Christian Günther von Bernstorff

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Christian Günther von Bernstorff, engraving by August Kneisel (c. 1830)
Christian Günther von Bernstorff

Christian Günther Graf von Bernstorff (born April 3, 1769 in Copenhagen , † March 28, 1835 in Berlin ) was a Danish and Prussian statesman and diplomat .

Life

Christian Günther von Bernstorff was born on April 3, 1769 in Copenhagen as the son of the Danish Minister of State Andreas Peter Graf von Bernstorff and Henriette Countess zu Stolberg-Stolberg, a sister of the poet Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg . He came from an old noble family residing in Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg . It was named after his grandfather, Count Christian Günther zu Stolberg-Stolberg.

He was raised by private tutors. His father gave him an early insight into his work. At the age of 18, he already held various diplomatic posts in the Danish Foreign Ministry. In 1789 he went to Berlin as legation secretary with his uncle Friedrich Stolberg, the Danish ambassador to Prussia . He took over the post in 1791 and moved to Stockholm in the same position in 1794 . After the death of his father in 1797, he was promoted to Danish State Secretary in Copenhagen and in 1800 to Minister for Foreign Affairs. Due to his unsuccessful policy of armed neutrality towards Great Britain , he resigned from active ministerial service in 1810 and went to Vienna as Danish envoy , where he took part in the Congress of Vienna in 1815 , in which Denmark lost Norway .

After his return to Denmark, Bernstorff was again sent to Prussia as a diplomat. In 1818 Friedrich Wilhelm III recruited him . from. Bernstorff entered Prussian service and, as Minister of State and Cabinet, took over the Foreign Ministry, which had been headed by Karl August von Hardenberg . During his ministerial activity, Bernstorff supported restorative politics and advocated persecution of demagogues . He did a great job in establishing the customs unions of the German individual states with Prussia, the basis of what would later become the German Customs Union . The office of Minister for Foreign Affairs, where he was initially overshadowed by Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich , he resigned in 1832 due to his poor health. Until his death, however, he was one of the closest personal advisers to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III.

Christian Günther von Bernstorff died in Berlin in 1835 at the age of almost 66. He was buried in the Trinity Cemetery in front of the Potsdamer Tor . The grave was lost when the cemetery was leveled in 1922 at the latest.

family

In 1806 he married Elise von Dernath (1789–1867), the 16-year-old daughter of his one year younger sister Charlotte and Magnus von Dernath , with whom he had six children, the three sons of whom died as small children and the daughter Marie unmarried stayed. The daughter Klara (1811-1832) married the Danish ambassador in Berlin Eugen von Reventlow (1798-1885), a son of Cay Friedrich von Reventlow , and died childless. Thora (1809–1873) had twelve children with her husband Julius von dem Bussche-Ippenburg .

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Elise von Bernstorff's memories  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , pp. 152–153.
  2. ^ Elise von Bernstorff: A picture from the time from 1789 to 1835. From her notes , 2 volumes, Berlin 1896; Vol. 1, p. 2
personal data
SURNAME Bernstorff, Christian Günther von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bernstorff, Christian Günther Graf von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish and Prussian statesman
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1769
PLACE OF BIRTH Copenhagen
DATE OF DEATH March 28, 1835
Place of death Berlin