GORTZ, GEORG HEINRICH VON, BARON VON SCHLITZ (T 668-1719), Swedish statesman, entered the Holstein-Gottorp service, and after the death of the duchess Hedwig Sophia, Charles XII.'s sister, became influential during the minority of her son, Duke Charles Frederick. His earlier policy aimed at strengthen ing Holstein-Gottorp at the expense of Denmark. With this object, during Charles XII.'s stay at Altranstadt (1706-1707), he tried to divert the king's attention to the Holstein question, and six years later, when the Swedish commander, Magnus Stenbock, crossed the Elbe, Gortz surrendered the fortress of Tonning to the Swedes. He next attempted to undermine the grand alliance against Sweden by negotiating with Russia, Prussia and Saxony for the purpose of isolating Denmark, or even of turning the arms of the allies against her. The plan foundered on the refusal of Charles XII. to save the rest of his German domains by ceding Stettin to Prussia. Another simultaneous plan of procuring the Swedish crown for Duke Charles Frederick failed. Gortz first suggested the marriage between the duke of Holstein and the tsarevna Anne of Russia.
On the arrival of Charles XII. from Turkey at Stralsund, Gortz was the first to visit him, and emerged from his presence virtually chief minister. Gortz owed his extraordinary influence to the fact that he was the only one of Charles's advisers who believed, or pretended to believe, that Sweden was still far from exhaustion, or at any rate had a sufficient reserve of power to give support to an energetic diplomacy. Ostensibly, Gortz was only the Holstein minister at Charles's court, in reality he was every thing in Sweden except a Swedish subject—finance minister, pleni potentiary to foreign powers, factotum, and responsible to the king alone, though he had not a line of instructions. His chief financial expedient was to debase, or rather ruin, the currency by issuing copper tokens redeemable in better times ; but it was no fault of his that Charles XII., during his absence, flung upon the market too enormous an amount of this copper money for Gortz to deal with. By the end of 1718 the hatred of the Swedes towards him was so intense and universal that they blamed him for Charles XII.'s tyranny as well as for his own.
Gortz hoped to conclude peace with at least some of Sweden's numerous enemies before the crash came and then, by means of fresh combinations, to restore Sweden to her rank as a great power. In pursuance of his "system," Gortz displayed a genius for diplomacy which would have done honour to a Metternich or a Talleyrand. He desired peace with Russia first of all, and at the congress of Aland even obtained relatively favourable terms, only to have them rejected by his obstinately optimistic master. Simultaneously, Gortz was negotiating with Cardinal Alberoni and with the Whigs in England. On the sudden death of Charles XII. the whole fury of the Swedish nation fell upon Gortz. After a trial before a special commission which was a parody of justice —the accused was not permitted to have any legal assistance or the use of writing materials—he was condemned to be beheaded, and promptly executed. His death was certainly a judicial murder, and some historians even regard him as a political martyr.
See R. N. Bain, Charles XII. (1895) , and Scandinavia, chap. 12 (Cambridge, 19o5) ; B. von Beskow, Freiherre Georg Heinrich von Gortz (Stockholm, 1868).