Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
Karl August
180px
Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Reign 1815-1828
Predecessor New Creation
Successor Charles Frederick
Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Reign 1809-1815
Predecessor New Creation
Successor Became Grand Duke
Duke of Saxe-Weimar
Reign 1758-1809
Predecessor Ernest Augustus II
Successor Union with Saxe-Eisenach
Regent Dowager Duchess Anna Amalia
Duke of Saxe-Eisenach
Reign 1758-1809
Predecessor Ernest Augustus II
Successor Union with Saxe-Weimar
Regent Dowager Duchess Anna Amalia
Born (1757-09-03)3 September 1757
Weimar
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Graditz, near Torgau
Spouse Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt
Issue Princess Luise Auguste Amalie
Charles Frederick
Prince Bernhard
Karoline Luise, Hereditary Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
House House of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Father Ernst August II, Duke of Saxe-Weimar
Mother Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
Religion Lutheranism

Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (3 September 1757 – 14 June 1828) was a Duke of Saxe-Weimar and of Saxe-Eisenach (personal union) from 1758, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach from its creation in 1809, and Grand Duke from 1815 until his death. He is noted for the intellectual brilliance of his court.[1]

Biography

Born in Weimar, he was the eldest son of Ernst August II Konstantin, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.

His father died when he was only nine months old (28 May 1758), and the boy was brought up under the regency and supervision of his mother, a woman of enlightened but masterful temperament. His governor was the Count Johann Eustach von Görtz, a German nobleman of the old strait-laced school; but a more humane element was introduced into his training when, in 1771, Christoph Martin Wieland was appointed his tutor. In 1774 the poet Karl Ludwig von Knebel came to Weimar as tutor to his brother, the young Prince Frederick Ferdinand Constantin, and in the same year the two princes set out, with Count Görtz and Knebel, for Paris. At Frankfurt Knebel introduced Karl August to the young Johann Wolfgang Goethe and this would mark the beginning of a momentous friendship.

In Karlsruhe on 3 October 1775, after he returned to Weimar and assumed the government of his duchy, Karl August married Luise Auguste, daughter of Ludwig IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt.

One of the first acts of the young grand-duke was to summon Goethe to Weimar, and in 1776 he was made a member of the privy council. “People of discernment,” he said, “congratulate me on possessing this man. His intellect, his genius is known. It makes no difference if the world is offended because I have made Dr Goethe a member of my most important collegium without his having passed through the stages of minor official professor and councillor of state.” To the undiscerning, the beneficial effect of this appointment was not at once apparent. With Goethe the Sturm und Drang spirit descended upon Weimar, and the stiff traditions of the little court dissolved in a riot of youthful exuberance.

1805 portrait of Charles Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Weimar.

The duke was a heavy drinker but also a good sportsman, and the revels of the court were alternated with breakneck rides across country, ending in nights spent around the campfire under the stars. The Weimaraner, a breed of gun dog said to have been developed by August and his court for hunting, is still popular today. Karl August, however, also had more serious tastes. He was interested in literature, in art, in science, funding Goethe and the foundation of the Fürstliche freie Zeichenschule Weimar and encouraging Weimar Classicism. Critics praised his judgment in painting; biologists found in him an expert in anatomy. Nor did he neglect the government of his little state.

His reforms were the outcome of something more than the spirit of the enlightened despots of the 18th century, for from the first he had realized that the powers of the prince to play earthly providence were strictly limited. His aim, then, was to educate his people to work out their own political and social salvation, the object of education being in his view, as he explained later to the dismay of Metternich and his school, to help men to independence of judgment. To this end Herder was summoned to Weimar to reform the educational system and it is little wonder that, under a patron so enlightened, the University of Jena attained the zenith of its fame and Weimar became the intellectual centre of Germany.

Engraving depicting Karl August walking with Corona Schröter and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Meanwhile, in the affairs of Germany and of Europe the character of Karl August gave him an influence out of all proportion to his position as a sovereign prince. He had early faced the problem presented by the decay of the Holy Roman Empire, and began to work for the unity of Germany. The plans of Emperor Joseph II, which threatened to absorb a great part of Germany into the heterogeneous Habsburg monarchy, threw him into the arms of Prussia, and he was the prime mover in the establishment of the league of princes (Fürstenbund) in 1785, by which, under the leadership of Frederick the Great, Joseph's intrigues were frustrated. He was, however, under no illusion as to the power of Austria, and he wisely refused the offer of the Hungarian crown, made to him in 1787 by Prussia at the instance of the Magyar malcontents, with the dry remark that he had no desire to be another Winter King. In 1788 Karl August took service in the Prussian army as major-general in active command of a regiment. As such he was present, with Goethe, at the Battle of Valmy in 1792, and in 1794 at the Siege of Mainz and the Battle of Pirmasenz (14 September) and Kaiserslautern (28–30 November). After this, dissatisfied with the attitude of the powers, he resigned, but rejoined on the accession of his friend King Frederick William III to the Prussian throne. The disastrous campaign of Jena (1806) followed. On 14 October, the day after the battle, Weimar was sacked, and Karl August, to prevent the confiscation of his territories, was forced to join the Confederation of the Rhine. From this time till after the Moscow campaign of 1812 his contingent fought under the French flag in all Napoleon's wars. In 1813, however, he joined the Grand Alliance, and at the beginning of 1814 took command of a corps of 30,000 men operating in the Netherlands.

At the Congress of Vienna (1815) Karl August was present in person and protested vainly against the narrow policy of the powers in confining their debates to the rights of the princes to the exclusion of the rights of the people. His services in the war of liberation were rewarded with an extension of territory and the title of grand-duke (Großherzog), but his liberal attitude had already made him suspect, and his subsequent action brought him still further into confrontation with the reactionary powers. He was the first of the German princes to grant a liberal constitution to his state under Article XIII of the Act of Confederation (5 May 1816) and his concession of liberty to the press made Weimar for a while the focus of journalistic agitation against the existing order. Metternich dubbed him contemptuously der grosse Bursche for his patronage of the revolutionary Burschenschaften, and the celebrated festival held at the Wartburg by his permission in 1818, though in effect the mildest of political demonstrations, brought down upon him the wrath of the great powers. The Grand Duke, against his better judgment, was compelled to yield to the remonstrances of Prussia, Austria and Russia. The liberty of the press was again restricted in the grand-duchy, but, thanks to the good understanding between the grand-duke and his people, the regime of the Carlsbad Decrees pressed less heavily upon Weimar than upon other German states.

File:Carl August of Weimar Portrait by Jagemann.jpg
Karl August as Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

Karl August died at Graditz, near Torgau, in 1828. Upon his contemporaries of the most various types his personality made a great impression. Karl von Dalberg, the prince-primate, who owed the coadjutorship of Mainz to the duke's friendship, said that he had never met a prince with so much understanding, character, frankness and true-heartedness; the Milanese, when he visited their city, called him the “uomo principe, and Goethe himself said of him that “he had the gift of discriminating intellects and characters and setting each one in his place. He was inspired by the noblest good-will, the purest humanity, and with his whole soul desired only what was best. There was in him something of the divine. He would gladly have wrought the happiness of all mankind. And finally, he was greater than his surroundings. . . Everywhere he himself saw and judged, and in all circumstances his surest foundation was in himself.” Karl August's correspondence with Goethe was published in 2 vols. at Weimar in 1863.

He left two surviving sons: Karl Frederick, by whom he was succeeded, and Karl Bernhard, a distinguished soldier, who, after the Congress of Vienna, became colonel of a regiment in the service of the King of the Netherlands, distinguished himself as commander of the Dutch troops in the Belgian campaign of 1830 (the ten days campaign), and from 1847 to 1850 held the command of the forces in the Dutch East Indies. Bernhard's son, William Augustus Edward, known as Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar (b. 1823 - d. 1902), entered the British army and ended his career as a Field Marshal.

Karl August's only surviving daughter, Karoline Luise, married Frederick Ludwig, Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and was the mother of Helene (b. 1814 - d. 1858), wife of Ferdinand, Duke of Orleans, eldest son of French King Louis Philippe.

Ancestry

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Family of Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
16. John Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Weimar
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
8. John Ernest III, Duke of Saxe-Weimar
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
17. Princess Christine Elisabeth of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
4. Ernest Augustus I, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
18. John VI, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
9. Princess Sophie Auguste of Anhalt-Zerbst
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
19. Princess Sophie Augusta of Holstein-Gottorp
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
2. Ernest Augustus II, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
20. Christian Heinrich, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth-Kulmbach
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
10. George Frederick Charles, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
21. Countess Sophie Christiane of Wolfstein
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
5. Margravine Sophie Charlotte of Brandenburg-Bayreuth
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
22. Frederick Louis, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
11. Princess Dorothea of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
23. Princess Louise Charlotte of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1. Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
24. Ferdinand Albert I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
12. Ferdinand Albert II, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
25. Landgravine Christine of Hesse-Eschwege
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
6. Charles I, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
26. Louis Rudolph, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
13. Duchess Antoinette Amalie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
27. Princess Christine Louise of Oettingen-Oettingen
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
3. Duchess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
28. Frederick I of Prussia
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
14. Frederick William I of Prussia
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
29. Sophia Charlotte of Hanover
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
7. Princess Philippine Charlotte of Prussia
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
30. George I of Great Britain
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
15. Sophia Dorothea of Hanover
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
31. Sophia Dorothea of Celle
 
 
 
 
 
 

Children

Karl August's children by Luise Auguste: Karl Frederick, the future Grand Duke, Karoline Luise and Karl Bernhard.
statue in Weimar

Karl August and Luise Auguste had seven children:

  1. Luise Auguste Amalie (b. Weimar, 3 February 1779 - d. Weimar, 24 March 1784).
  2. a daughter (b. and d. Weimar, 10 September 1781).
  3. Karl Frederick, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (b. Weimar, 2 February 1783 - d. Schloss Belvedere, near Weimar, 8 July 1853).
  4. a son (b. and d. Weimar, 26 February 1785).
  5. Karoline Luise (b. Weimar, 18 July 1786 - d. Ludwigslust, 20 January 1816), married on 1 July 1810 to Frederick Ludwig, Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.
  6. a son (b. and d. Weimar, 13 April 1789).
  7. Karl Bernhard (b. Weimar, 30 May 1792 - d. Liebenstein, 31 July 1862).

In addition, Karl August acknowledged five children by him born out of wedlock:

  • With Eva Dorothea Wiegand (b. 1755 - d. 1828)
    1. Johann Karl Sebastian Klein (b. Stützerbach, 9 June 1779 - d. Weimar, 28 June 1830), married on 22 April 1817 to Anna Fredericka Henriette Müller. They had three sons who possibly died young.
  • With Luise Rudorf (b. 1777 - d. 1852)
    1. Karl Wilhelm of Knebel (b. Templin, 18 January 1796 - d. Jena, 16 November 1861), married firstly on 6 February 1825 to Fredericka of Geusau, with whom he had one son, who died in infancy, before they divorced in 1837; secondly he married on 14 May 1839 Josephine Karoline Emilie Trautmann, with whom he had one son and two daughters.
  • With Henriette Karoline Fredericka Jagemann (b. 1777 - d. 1848), created Frau von Heygendorf
    1. Carl of Wolfgang (b. Weimar, 25 December 1806 - d. Dresden, 17 February 1895)
    2. August of Heygendorff (b. Weimar, 10 August 1810 - d. Dresden, 23 January 1874).
    3. Mariana of Heygendorff (b. Weimar, 8 April 1812 - d. 's Gravenhage, 10 August 1836), married on 15 October 1835 to Daniel, Baron Tindal.

Notes

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

  1. Ulich, Robert, The Education of Nations, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1961, p.193

References

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainLua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. This work in turn cites:
    • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Preceded by Duke of Saxe-Weimar
1758-1809
Became Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
Duke of Saxe-Eisenach
1758-1809
New title
Previously
Duke of Saxe-Weimar and
Duke of Saxe-Eisenach
Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
1809-1815
Became Grand Duke
New title
Previously Duke
Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
1815-1828
Succeeded by
Karl Frederick