FRIEDRICH GENTZ, 1764-1832 a Dissertation Presented to The

FRIEDRICH GENTZ, 1764-1832 a Dissertation Presented to The

BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW: FRIEDRICH GENTZ, 1764-1832 A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy by TRAVIS EAKIN Dr. Jonathan Sperber, Dissertation Supervisor MAY 2019 The undersigned, appointed by the Dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW: FRIEDRICH GENTZ, 1764-1832 Presented by Travis Eakin A candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy And hereby certify that in their opinion it is worthy of acceptance: _____________________________________________________________ Professor Jonathan Sperber, Chair _____________________________________________________________ Professor Ilyana Karthas _____________________________________________________________ Professor Robert Smale _____________________________________________________________ Professor John Frymire _____________________________________________________________ Professor Sean Franzel Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the commentary, input, and support of a number of people along the way. The first and one of the oldest debts I owe is to my undergraduate advisor at Southeast Missouri State University, Dr. David Cameron. His insight and wit made history come alive for me, as it did for many others, and encouraged me to think I too might be able to make a mark in the field. I am proud to consider myself a part of his scholarly legacy. I was first encouraged to look into Friedrich Gentz as a possible dissertation subject by Professor Barbara Hahn, of the German Studies Department at Vanderbilt University, after a conference in 2012. Clearly our conversation stayed with me over the years, and I am very grateful for her suggestion. At the University of Missouri, there are a whole host of individuals I want to thank. First and foremost is my advisor, Dr. Jonathan Sperber. Whether encouraging or challenging my research and conclusions, keeping me in the loop on travel grants and other funding opportunities, writing letters on my behalf, anything and everything else, he deserves an enormous share of credit for helping me keep this thing going and preventing it from getting out of hand. Others who were a great help and source of encouragement were the other members of my dissertation committee, Professors John Frymire, Robert Smale, Ilyana Karthas, and Sean Franzel, all of whom provided valuable input. Thanks also to Tim Parshall for his assistance in preparing the paperwork for my grant and fellowship applications, and to the other graduate students in the History Department for their advice, both personal and professional; I would ii especially like to include Sarah Lirley McCune, Craig Forrest, and Mary Beth Brown (even if they are all Americanists) for being sounding boards during the twists and turns of the Ph.D. process, of which there were many. I have many thanks as well for those who assisted me during my trips to Europe for research purposes, especially the Fulbright excursion of 2016-17. Prof. Dr. Andreas Fahrmeir of the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main was a most helpful Doktorvater during my time there; thanks also to his colleague Torsten Riotte, and to Sabine Freitag at the University of Bamberg for glancing over one of my drafts. My fellow Fulbrighter Carlos Pereira de Salva of Northwestern University gave me some insight, including a freewheeling discussion of Kantian philosophy on the train from Marburg to Frankfurt; and of course I must thank the staff at the Geheime Staatsarchiv in Berlin, the Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv in Vienna, and the Czech National Archives in Prague for their wealth of documents and their personal assistance. In addition to those already named, there are many friends to whom I owe a great personal and professional debt. I especially want to name Katherine and Kyle Blank, formerly of the University of Mississippi, who have shared the life of the lowly graduate student with me, and our mutual commiseration and encouragement has helped us all endure much longer than it would have once seemed possible. Finally, I would not be here without the love and support of my mom, Patresa Eakin, who has never failed to push me to do my best and not settle for “good enough.” It is from her that I gained the determination to see this project through to the end, and my success is her success. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements… ..................................................................................................................... ii Abstract… ....................................................................................................................................... v Introduction… ................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1… ....................................................................................................................................12 Chapter 2… ....................................................................................................................................34 Chapter 3… ....................................................................................................................................60 Chapter 4… ....................................................................................................................................90 Chapter 5… ..................................................................................................................................121 Chapter 6… ..................................................................................................................................153 Chapter 7… ..................................................................................................................................178 Chapter 8… ..................................................................................................................................203 Chapter 9… ..................................................................................................................................227 Conclusion… ...............................................................................................................................249 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................263 Vita… .......................................................................................................................................... 274 iv Abstract This dissertation reviews the life and political impact of Friedrich Gentz, who was born in Breslau, Prussia, in 1764, and died in Vienna, Austria, in 1832. Though remembered today as only a second- (or even third-) tier statesman alongside such luminaries of his day as Napoleon, Metternich, Wellington, and others, Gentz was nonetheless of importance in the shifting tides of late 18th and early 19th-century politics in Europe. The German translator of Edmund Burke, he was instrumental in bringing the conservative thinker’s ideas into the conversations of Central Europe, while his writings against first the French Revolution, then Napoleon, marked him as one of the leading opponents of revolutionary ideology, and led the French emperor to dub him “that miserable scribe.” But Gentz was important even beyond his anti-revolutionary polemics. As a product of the Enlightenment, he had some sympathy with the forces of modernity, and his career reflected the struggle to combine an openness to reform with hostility to revolution. In his later collaboration with Metternich to forge what became known as the Restoration, we can see just how much the post-Napoleonic conservative order in Europe was built upon a specific vision, one that rejected the quasi-feudal patterns of the ancien regime just as firmly as it did the democratic radicalism of its own day. Though it ultimately did not last, Gentz’s work is clearly visible in the political contours of the 19th century. From the Enlightenment salons of Berlin to the dazzling Congress of Vienna and beyond, Between the Old and the New traces the eventful career of one of the most interesting men of letters in Revolutionary-era Europe. v Introduction I began research for my dissertation in 2014, exactly two centuries after Friedrich Gentz reached the pinnacle of his career as right-hand man to Klemens von Metternich at the Congress of Vienna. I have long been interested in intellectual history, in the history of ideas and of ideology-based political movements. As I had often seen Gentz referred to as one of the European Continent’s chief disciples of conservative titan Edmund Burke, and even as his German counterpart, I initially believed that I would be able to use Gentz’s life to tell the story of how German conservatism developed as a coherent force in the nineteenth century. His beliefs and his character would explain a great deal about this particular ideology. After a year or two of research, I was gradually forced to revise the initial parameters of my project. Not that many of the achievements often credited to Gentz are not his. He was, as is frequently pointed out, the first man to translate Reflections on the French Revolution into German; he was in the forefront of intellectual opposition to the Revolution and to the conqueror it spawned, Napoleon Bonaparte; and as a close associate of Metternich at the conclusion

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