GORRES, JOSEPH VON (1776-1848), German writer, was born on Jan. 25, 1776, at Coblenz, and educated at a Latin college under clerical direction. Young Gorres sympathized with the French Revolution, harangued the revolutionary clubs in the Rhineland, and insisted on the unity of interests which should ally all civilized States. He then began a Republican journal called Das rote Blatt (afterwards Riibezahl), in which he elo quently defended French principles.
After the peace of Campo Formio (1797) there was some hope that the Rhenish provinces would be constituted into an independent Republic. In 1799 the provinces sent to Paris an embassy of which Gorres was a member; it arrived two days after Napoleon had assumed the supreme direction of affairs. After much delay he received the embassy; but the only answer they obtained was "that they might rely on perfect justice, and that the French Government would never lose sight of their wants." Gorres on his return published a tract called Resultate meiner Sendung nach Paris, in which he reviewed the history of the French Revolution. He was thoroughly disillusioned. During the 13 years of Napoleon's dominion Gorres lived a retired life. In 18o1 he married Catherine de Lasaulx; from 18o6 to 1808 he lectured at Heidelberg. With K. Brentano and L. von Arnim he edited the famous Zeitung fur Einsiedler (subsequently re-named Trost-Einsamkeit), and in 18o7 he published Die deutschen Volksbiicher.
He loved the German folk-tale, not as a vehicle for romantic ideas, but in its stark realism. His versions have none of the fanciful adornments given to the folk-tale by Novalis and Tieck, but are more akin to those of the brothers Grimm. He returned to Coblenz in 18o8. He now studied Persian, and published a Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt (2 vols., 181o) and Das Heldenbuch von Iran (1816), a translation of part of the Shahnama, the epic of Firdousi. In 1813 he was drawn into the movement for national independence and in 1814 founded the Rheinische Merkur. The intense earnestness of the paper, its hostility to Napoleon, and its fiery eloquence secured for it a position unique in the history of German newspapers. Napoleon himself called it la cinquieme puissance. It advocated a united Germany, with representative government, but under an emperor . after the fashion of other days—for Gorres now abandoned his early revolutionary ideas. He inveighed most bitterly against the second peace of Paris (1815), declaring that the territory com prising Alsace and Lorraine should have been demanded back from France.
Stein was glad enough to make use of the Merkur at the time of the meeting of the congress of Vienna, but Hardenberg in May 1815 warned Gdrres to remember that he was not to attack France but only Bonaparte. The Merkur evinced an antipathy to Prussia, a desire for an Austrian emperor, and also a tendency to pronounced liberalismwhich made it most distasteful to Hardenberg and Frederick William III. Gorres disregarded the warnings of censorship, and accordingly his paper was suppressed early in 1816 at the instance of the Prussian Government ; soon afterwards Gorres was dismissed from his post as teacher at Coblenz. In the wild excitement which followed Kotzebue's assassination the reactionary decrees of Carlsbad were framed, and these were attacked by Gorres in his pamphlet Deutschland and die Revolution (1820). He reviewed the circumstances which had led to the murder of Kotzebue, and, while expressing horror at the deed itself, he urged the danger of repressing the free utterance of public opinion by reactionary measures. The pam phlet was suppressed by the Prussian Government, and orders were immediately issued for the arrest of Gorres and the seizure of his papers. He escaped to Strasbourg, and thence went to Switzerland.
In Gorres's pamphlet Die heilige Allianz and die Volker auf dem Kongress zu Verona, he asserted that the princes had met together to crush the liberties of the people, and that the people must look elsewhere for help. The "elsewhere" was to Rome ; and from this time Gorres became a vehement Ultramontane. King Ludwig of Bavaria gave him the chair of history at Munich. His Christliche Mystik (1836-42) was an exposition of Roman Catholic mysticism. On the deposition and imprisonment by the Prussian Government of the archbishop Clement Wenceslaus, in consequence of the dispute on mixed marriages, Gorres wrote a violent tract, Athanasius (1837), on the Catholic side. Gdrres died on Jan. 29, 1848.
Gorres's Gesammelte Schriften (only his political writings) appeared in six volumes (1854-6o), to which three volumes of Gesammelte Briefe were subsequently added (1858-74) . See J. Galland, Joseph von Gorres (1876, 2nd ed. 1877) ; J. N. Sepp, Gorres and seine Zeit genossen (1877) and by the same author, Gorres, in the series Geistes helden (1896) ; J. G. Uhlmann, Joseph Gorres and die deutsche Einheits and V erf assungsf rage (1912) ; M. Berger, Gorres als politischer Publizist (1921) . A Gorres-Gesellschaf t was founded in 1876, and in 1926 counted about 4,000 members. Its purpose is to encourage the Catholic aspect in culture.