Gentz, Friedrich von
Gentz, Friedrich von
Bibliography
See his The French and American Revolutions Compared (tr. by J. Q. Adams, 1803, new ed. 1955). See also biography by P. R. Sweet (1941, repr. 1970); G. Mann, Secretary of Europe (tr. 1946, repr. 1970); study by P. F. Reiff (1912, repr. 1967).
Gentz, Friedrich Von
Born May 2, 1764, in Breslau; died June 9, 1832, in Weinhaus, near Vienna. Austrian politician and publicist. Born into the family of a Prussian civil servant.
Gentz entered the Prussian state service in 1786 and went over to the Austrian service in 1802. In the mid-1790’s, he violently opposed the French Revolution and then Napoleonic France in his publicistic writing. He was subsidized by various countries (including Britain, from 1802). A close and trusted adviser of Metternich, Gentz was secretary of the Congress of Vienna of 1814-15, a conference of allied ministers in Paris in 1815, and congresses of the Holy Alliance in Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), Verona, Laibach, and Troppau. Gentz was an active defender of feudal-monarchical reaction. His works are an important historical source.
WORKS
Ausgewählte Schriften. …, vols. 1-5. Leipzig, 1836-38.Tagebücher … , vols. 1-4. Leipzig, 1873-74.
Tagebücher (1829-1831). Vienna [1921].
Briefe, vols. 1-3. Munich-Berlin, 1909-13.
REFERENCES
Sweet, P. R. Friedrich von Gentz: Defender of the Old Order. Madison, Wise. [1941].Mann, G. Friedrich von Gentz: Geschichte eines europäischen Staatsmannes. Zürich-Vienna, 1947.
A. B. GERMAN