BRUHL, HEINRICH, COUNT VON (17oo-1763), German statesman at the court of Saxony, was born on Aug. 13, 1700. He was placed as page with the dowager duchess of Weissenf els, and then at the court of Frederick Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony and king of Poland. Briihl, who began as page and chamberlain, was largely employed in procuring money for his ,master. He was successively chief receiver of taxes and minister for the interior in 1731. During the whole of the thirty years of the reign of Frederick Augustus II. he was the real inspirer of his master and the practical chief of the Saxon court. After 1738 he was in effect sole minister. The title of prime minister was created for him in 1746. Briihl must therefore be held wholly responsible for the ruinous policy which destroyed the position of Saxony in Germany between 1733 and 1763. His indiscretion was repeatedly responsible for the king of Prussia's discoveries of the plans laid against him. But the confidence of his master sur vived the ignominious flight into Bohemia, into which he was trapped by Briihl at the time of the battle of Kesseldorf, and all the miseries of the Seven Years' War. The favourite abused the confidence of his master shamelessly. Not content with the 67,00o halers a month which he drew as salary for his innumerable offices, Briihl abstracted more than five million halers of public money for his private use, and left a fortune of 1 million halers.
He died on Oct. 28, 1763, having survived his master only a few weeks.
His youngest son, HANS MORITZ VON BRUHL (d. 1811), was, before the Revolution of 1789, a colonel in the French service, and afterwards general inspector of roads in Brandenburg and Pomerania. His son, KARL FRIEDRICH MORITZ PAUL VON BRUHL (1772-1837), the friend of Goethe, was intendant-general of the Prussian royal theatres, and in 183o he was appointed intendant general of the royal museums.
See J. G. H. von Justi, Leben and Charakter des Grafen von Briihl (Gottingen, 1760-61).