Georg Heinrich von Görtz

Georg Heinrich von Görtz

Charles XII. and Görtz

Georg Heinrich von Schlitz called von Görtz , often addressed as Georg Heinrich von Görtz (* 1668 ; † February 19, 1719 in Stockholm ), was a Holstein minister who, in the last years of the reign (1715–1718) of the Swedish King Karl XII. whose policy largely determined.

origin

He came from the family of the von Schlitz called Görtz , with headquarters in Schlitz near Fulda. His parents were Philip Friedrich von Schlitz called Görtz (1641–1695) and his wife Anna Juliane Elisabeth von Minnigerode (1653–1687). The father was canon in Halberstadt and knight captain of the Franconian knighthood, canton Rhön and Werra. One uncle Georg Ludwig (1655–1696) was major general in Hessen-Kassel , another, Friedrich Wilhelm (1647–1728), was Brunswick Chamber President and Premier.

He studied law and political science in Jena and Helmstedt. He lost an eye in a duel . In 1695 he stayed in Frankfurt for a year and then went on a two-year journey through Switzerland, France and Holland.

Beginnings in Schleswig-Holstein

On the recommendation of his uncle Friedrich Wilhelm von Schlitz, Görtz entered the service of Duke Friedrich IV of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf as a chamberlain in 1698 . He also accompanied the duke on visits to his childhood friend and brother-in-law Karl XII. , 1698 to his wedding in Stockholm and 1700–1702 to the field camp in Poland and Livonia, where the duke was in command in the war between the King of Sweden and the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland Augustus the Strong . At the same time, Görtz was sent to the Emperor's court in Vienna on a diplomatic assignment, where he was already noticed at the time because of his efforts. After the Duke fell in the Battle of Klissow in 1702, he accompanied the body back to Gottorf Castle and was appointed privy councilor and member of the government. He was in high favor with the dowager Hedwig Sophia , an older sister of Charles XII, and her "administrator", the brother of the late Duke, Christian August , who in 1705 became Prince-Bishop of Lübeck against Danish competition.

Görtz's diplomatic talent was evident early on. He tried to defuse the smoldering conflict with Denmark, initially settled in the Peace of Traventhal in 1700, without losing the support of the Swedes. As the head of finances, he made himself unpopular by levying and ruthlessly collecting new taxes. In contrast to Magnus von Wedderkop , he rejected economical housekeeping . But his ministerial colleagues also enjoyed the favor of the duke's widow, and Görtz was not yet able to determine politics alone.

In 1704 he married Christina von Reventlow (1676-1713), who was distantly related to him, and thus became part of the Holstein knighthood .

Senior Minister in Holstein-Gottorf

After the death of the duchess Hedwig Sophia in 1708, Christian August took over the government, and Görtz continued to gain influence. He had his competitor Wedderkop arrested in 1709 and appropriated his Hamburg property. Wedderkop was imprisoned in Tönning and was only released in 1714 (contrary to Görtz's instructions to execute him when he was handed over to the Danes). He was later fully rehabilitated and compensated and died in Hamburg in 1721.

In the Northern War between Denmark, Saxony and Russia on the one hand and Sweden on the other, Görtz first tried to maintain a neutral position. But when Stenbock's Swedish army advanced in Schleswig-Holstein in 1713 , he secretly tolerated their wintering in the Tönning fortress . The Danes, who suspected the Gottorfs anyway, then occupied the Gottorf shares in the Duchy of Schleswig . Even after Tönning fell in 1714 and Stenbock was taken prisoner, the Danes stayed in the country, and Görtz now places his main hope in the King of Sweden, who after the defeat in Russia ( Poltava 1709) sat in self-chosen exile in Turkey ( Bender ). His envoy Friedrich Ernst von Fabrice was finally able to convince the king that he could only save his possessions in Germany from Sweden. Görtz had meanwhile also put out his feelers in the other direction and achieved a "neutral" occupation (sequestration) of Swedish Pomerania by Prussia with Gottorf as a "junior partner". He also negotiated with the Tsar about a marriage of the Gottorf Hereditary Prince Karl Friedrich (1700–1739), who was the nephew of the childless Karl XII. of Sweden also had claims to the Swedish throne. The return of Charles XII. in a violent kick in November 1714, initially to Stralsund , all these plans came to an end. He immediately canceled the understanding with Prussia, with the result that they entered the Northern War. In 1715, the elector of Hanover, Georg I , who bought the formerly Swedish Bremen and Verden occupied by them from the Danes , joined the ranks of those who wanted to benefit from Sweden's weakness.

Representative of Charles XII.

Görtz hurried to meet Karl in Stralsund and impressed the initially suspicious king. The lithe, inventive Görtz was completely opposite to the character of the king; on the other hand, both were similar in their cold-blooded, calculating intelligence. Görtz's abilities were very welcome to the king, who made diplomatic tactics to gain time for his reconquest plans. However, Görtz knew how to take the king like no one else around him: "Trying to insist on your own point of view against him is pointless. You have to pretend to go along with your plans in order to gradually bring him to your own . "

Görtz now received almost unlimited power in Sweden's domestic politics and finances, although without being officially a minister. His first task was to get the king new money for further campaigns. To do this, he pressed the last of the money out of the country, had the coins deteriorated ("Görtzthaler") and kept inventing new taxes. All contacts with the king were through him and his friends in Gottorf. As a result, he made himself hated by the Swedes and brought the "Hessian Party" to court - Karl's younger sister Ulrike had married Friedrich von Hessen and was trying to succeed Karl Friedrich, Prince of God, in competition with the Gottorf Hereditary Prince . The King of Sweden had to capitulate in the siege of Stralsund in December 1715 and crossed over to Sweden, which he entered again for the first time in 15 years, in order to immediately begin his campaign against Denmark and Norway, which would occupy him until his death in 1718.

Simultaneously in 1716 the invasion of the Swedish Skåne threatened by the allied Danes and Russians, supported by a British fleet. But when Tsar Peter I , who was just back on a trip to Europe, surprisingly canceled the landing that had already been planned, new distrust of the Russians arose among the allies: They suspected that they wanted to establish themselves in the Reich. Görtz sensed a chance to reach a separate peace with the Russians in order to have his back free for reconquests in northern Germany and against Denmark. First, however, he prepared a blow against George I of Great Britain, the Hanoverian Elector, in which he could be sure of the sympathy of Tsar Peter I. Secret negotiations with the Jacobites who wanted to overthrow George I from the British throne had been going on since 1715 . However, the British got wind of it and, after the illegal arrest of the Swedish ambassador Carl Gyllenborg in London in February 1717, had the entire secret correspondence published ("Gyllenborg Affaire"). Görtz was also arrested in Holland under British pressure, but when Karl XII. in return for the appointment of the British ambassador, both were released in August.

Initiating and ending peace negotiations with Russia

In August 1717 Peter I and Görtz met in the Dutch pleasure palace Het Loo . Görtz was apparently able to dispel the Tsar's major reservations about rapprochement, and the following year, from May 1718, the Åland Congress held peace negotiations . In addition to Görtz, negotiators for the Swedes were Carl Gyllenborg, for the Russians the Westphalian Heinrich Ostermann (1687–1747) and the Scot General James Bruce . For the stubborn Karl XII. If the negotiations were only a gain in time, he would never have been prepared to forego Finland and its former Baltic provinces Estonia and Livonia , even if Peter promised him support against Hanover and Denmark. Görtz commutes back and forth between the King and the Aland Islands all summer .

When the king was shot by a sniper on December 11, 1718 during the siege of Frederikshald, during which he exposed himself carelessly in the front line according to his character, not only was the Northern War almost over with one blow, but that too Seals the fate of Görtz, who was already on the Norwegian border on his way to the king. He was immediately arrested by the "Hessian Party" that had now come to power around the new Queen Ulrike and her husband. Six weeks after his arrest, he was tried in Stockholm and sentenced to death in a caricature of a court hearing for treason and "wrong advice", a specially fabricated crime, and beheaded on February 19, 1719. On the wall of his prison cell was the inscription: "Mors regis, fides in regem est mors mea" (The king is dead, loyalty to the king is my death). He left two daughters, over whom his cousin, the chamberlain of Georg I, Friedrich von Görtz, took over the guardianship and who grew up at the court of Georg I. Georgine Henriette Dorothea (1708–1787) later married the Danish diplomat Friedrich von Eyben . Görtz was later rehabilitated in Sweden - people remembered that in the end he had only carried out the orders of his king. His goods were returned to the heirs as early as 1724, and the Swedish King Gustav III. , who used the Görtz case to discredit the policy of his predecessors (the so-called "peace time"), personally paid 600,000 thalers to his descendants in 1776. In the same year a justification was published to save the honor and innocence of Goertz by a relative.

Appreciation

Görtz was in Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf, which as a result of his policy went partly to Denmark, and Sweden - as a result of the policy of King Charles XII. almost all of its provinces lost - mostly judged negatively, while Charles XII. later glorified. Voltaire , who knew Görtz personally, judges in his biography of Karl XII. About him: “There has probably never been a man who has been so lithe and bold, so inventive in adversity, so comprehensive in his plans, so energetic in his business as he is. No project frightened him, all means were right for him. "

family

Görtz married Christine Magdalene von Reventlow (1676–1713), a daughter of the Privy Councilor Detlev von Reventlow (1654–1701) on Reetz, and widow of the Holstein Privy Councilor Cai von Rantzau-Neuhaus (1650–1704) in 1704 . The couple had two daughters:

• Georgine Henriette Dorothea (1708; † June 30, 1787)

⚭ 1724 (divorce in 1726) Johann Friedrich von Bardenfleth († 1736), major general

⚭ 1741 Friedrich von Eyben (1699–1787)

• Juliane Philippine Eustachine

The Swedish King Gustav III. Henriette returned her father's goods confiscated in Sweden in 1773.

literature

• Hjalmar Lindeberg: Görtz - a victim of absolutism , Hildesheim, Verlag Borgmeyer 1937 (Original Stockholm 1925, from the Swedish by GH von Görtz)
• Voltaire: Histoire de Charles XII , 1731, German, Frankfurt / M. u. a., Insel Verlag 1978
• Otto Haintz: King Karl XII. von Schweden , 3 vol. (2nd edition), Berlin, de Gruyter 1958
• Ragnhild Hatton: Charles XII of Sweden , London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1968
• Pauls, Hoffmann (ed.): History of Schleswig-Holstein , 1960, vol. 5, p. 240ff (Kellenbenz)
• Otto Brandt : History of Schleswig-Holstein. 5th edition, Kiel 1957.
• Reinhold Koser :  Görtz, Georg Heinrich Freiherr von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, pp. 389-393.
• Hermann Kellenbenz :  Görtz, Georg Heinrich Freiherr von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , pp. 536-538 ( digitized version ).
• Jan Berggren: Rikets mest hatade man: Georg Heinrich von Görtz, en biografi , Stockholm, Carlsson 2010. ISBN 978-91-7331-296-7
• Werner Buchholz: Article Görtz in Biographisches Lexikon Schleswig Holstein and Lübeck, Vol. 8, Neumünster, Wachholtz Verlag 1987
• Hubertus Neuschäffer: Henning Friedrich Graf von Bassewitz (1680–1749) . Schwerin, Thomas Helms Verlag 1999. ISBN 978-3-931185-47-3 .
• Peter von Kobbe, Schleswig-Holstein history from the death of Duke Christian Albrecht to the death of King Christian VII (1694 to 1808) , p.89f

Fiction

• August Verleger: The way through Hell - Baron Görtz and Karl XII , Fulda, Verlag Parzeller & Co 1960 (novel)

Web links

Commons : Georg Heinrich von Görtz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Georg Heinrich von Görtz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Georg Heinrich von Görtz  in the German Digital Library

Sources and footnotes

1. ↑ The Görtzpalais on Neuer Wall , after the war the seat of Germanischer Lloyd.
2. ↑ Later he actually married the daughter of Peter the Great, and his son was named Peter III. Tsar
3. ↑ Görtz in a letter to his fellow ministerial colleague Dernath in Gottorf.
4. ↑ It dragged on until the Peace of Nystad in 1721 with minor fighting that should improve the negotiating position. In the end Sweden only kept Finland and the part of Swedish Pomerania around Stralsund and Wismar.
5. ↑ Franz Carl von Moser Rescue of Honor and Innocence, the former Königl. Swedish Minister of State and Duke. Schleswig-Holstein secret council and Oberhofmarschall Georg Heinrichs, Freyherrn von Schlitz, called von Goerz, from the king Carl the XII. of the Swedish Senate, the Swedish gentlemen and men, original and other documents . With XXX. Supplements. Ao. 1776. Hamburg expanded in the second edition in 1791. Von Moser married into the von Görtz family and uses the family's papers.
6. ^ Voltaire: Karl XII , Insel Verlag 1978, p. 242