was the commercial treaty concluded in 1785 between Prussia and the United States.
With Frederick, especially in his later years, Hertzberg stood in very intimate personal relations and was often the king’s guest at Sans-Souci. Under Frederick William II. his influential position at the court of Berlin was at first unshaken. The king at once received him with favour, as is clearly proved by Hertzberg’s elevation to the rank of count in 1786; and Mirabeau would never have attacked him with such violence in his Secret History of the Court of Berlin, which appeared in 1788, if he had not seen in him the most powerful man after the king. In this attack Mirabeau seems to have been influenced by Hertzberg’s personal enemies at the court. Hertzberg’s political system remained on the whole the same under Frederick William II. as it had been under his predecessor. It was mainly characterized by a sharp opposition to the house of Habsburg and by a desire to win for Prussia the support of England, a policy supported by him in important memoirs of the years 1786 and 1787. His diplomacy was directed also against Austria’s old ally, France. Hence it was chiefly owing to Hertzberg that in 1787, in spite of the king’s unwillingness at first, Prussia intervened in Holland in support of the stadtholder William V. against the democratic French party (see Holland: History). The success of this intervention, which was the practical realization of a plan very characteristic of Hertzberg, marks the culminating point in his career.
But the opposition between him and the new king, which had already appeared at the time of the conclusion of the triple alliance between Holland, England and Prussia, became more marked in the following years, when Hertzberg, relying upon this alliance, and in conscious imitation of Frederick II.’s policy at the time of the first partition of Poland, sought to take advantage of the entanglement of Austria with Russia in the war with Turkey to secure for Prussia an extension of territory by diplomatic intervention. According to his plan, Prussia was to offer her mediation at the proper moment, and in the territorial readjustments that the peace would bring, was to receive Danzig and Thorn as her portion. Beyond this he aimed at preventing the restoration of the hegemony of Austria in the Empire, and secretly cherished the hope of restoring Frederick the Great’s Russian alliance.
With a curious obstinacy he continued to pursue these aims even when, owing to military and diplomatic events, they were already partly out of date. His personal position became increasingly difficult, as deep-rooted differences between him and the king were revealed during these diplomatic campaigns. Hertzberg wished to effect everything by peaceful means, while Frederick William II. was for a time determined on war with Austria. As regards Polish policy, too, their ideas came into conflict, Hertzberg having always been openly opposed to the total annihilation of the Polish kingdom. The same is true of the attitude of king and minister towards Great Britain. At the conferences at Reichenbach in the summer of 1790, this opposition became more and more acute, and Hertzberg was only with difficulty persuaded to come to an agreement merely on the basis of the status quo, as demanded by Pitt. The king’s renunciation of any extension of territory was in Hertzberg’s eyes impolitic, and this view of his was later endorsed by Bismarck. A letter which came to the eyes of the king, in which Hertzberg severely criticized the king’s foreign policy, and especially his plans for attacking Russia, led to his dismissal on the 5th of July 1791. He afterwards made several attempts to exert an influence over foreign affairs, but in vain. The king showed himself more and more personally hostile to the ex-minister, and in later years pursued Hertzberg, now quite embittered, with every kind of petty persecution, even ordering his letters to be opened.
Even in his literary interests Hertzberg found an adversary in the ungrateful king, for Frederick William, to give one instance, made it so difficult for him to use the archives that in the end Hertzberg entirely gave up the attempt. He found, however, some recompense for all his disillusionment and discouragement in learning, and, Wilhelm von Humboldt excepted, he was the most learned of all the Prussian ministers. As a member of the Berlin Academy especially, and, from 1786 onwards, as its curator, Hertzberg carried on a great and valuable activity in the world of learning. His yearly reports dealt with history, statistics and political science. The most interesting is that of 1784: Sur la forme des gouvernements, et quelle est la meilleure. This is directed exclusively against the absolute system (following Montesquieu), upholds a limited monarchy, and is in favour of extending to the peasants the right to be represented in the diet. He spoke for the last time in 1793 on Frederick the Great and the advantages of monarchy. After 1783 these discourses caused a great sensation, since Hertzberg introduced into them a review of the financial situation, which in the days of absolutism seemed an unprecedented innovation. Besides this, Hertzberg exerted himself as an academician to change the strongly French character of the Academy and make it into a truly German institution. He showed a keen interest in the old German language and literature. A special “German deputation” was set aside at the Academy and entrusted with the drawing up of a German grammar and dictionary. He also stood in very close relations with many of the German poets of the time, and especially with Daniel Schubart. Among the German historians in whom he took a great interest, he had the greatest esteem for Pufendorf. He was equally concerned in the improvement of the state of education. In 1780 he boldly took up the defence of German literature, which had been disparaged by Frederick the Great in his famous writing De la littérature allemande.
Hertzberg’s frank and honourable nature little fitted him to be a successful diplomatist; but the course of history has justified many of his aims and ideals, and in Prussia his memory is honoured. He died at Berlin on the 22nd of May 1795.
Authorities.—(1) By Hertzberg himself: The Mémoires de l’Académie from 1780 on contain Hertzberg’s discourses. The most noteworthy of them were printed in 1787. Here too is to be found: Histoire de la dissertation [du roi] sur la littérature allemande; see also Recueil des déductions, &c., qui ont été rédigés ... pour la cour de Prusse par le ministre (3 vols., 1789–1795); and an “Autobiographical Sketch” published by Höpke in Schmidt’s Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, i. (1843). (2) Works dealing specially with Hertzberg: Mirabeau, Histoire secrète de la cour de Berlin (1788); P. F. Weddigen, Hertzbergs Leben (Bremen, 1797); E. L. Posselt, Hertzbergs Leben (Tübingen, 1798); H. Lehmann, in Neustettiner Programm (1862); E. Fischer, in Staatsanzeiger (1873); M. Duncker, in Historische Zeitschrift (1877); Paul Bailleu, in Historische Zeitschrift (1879); and Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (1880); H. Petrich, Pommersche Lebensbilder i. (1880); G. Dressler, Friedrich II. und Hertzberg in ihrer Stellung zu den holländischen Wirren, Breslauer Dissertation (1882); K. Krauel, Hertzberg als Minister Friedrich Wilhelms II. (Berlin, 1899); F. K. Wittichen, in Historische Vierteljahrschrift, 9 (1906); A. Th. Preuss, Ewald Friedrich, Graf von Hertzberg (Berlin, 1909). (3) General works: F. K. Wittichen, Preussen und England, 1785–1788 (Heidelberg, 1902); F. Luckwaldt, Die englisch-preussische Allianz von 1788 in den Forschungen zur brandenburgisch-preussischen Geschichte, Bd. 15, and in the Delbrückfestschrift (Berlin, 1908); L. Sevin, System der preussischen Geheimpolitik 1790–1791 (Heidelberger Dissertation, 1903); P. Wittichen, Die polnische Politik Preussens 1788–1790 (Berlin, 1899); F. Andreae, Preussische und russische Politik in Polen 1787–1789 (Berliner Dissertation, 1905); also W. Wenck, Deutschland vor 100 Jahren (2 vols., 1887, 1890); A. Harnack, Geschichte der preussischen Akademie (4 vols., 1899); Consentius, Preussische Jahrbücher (1904); J. Hashagen, “Hertzbergs Verhältnis zur deutschen Literatur,” in Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie for 1903. (J. Hn.)
HERTZEN, ALEXANDER (1812–1870), Russian author, was
born at Moscow, a very short time before the occupation of that
city by the French. His father, Ivan Yakovlef, after a personal
interview with Napoleon, was allowed to leave, when the invaders
arrived, as the bearer of a letter from the French to the Russian
emperor. His family attended him to the Russian lines. Then
the mother of the infant Alexander (a young German Protestant
of Jewish extraction from Stuttgart, according to A. von
Wurzbach), only seventeen years old, and quite unable to speak
Russian, was forced to seek shelter for some time in a peasant’s
hut. A year later the family returned to Moscow, where Hertzen
passed his youth—remaining there, after completing his studies
at the university, till 1834, when he was arrested and tried on a
