HARDENBERG, KARL AUGUST VON, PRINCE (I 7So-1822), Prussian statesman, was born at Essenroda, Han over, on May 31, 175o. He studied at Leipzig and Gottingen, and entered the Hanoverian civil service in 177o. Finding the promo tion slow, he spent some time in travel, visiting the South German courts and those of France, Holland and England. On his return he married the countess Reventlow, became privy councillor and a count. He then went to London in the hope of obtaining the post of Hanoverian envoy there, but his wife formed a liaison with the prince of Wales, and he was forced to leave the Hanoverian service. He entered (1782) that of Brunswick, but here again his wife's conduct made his position untenable. They were divorced, and he then married a divorced woman. In 1792 Hardenberg was made administrator of the principalities of Ansbach and Bay reuth, which had just fallen to Prussia. He filled this difficult office with great skill, and used it to expand Prussian influence in South Germany. He then received a rising commission as Prussian envoy to the Rhenish courts, and presently succeeded Count Goltz as Prussian plenipotentiary at Basle where he signed (Feb. 28, 1795) the treaty with France.
In 1797, on the accession of Frederick William III., Hardenberg became a member of the Prussian cabinet. He acted as deputy for the foreign minister, Hangwitz, in 1803, and in 1804 succeeded him. The king desired to continue the policy of Prussian neutral ity, though he had made an agreement with Russia to take up arms in case of further aggression by Napoleon in north Germany. If there was to be war, Hardenberg would have preferred the French alliance, which was the price Napoleon demanded for the cession of Hanover to Prussia ; for the Eastern Powers would scarcely have conceded, of their free will, so great an augmentation of Prussian power. But he still hoped to gain the coveted prize by diplomacy, backed by the veiled threat of an armed neutrality. Napoleon's contemptuous violation of Prussian territory by march ing three French corps through Ansbach turned the scale, and the king signed (Nov. 3) with the tsar Alexander the terms of an ultimatum to be laid before the French emperor. The battle of Austerlitz, however, compelled submission. Prussia, indeed, by the treaty signed at Schonbrunn on Dec. 15, 18o5, received Han over, but in return for all her territories in South Germany. One condition of this arrangement was the retirement of Hardenberg, whom Napoleon disliked. He was again foreign minister for a few months after the crisis of 1806 (April–July 1807) ; but Napoleon's resentment was implacable, and one of the conditions of the terms granted to Prussia by the Treaty of Tilsit was Hardenberg's dismissal.
After the enforced retirement of Stein in 1810 and the inter lude of the feeble Altenstein ministry, Hardenberg was again sum moned to Berlin, this time as chancellor (June 6, 1810) . The cam paign of Jena had profoundly affected him. He broke with the old diplomacy, and was inspired with a passionate desire to restore the position of Prussia and crush her oppressors. In his retire ment at Riga he had worked out a plan for reconstructing the monarchy on Liberal lines; and though circumstances did not admit of his pursuing an independent foreign policy, he prepared for the struggle with France by carrying out Stein's far-reaching schemes of social and political reorganization. The military sys tem was completely reformed, serfdom was abolished, municipal institutions were fostered, the civil service was thrown open to all classes, and great attention was devoted to the educational needs of every section of the community.
After the Moscow campaign of 1812, Hardenberg, supported by the noble Queen Louise, determined Frederick William to take advantage of Gen. Yorck's loyal disloyalty, and declare against France. He was rightly regarded by German patriots as the statesman who had done most to encourage the spirit of national independence ; and immediately after he had signed the first Peace of Paris he was raised to the rank of prince (June 3, 1814) in recognition of the part he had played in the War of Liberation.
Hardenberg now had an assured position in that close corpora tion of sovereigns and statesmen by whom Europe, during the next few years, was to be governed. He accompanied the allied sovereigns to England, and at the congress of Vienna (1814-15) was the chief plenipotentiary of Prussia. But from this time the zenith of his influence, if not of his fame, was passed. In diplo macy he was no match for Metternich. At Vienna, in spite of the powerful backing of Alexander of Russia, he failed to secure the annexation of the whole of Saxony to Prussia; at Paris, after Waterloo, he failed to carry through his views as to the further dismemberment of France; he had weakly allowed Metternich to forestall him in making terms with the States of the Confedera tion of the Rhine, which secured to Austria the preponderance in the German federal diet; on the eve of the conference of Carlsbad (1819) he signed a convention with Metternich, by which—to quote the historian Treitschke—"like a penitent sinner, without any formal quid pro quo, the monarchy of Frederick the Great yielded to a foreign Power a voice in her internal affairs." At the congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laibach and Ve rona the voice of Hardenberg was but an echo of that of Metternich.
The cause lay partly in the difficult circumstances of the loosely knit Prussian monarchy, but partly in Hardenberg's character, which had deteriorated with age. He continued amiable, charm ing and enlightened as ever; but the excesses which had been par donable in a young diplomatist were a scandal in an elderly chan cellor, and could not but weaken his influence with so pious a Landesvater as Frederick William III. Hardenberg clung to office, and when the tide turned strongly against Liberalism he allowed himself to drift with it. He died at Genoa, on Nov. 26, 1822.
See L. v. Ranke, Denkwiirdigkeiten des Staatskanzlers Fursten von Hardenberg (5 vols., Leipzig, i877) ; J. R. Seeley, The Life and Times of Stein (3 vols., Cambridge, 1878) ; E. Meier, Reform der Verwalt ungsorganisation unter Stein and Hardenberg (ib., 1880 ; Chr. Meyer, Hardenberg and seine Verwaltung der Fiirstentiimer Ansbach and Bayreuth (Breslau, 1892) ; Koser, Die Neuordnung des preussischen Archivwesens durch den Staatkanzler Fursten v. Hardenberg (Leipzig, 1904) ; F. Hartung, Hardenberg and die preussische Verwaltung in Ansbach-Bayreuth, 1792-1806 (1906) ; P. Haake, Der preussische Verfassungskampf vor hundert Jahren (1921).