursued a policy of peace with Napoleon and territorial expansion through negotiation. In 1806, however, Hardenberg’s counsel was disregarded and Prussia allied with Russia in a new war against Napoleon.

The war ended disastrously for Prussia. The Prussian army was overwhelmingly defeated at the Battles of Jena and Auerstedt in 1806, and the Prussian monarch was forced to sign the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807. The treaty not only diminished Prussia territorially but also limited its autonomy. Part of the settlement at Tilsit was that Hardenberg, whom Napoleon distrusted, should retire from government service. Before leaving office, however, Hardenberg began the restructuring of the old administrative system, the first step in what has come to be known as the Prussian reform movement.

In 1807-1808, the reform movement was expanded by Freiherr vom Stein , who oversaw the emancipation of Prussian serfs and the extension of self-government to the municipalities of Prussia before being forced from office by Napoleon. Hardenberg remained in contact with Stein; during his forced retirement he produced his famous Riga Memorandum in 1808, which became the blueprint for the further reforms of Prussian institutions. The central thesis of the memorandum was that if the monarchical form of government was to survive in Prussia, the government must adopt many of the liberal institutions produced in France by the Revolution of 1789. Hardenberg’s memorandum showed that he, like Stein, recognized that the forces of nationalism and democracy unleashed by the revolution in France would ultimately destroy the old order of Europe if they were not brought under control. He proposed that the Prussian government should introduce liberal reform from above to prevent revolution.

In 1810, Napoleon allowed Frederick William to recall Hardenberg to the Prussian government, this time as prime minister. His initial reforms aimed at making the tax structure of the kingdom more equitable and at simplifying tax collection. Hardenberg imposed a property tax on all citizens (the nobility had formerly been exempted), an excise tax on all areas, and a profit tax. Concurrently, most restrictions on trade and commerce were removed, and civic equality for Jews was established.

Hardenberg then took a hesitant step toward establishing a representative assembly to permit popular participation in the making of governmental policy. By convening an assembly of notables he hoped to create widespread enthusiasm for the further changes he intended to make. However, the junkers (aristocratic landowners) opposed the idea of representative government and used their influence with Frederick William to thwart the hope of a national parliament. Nevertheless, Hardenberg was able to open admission of the officer corps and of the bureaucracy (formerly the exclusive preserves of the junkers) to all citizens.

From 1812 until his death, most of Hardenberg’s attention was focused on foreign policy. In 1812, Napoleon forced Prussia to sign a military alliance in preparation for his planned invasion of Russia. When Napoleon’s Russian campaign ended in a French debacle, Hardenberg saw the possibility of escaping the domination Napoleon had exercised over Prussia since 1806. Moving cautiously, Hardenberg engineered a military alliance in 1813 between Prussia and Russia, the Treaty of Kalisz. Ironically, Stein, in his new capacity as political adviser to Alexander I, was the Russian representative at Kalisz.

During the ensuing War of Liberation, a wave of patriotic enthusiasm swept through Prussia. After Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig in 1813 led to his withdrawal from the German states, Hardenberg went to Vienna to represent Prussia at the international congress whose purpose was to restructure Europe.

At Vienna, Hardenberg immediately came into conflict with Metternich, the Austrian representative. Metternich, an archconservative intent on reestablishing the old aristocratic order in Europe, opposed German unification in particular (Hardenberg’s aim) and nationalism in general, which he saw as destructive to the interests of the multiracial Austrian Empire. The clash between Austria and Prussia over this and other matters at Vienna almost led to war and was instrumental in Napoleon’s decision to return from his first exile and reclaim the throne of France.

After Waterloo, Hardenberg and Frederick William seemed to become more and more dominated by Metternich. They acquiesced to the creation of the Germanic confederation, a weakly unified government of largely independent small states. Hardenberg gave up his plan to introduce a constitution and a parliament in Prussia and signed the Holy Alliance, which obligated Prussia along with the other signatories to intervene militarily whenever a legitimate monarch anywhere in Europe was threatened by revolution. Nevertheless, domestic reform continued and considerable passion for unification and parliamentary government flourished, especially in Prussian universities.

After the assassination of a conservative newspaper editor by a young nationalist in 1819, Metternich persuaded Hardenberg and Frederick William to adopt the Karlsbad Decrees, which ushered in a period of total reaction in the German states. The Prussian reform movement was ended. Hardenberg, completely under the spell of Metternich, continued to direct Prussian foreign policy until his death, in Genoa on November 26, 1822.

Significance

Karl von Hardenberg enjoyed considerable successes in domestic reform and diplomacy. Under his leadership, the principle of civic equality became firmly established in Prussia. Prussian Jews began to play leading roles in government, in the arts, and in education after 1812, as a result of Hardenberg’s leadership in social reform. The bureaucracy and the army became more efficient because careers in those organizations were opened to all men of talent and promotions became based on merit rather than family. Hardenberg laid the foundation for the Prussian educational system to become the model and the envy of the rest of the world. Hardenberg was responsible for the establishment of a more equitable system of taxation and for the removal of many archaic restrictions on trade and commerce in Prussia.

Through his diplomacy, Hardenberg was instrumental in the defeat of Napoleon. His leadership in foreign affairs allowed the Prussian kingdom not only to survive the dangerous times of the Napoleonic Wars but also to emerge from the era larger and more powerful than it had been in 1780. For these accomplishments, Hardenberg is often recognized as being second in importance only to Otto von Bismarck among Prussian prime ministers. Despite these impressive accomplishments, Hardenberg is sometimes criticized for missing opportunities to accomplish much more.

Hardenberg’s goals in foreign and domestic policy were to preserve the old order insofar as possible. He could not have led a movement that would have dismantled that order when the possibility existed of preserving most of it under the Metternichian system. In the final analysis, Hardenberg was an effective diplomat and an able administrator whose tenure as prime minister of Prussia was a decisive step toward the transformation of his country into a modern nation-state.

Bibliography

Blackbourn, David. History of Germany, 1780-1918: The Long Nineteenth Century. 2d ed. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2003. The chapter entitled “Reform from Above” includes information about Hardenberg’s attempts to institute reforms after the French Revolution.

Chapman, Tim. The Congress of Vienna: Origins, Processes, and Results. London: Routledge, 1998. Recounts the negotiations conducted at the Congress, describing the historical background for these sessions, the agreements reached, and the long-term consequences of these agreements.

Holborn, Hajo. 1648-1840. Vol. 2 in A History of Modern Germany. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. Contains several chapters on the reform movement and provides sketches of its most important leaders, including Hardenberg. Places the Prussian reform movement and the reformers in their proper perspective in German history.

Meinecke, Friedrich. The Age of German Liberation, 1795-1815. Translated by Peter Paret and Helmut Fischer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. One of the best accounts of the period, Meinecke’s book provides a good account of Hardenberg’s life and work.

Schenk, H. G. The Aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars: The Concert of Europe, an Experiment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947. Perhaps the best account of the congress system implemented by Metternich after 1815. Hardenberg’s role in diplomatic affairs during this era is amply and sympathetically treated.

Simon, Walter M. The Failure of the Prussian Reform Movement, 1807-1819. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955. Simon is critical of both the reforms and the reformers in Prussia, particularly Hardenberg. Simon argues that the failure of the reforms to establish a unified, parliamentary German state led directly to the development of the authoritarianism of the German Empire after 1871 and ultimately to the Third Reich.

Webster, C. K. The Congress of Vienna. New York: Oxford University Press, 1919. This older study of the Congress of Vienna is still the standard work on the subject.