Karl Heinrich von Gleichen

Monument to Karl Heinrich von Gleichen at St. Emmeram Castle

Karl Heinrich von Gleichen (* 1733 in Nemmersdorf , Markgraftum Brandenburg-Bayreuth ; † April 5, 1807 in Regensburg ) was a German diplomat and, among other things, Danish ambassador to Paris. He left memoirs.

Life

Von Gleichen came from the Margraviate Bayreuth and was the only son of the chief hunter of the Margrave of Bayreuth Ernst von Gleichen and of Cordula Barbara, née Domlin von Kronenschild. He came from the Thuringian barons of the Gleichen , studied in Leipzig around 1750 (where he met Christian Fürchtegott Gellert and became friends with him) and was then initially in the service of the Margrave of Bayreuth as a chamberlain. In 1753 he visited Paris for the first time with his poet friend Johann Friedrich von Cronegk and made contacts with Madame de Graffigny, among others . In 1755 he accompanied the margrave and margravine to Italy, and in 1755 he became chamberlain to the margravineWilhelmine von Bayreuth , whose trust he enjoyed from then on. In 1756 an incident occurred when Gleichen was sent to Rome, among other things, to acquire works of art and to present to the Pope. He was invited to the later French Foreign Minister Étienne-François de Choiseul's villa in Frascati, but met him sharply when he made a mocking remark about the margravine. The wife of Choiseul calmed the conflict and from then on von Gleichen also enjoyed the trust and friendship of Choiseul, in whose circle in Paris he later often appeared. He was also friends with the wife of Choiseul and other members of the circle such as the Abbé Barthelemy. In 1758 he returned to Bayreuth via Geneva and Avignon, and in the same year, on the recommendation of Choiseul, he became the margrave's ambassador to Paris. On the recommendation of Foreign Minister Choiseul, he became Denmark's envoy to Madrid in 1760, leaving the Bayreuth service with a pension and with grace and henceforth being allowed to bear the title of baron (all of which was a consequence of a letter from Louis XV to the Margrave, whom he called cousin on this occasion ). In 1759 he also visited Copenhagen before taking up his diplomatic post. In 1763 he became the Danish ambassador in Paris and succeeded in getting the money from France to Denmark that had been promised after the Treaty of Hubertusburg . Thanks in part to von Gleichen, the visit of the Danish King Christian VII to Paris in 1768 (accompanied by Minister Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff and Johann Friedrich Struensee ) was successful . On this occasion he received the Danebrog Order . However, he aroused the displeasure of Bernstorff, who recalled him in 1770 and transferred to Naples as Danish ambassador in July. In 1771, however, this diplomatic post was given up in Denmark. Gleichen made friends with Ferdinando Galiani in Naples and considered staying there for a while. His plans for the future in France ended with the fall of Choiseul. In Denmark they only wanted to pay him a pension if he settled there, but Gleichen was not dependent on it and was independent due to his inheritance (his father had died in 1761 and he was the sole heir). He traveled to Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, England and France from 1771 to 1779. Among other things, he visits his friend Choiseul at his country estate Chateloup. In Paris, Madame Du Deffand and Madame Geoffrin frequented the Sallon, and frequented Buffon , Marmontel , Denis Diderot , d'Alembert and Holbach, and visited Voltaire in Ferney and Jean-Jacques Rousseau several times . In England he met Horace Walpole and in North Rhine-Westphalia Frans Hemsterhuis and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi . In 1779 he moved to Regensburg, which attracted him through the presence of representatives from the Reichstag and other diplomats. Occasionally he took up his travels again.

In his memoirs he describes, among other things, the Count of Saint-Germain , whom he knew very well in Paris, as his appearance fascinated him (he followed him for half a year). He also portrays Alessandro Cagliostro , Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Johann Caspar Lavater . He was generally interested in ghost vision and magic and published two books about it in awkward German (which contrasts with his perfect French). He warns against the degeneration of Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism (and praises the American Reunis Lodge in Paris as an exception). He himself belonged to the Masonic lodge of the Amis Reunis (founded in 1773), as well as the Illuminati . Regarding ghost vision, he also shares an interest with the Margravine von Bayreuth. Walpole praised his righteousness, but also reprimanded a certain superficiality (with the bon mot that he drowned himself in a spoonful of water in an effort to get to the bottom of things).

He was a well-known personality in Regensburg, to whom a memorial with a sphinx was placed in front of the St. Emmeraner Tor.

His cousin Wilhelm Friedrich von Gleichen-Rußwurm (1717–1783) was the chief stable master of the Margrave of Bayreuth and a biologist.

Fonts

• Memories of Baron Carl Heinrich von Gleichen. Hirschfeld, Leipzig 1847 ( archive )
  • a first French edition (the memoirs are originally in French) appeared in 1813: Mémoires de M. le Baron de Gleichen Ministre de Denmark à differentes cours depuis 1760–1771. (Publisher AW, that is Count Alexander von Westerholt), JE Seidel, Sulzbach 1813.
  • Souvenirs de Charles Henri Baron de Gleichen. Techenot, Paris 1868 (foreword by Paul Grimblot, translation of the German edition from 1847 with the use of the original French texts)
• Metaphysical treats or experiments on the most hidden objects of world wisdom and their basic causes. 2 volumes, 1791/92
• Creation through numbers and words. Something about magic, cabala and secret societies from the gentleman author of the Metaphysical Treatments. 1792

literature

• Anton Bettelheim:  Same, Karl Heinrich von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 49, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1904, pp. 381-385.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 234 pages. With excerpts from the correspondence. Anton Bettelheim did not know in the ADB where the estate was going. The memoirs are only part of his memoir