Georg Ludwig von Edelsheim

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Georg Ludwig von Edelsheim (born June 22, 1740 in Hanau , † December 1, 1814 in Karlsruhe ) was a Baden minister.

Life

family

Georg Ludwig von Edelsheim comes from the Hanau family of Edelsheim and was born as the son of Philipp Reinhard von Edelsheim (* July 27, 1695; † July 11, 1772) and Friederike Freiin von Zeschlin (* 1703; † January 19, 1761). His brother was the politician Wilhelm von Edelsheim .

Georg Ludwig married Adelheid von Keyserlingk (July 3, 1744 - June 12, 1818), daughter of Dietrich Cesarion von Keyserlingk (1698–1745), confidante of Friedrich II and his wife Countess Eleonore Louise Albertine von Schlieben-Sanditten ( 1720-1755). They had three children together:

Career

Georg Ludwig studied in Göttingen , Strasbourg and Geneva and then stayed temporarily in Gotha . On the recommendation of Friedrich II's sister, Philippine Charlotte of Prussia , he was entrusted with a secret mission which served to initiate negotiations on a separate peace with France in February 1760. This took him to Paris and London , and even if the negotiations subsequently failed, his tactful demeanor won him the trust and favor of Frederick II.

In May 1761 he became secretary at the Prussian embassy in London and in 1763, after the Peace of Hubertusburg, he was assigned to the Berlin Ministry of Foreign Affairs for further training. In 1771 he succeeded the Prussian ambassador Jakob Friedrich von Rohd (1703–1784) in Vienna , whom he had already represented occasionally in the past.

After the death of his father, he submitted his resignation at the end of 1773 and returned to Hanau to take over the management of the property that had fallen to him.

In April 1778 he received a new assignment from Friedrich II. He was supposed to sound out at the smaller central and southern German courts ( Weimar , Gotha , Kassel , Darmstadt and Karlsruhe ), with reference to the Austrian attacks, whether they would be ready to bind more closely to Prussia . To this end, the courts should contact the Electorate of Braunschweig-Lüneburg and Kurköln in order to discuss the possibilities of a merger of the Saxon and Westphalian districts . The negotiations were initially unsuccessful because France was suspicious of this company; With the conclusion of the Peace of Teschen they became irrelevant, but they prepared the ground for the later Prince League .

In April 1784 he followed the call of Margrave Karl Friedrich and moved to Karlsruhe, where he was appointed Colonel Chamberlain and Real Privy Councilor and appointed to represent Baden as a district envoy to the Swabian Circle . In 1792 he was appointed president of the newly established appeal court.

After the death of his brother, Margrave Karl Friedrich appointed him his successor as Minister for Foreign Affairs on April 28, 1794. In autumn he was still in favor of the idea of ​​a princes' alliance directed against France, but after the conclusion of the Basel Peace he was forced to pursue a policy of separate peace; the conclusion of a separate peace with the republic then also laid the foundation for an area expansion in Baden between 1803 and 1810.

During the French invasion in 1796, the margrave fled to Triesdorf and Georg Ludwig led the government at the head of the secret council. From autumn 1797 to April 1799 he took part in the negotiations of the Rastatt Congress as a Baden sub- delegate and was involved in a declaration on the murder of some French envoys . In the spring of 1801, Margrave Karl Friedrich sent him to Paris in order to lead the negotiations on Baden's compensation issue on behalf of Sigismund von Reitzenstein's sick envoy .

After the conclusion of the Basel Peace he distanced himself from Prussian politics and was convinced that neutrality could not be preserved and that the obligation to self-preservation required the connection to France; so he signed the alliance with Napoleon in the autumn of 1805 . In the Rhine Confederation time he increasingly lost its influence on the foreign policy of the Grand Duchy and the management of the business, which he officially still held, but were actually on politicians Sigismund of Reitsenstein, Wolfgang Heribert von Dalberg and Conrad Karl Friedrich von Andlau-Birseck over .

Before his death, he received the satisfaction of witnessing the collapse of the first French Empire .

His successor was Ludwig Wilhelm Alexander von Hövel .

Fonts (selection)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Jump up ↑ Becke-Klüchtzner, Edmund von der: Stamm-Tafeln des Nobility of the Grand Duchy of Baden: a newly edited book of nobility (Baden-Baden, 1886). In: p. 116 f. Retrieved November 6, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Edelsheim, Georg Ludwig von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Baden Minister
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1740
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanau
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1814
Place of death Karlsruhe