BERNSTORFF, CHRISTIAN GUNTHER, COUNT vox (1769-1835), Danish and Prussian statesman and diplomatist. son of Count Andreas Peter von Bernstorff, was born at Copen hagen on April 3, 1769. He began his career in 1787, as attache to the representative of Denmark at the opening of the Swedish diet. In 1789 he went as secretary of legation to Berlin, where his maternal uncle, Count Leopold Friedrich zu Stolberg, was Danish ambassador; he was soon charge d'affaires, and in 1791 minister plenipotentiary. He was ambassador at Stockholm from until May 1797, when he was summoned to Copenhagen to act as substitute for his sick father, on whose death (June 21) he suc ceeded as secretary of state for foreign affairs and privy council lor. In 1800 he became head of the ministry. He remained responsible for the foreign policy of Denmark until May 181o, a fateful period which saw the battle of Copenhagen (April 2, 18o1), the bombardment of Copenhagen and capture of the Danish fleet in 1807. After his retirement he remained without office until his appointment in 1811 as Danish ambassador at Vienna. He remained here, in spite of the fact that for a while Denmark was nominally at war with Austria, until, in January 1814, on the accession of Denmark to the coalition against Napoleon, he pub licly resumed his functions as ambassador. He accompanied the emperor Francis to Paris, and was present at the signature of the first peace of Paris. With his brother Joachim, he represented Denmark at the congress of Vienna and, as a member for the commission for the regulation of the affairs of Germany, was responsible for some of that confusion of Danish and German interests which was to bear bitter fruit later in the Schleswig Holstein question. He again accompanied the allied sovereigns to Paris in 1815, returning to Copenhagen the same year. In 1817 he was appointed Danish ambassador at Berlin, his brother Joachim going at the same time to Vienna. In the following year Prince Hardenberg made him the formal proposition that he should transfer his services to Prussia, which, with the consent of his sovereign, he did.
It was, therefore, as a Prussian diplomat that Bernstorff at tended the congress at Aix-la-Chapelle (Oct. 1818), at the close of which he returned to Berlin as minister of state and head of the department of foreign affairs. Bernstorff was by train ing and temperament opposed to the Revolution, and he was initiated into his new duties as a Prussian minister by the reac tionary Ancillon. He is accused of having subordinated the par ticular interests of Prussia to the European policy of Metternich and the "Holy Alliance." It is true that Bernstorff supported the Carlsbad decrees, and the Vienna Final Act ; he was also the faithful henchman of Metternich at the congresses of Laibach, Troppau and Verona. On the other hand, he took a considerable share in laying the foundations of the customs union (Zollverein), which was destined to be the foundation of the Prussian hegemony in Germany. In his support of Russia's action against Turkey in 1828 also he showed that he was no blind follower of Metternich's views. In the crisis of 183o his moderation in face of the warlike clamour of the military party at Berlin did much to prevent the troubles in Belgium and Poland from ending in a universal Euro pean conflagration. In the spring of 1832 the state of his health compelled him to resign the ministry of foreign affairs to Ancillon. He died on March 28, 1835.
See J. Caro in Allgem. Deutsch. Biog. s.v.; H. von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte (Leipzig, 1874-94) ; C. Ringhoffer, Ein Dezennium preussischer Orientpolitik . . . 1821-3o (1897) .