Louis Balan

Louis Balan (born April 20, 1769 in Berlin , † January 1, 1807 in London ) was a Prussian diplomat .

career

Louis Balan attended the grammar school of the French colony in Berlin , where he read to the aged King Frederick the Great , Racine and Corneille together with the later Prussian ministers Lombard and Ancillon . After initially studying theology in 1784 at the theological seminary of the French colony in Berlin, he later took up law studies at the University of Halle due to concerns about his conscience .

He soon embarked on a diplomatic career through relationships with the Graefisch Hatzfeld house. In the 1790s he was appointed Legation Councilor and 1st Secretary of the Prussian Legation in London . Immediately before his appointment as Consul General to the United States of North America, Louis Balan died on January 1, 1807, "broken in body and soul by the events of 1806 that were so deeply sad for Prussia ".

family

Louis Balan comes from the Huguenot family Balan (Valan), originally located in Montauban , whose ancestor Joseph Balan (1686–1736) left his home after the edict of Nantes was repealed by Louis XIV and fled to Prussia at the end of the 17th century .

The son of merchant Louis Balan (1724-1804) and Anne Balan (née Ancillon ) was married to Margareth Elisabeth Berkeley in 1800 by the Archbishop of London . There were three children from this marriage: Elise, William and Frederic (1806–1884, Go. Counselor). Frederic Balan's son Curt Balan later became President of the Evangelical Lutheran Consistory in Poznan .

literature

• Curt Balan , The Story of My Father , Berlin, 1895.