Friedrich Von Gentz

Born May 2, 1764, in Breslau; died June 9, 1832, in Weinhaus, near Vienna. Austrian politician and publicist. Born into the family of a Prussian civil servant.

Gentz entered the Prussian state service in 1786 and went over to the Austrian service in 1802. In the mid-1790’s, he violently opposed the French Revolution and then Napoleonic France in his publicistic writing. He was subsidized by various countries (including Britain, from 1802). A close and trusted adviser of Metternich, Gentz was secretary of the Congress of Vienna of 1814-15, a conference of allied ministers in Paris in 1815, and congresses of the Holy Alliance in Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), Verona, Laibach, and Troppau. Gentz was an active defender of feudal-monarchical reaction. His works are an important historical source.