BUNSEN, CHRISTIAN CHARLES JOSIAS, BARON VON (1791-186o), Prussian diplomatist and scholar, was born on Aug. 25, 1791, at Korbach, Waldeck, and studied at Gottingen. In 1813 he travelled with W. B. Astor in Germany, and then turned to the study of the religion, laws, language and literature of the Teutonic races. He had read Hebrew when a boy, and now worked at Arabic, Persian and Norse. In 1815 he went to Berlin, to lay before Niebuhr the plan of research which he had mapped out. Niebuhr was so impressed with Bunsen's ability that, two years later, when he became Prussian envoy to the papal court, he made the young scholar his secretary. The intervening years Bunsen spent in assiduous labour among the libraries and collec tions of Paris and Florence. In July 1817 he married Frances Waddington, eldest daughter of B. Waddington of Llanover, Monmouthshire.
As secretary to Niebuhr, Bunsen was brought into contact with the Vatican movement for the establishment of the papal church in the Prussian dominions to provide for the largely increased Catholic population, and was among the first to realize the im portance of this new vitality on the part of the Vatican. He pur sued a conciliatory policy on the mixed marriages question, when he was put in charge of the legation on Niebuhr's resignation. But the brief (183o) in which the papal concessions were made was ambiguous. Count Spiegel, archbishop of Cologne, accepted a compromise at Berlin, but in 1835 he died, and was succeeded by the ultramontane Baron von Droste-Vischering, who adopted the extreme Catholic position and was removed from his diocese by the government. Bunsen, who was said to have recommended this coup, was then refused audience by the pope. The Prussian government, in this impasse, took the safest course, refused to support Bunsen, and accepted his resignation in April 1838.
After leaving Rome Bunsen spent two years as ambassador in Berne, and was transferred in 1842 to the London Embassy where he spent the rest of his official life. The accession to the throne of Prussia of Frederick William IV. (June 7, 1840) made a great change in Bunsen's career. Ever since their first meeting in 1828 the two men had exchanged ideas in an intimate correspon dence. Enthusiasm for evangelical religion and admiration for the Anglican Church they held in common, and Bunsen was selected for realizing the king's fantastic scheme of setting up at Jeru salem a Prusso-Anglican bishopric as a sign of the unity and aggressive force of Protestantism. The bishopric was established, endowed with Prussian and English money, and was for some forty years an isolated symbol of Protestant unity and a rock of stumbling to Anglican Catholics. His tenure of the London em bassy coincided with the critical period in Prussian and European affairs which culminated in the revolutions of 1848. Bunsen real ized the significance of the signs that heralded the coming storm, and tried in vain to move the king to a policy which would have placed him at the head of a Germany united and free. He felt bitterly the humiliation of Prussia by Austria after the victory of the reaction, and in 1852 he set his signature reluctantly to the treaty which, in his view, surrendered the "constitutional rights of Schleswig and Holstein." On the outbreak of the Cri mean War he urged Frederick William to throw in his lot with the western powers, and create a diversion in the north-east which would have forced Russia at once to terms. The rejection of his advice, and the proclamation of Prussia's attitude of "benevolent neutrality," led him in April 1854 to offer his resignation, which was accepted.
Bunsen retired to Bonn and in i855 published Die Zeichen der Zeit: Brie f e, etc. (2 vols.), which exercised an immense influence in reviving the Liberal movement which the failure of the revolu tion had crushed. Frederick William made him a baron in 1857. In 1858, at the special request of the regent (afterwards the em peror) William, he took his seat in the Prussian Upper House. Bunsen died on Nov. 28, 186o.
His Memoirs in 1868, contain much of his private correspond ence. The German translation (3 vols. 1868-71) of these Memoirs, published by his wife, has added extracts from unpublished docu ments. Baron Humboldt's letters to Bunsen were printed in 1869. His works include The Church of the Future (Eng. ed. 1847) ; Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte (5 vols. ; Ignatius von Antiochen ; God in History (3 vols. Leipzig, Eng. trans. 1870). His grandson, Sir Maurice de Bunsen (b. 1852), entered the English diplomatic service in 1877, was minis ter at Lisbon (19o5), ambassador at Madrid (1906), Vienna (1913) and special representative in the United States (1918-19) .
See also L. von Ranke, Aus dem Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms IV. mit Bunsen (1873) ; Biihring, Christian K. J. von Bunsen (1892) ; and Ulbricht, Bunsen and die deutsche Einherts bewegung (Iwo).