HERTZBERG, EWALD FRIEDRICH, COUNT VON ( I 7 2 795) , Prussian statesman, was born at Lottin, Pomerania, on Sept. 2, 17 2 5. He studied law at Halle, and entered the Prus sian government service, rising rapidly until he became chief minister in 1763. For more than 4o years Hertzberg played an active part in the Prussian foreign office. In this capacity he had a decisive influence on Prussian policy, both under Frederick the Great and Frederick William II. At the beginning of the Seven Years' War (1756) he took part as a political writer in the Hohen zollern-Habsburg quarrel, both in his "Motives which have in duced the king of Prussia to oppose the intentions of the court of Vienna, and to prevent them from being carried into effect" and in his Memoire raisonne sur la conduite des tours de Vienne et de Saxe, based on the secret papers taken by Frederick the Great from the archives of Dresden. After the defeat at Kolin he organized the national defence in Pomerania and col lected the necessary troops for the protection of the fortresses of Stettin and Colberg. In the same year he conducted the peace negotiations with Sweden, and helped to bring about the peace of Hubertsburg ( I 763) .
In 1772, in a memoir based upon comprehensive historical studies, he defended the Prussian claims to certain provinces of Poland. He also supported by his writings the negotiations on the Bavarian succession (1778) and the peace of Teschen But in 1780 he failed to uphold Prussian interests at the election of the bishop of Munster. In 1784 appeared Hertzberg's memoir containing a thorough study of the Fiirstenbund. He championed this creation of Frederick the Great's mainly with a view to an energetic reform of the empire, though the idea of German unity was naturally still far from his mind. In 1785 followed "An explanation of the motives which have led the king of Prussia to propose to the other high estates of the empire an association for the maintenance of the system of the empire." Though the Furstenbund failed to effect a reform of the empire, it at any rate prevented the fulfilment of Joseph II.'s old desire for the incorporation of Bavaria with Austria. The last act of state in which Hertzberg took part under Frederick the Great 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. Hertzberg was raised 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 (1788), if he had not seen in him the most powerful man after the king. His political system remained on the whole the same under Frederick William II. as it had been under his prede cessor. 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 Hertz berg that in 1787, in spite of the king's unwillingness at first, Prussia intervened in Holland in support of the stadtholder Wil liam V. against the democratic French party (see HOLLAND : History). The success of this intervention, which was the prac tical 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 inter vention. 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.
Deep-rooted differences between him and the king were re vealed 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. On 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 179o, this opposition became more and more acute, and Hertz berg 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 Bis marck. A letter which came to the eyes of the king, in which Hertzberg severely criticized the king's foreign policy, and espe cially his plans for attacking Russia, led to his dismissal on July 5, 1791. 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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt excepted, Hertzberg was the most learned of all the Prussian ministers. As a member of the Berlin Academy especially, and, from 1786 onward, as its curator, Hertz berg was active in the world of learning. His yearly reports dealt with history, statistics and political science. The most interesting is that of i 784 : 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 dis courses 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. Hertzberg ex erted himself as an academician to change the strongly French character of the Academy and make it into a truly German insti tution. 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 in 178o he boldly took up the defcnce of German literature, which had been disparaged by Frederick the Great in his famous writing De la litterature alle mande. He died in Berlin on May 22, 1795.
BIBLIOGRAPIIY.-(I) By Hertzberg himself: The Memoires de Bibliograpiiy.-(I) By Hertzberg himself: The Memoires de l'Academie from 178o 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 litterature allemande; see also Recueil des deductions, etc., qui out ete rediges . . . pour la cour de Prusse par le ministre (3 vols., 1789--95) ; and an "Autobiographical Sketch" published by Hopke in Schmidt's Zeitschrift fur Geschichts wissenscha f t, i. (1843) (2) Works dealing specially with Hertzberg: Mirabeau, Histoire secrete de la cour de Berlin (1788) ; P. F. Weddigen, Hertzbergs Leben (Bremen, 1797) ; E. L. Posselt, Hertzbergs Leben (Tubingen, 1798) ; H. Lehmann, in Neustettiner Programm (1862) ; E. Fischer, in Staatsanzeiger (1873) ; M. Duncker, in Historische Zeitschrift (1877) ; Paul Bailleu, in Historische Zeitschrift (I879) ; and Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (188o) ; H. Petrich, Pommersche Lebensbilder i. (188o) ; G. Dressler, Friedrich II. and Hertzberg in ihrer Stellung zu den holldndischen 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 and England, 1785-1788 (Heidelberg, 1902) ; F. Luckwaldt, Die englisch-preussische Allianz von 1788 in den Forschungen zur brandenburgisch-preussischen Geschichte, Bd. I 5, and in the Delbriick f estschri f t (Berlin, 1908) ; L. Sevin, System der preussischen Geheimpolitik 179o-7791 (Heidei berger Dissertation, 1903) ; P. Wittichen, Die polnische Politik Preussens 1788-1790 (Berlin, 1899) ; F. Andreae, Preussische and russische Politik in Polen (Berliner Dissertation. 1905) ; also W. Wenck, Deutschland vor zoo Jahren (2 vols., 1887, 18go) ; A. Harnack, Geschichte der preussischen Akademie (4 vols., 1899) Consentius, Preussische Jahrbiicher (1904) ; J. Hashagen, "Hertzbergs Verhaltnis zur deutschen Literatur," in Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philologie for 1903.