GURRES, JAKOB JOSEPII VON, a distinguished German author, was h. at Coblenz, Jan. 25,1776. In common with most of the ardent youth of the time, Gorres threw himself eagerly into the movement of the French revolution; became an active member of the clubs and debating societies which sprung up in all the towns upon the French border, and established a newspaper, entitled the Red Journal, which was the exponent of the most extreme opinions of the time. In the year 1799 he went to Paris as the chief of a deputation to negotiate the annexation of the Rhineland to the French republic, but the revolution of the 18th Brumaire put an end to this and all similar dreams.. Gorres returned to Germany, disgusted with politics, quietly settled down in a professor ship in his native town, and devoted himself exclusively to literature for several years. His works on art, on physiology, on the laws of organism, and on the relations of faith and science, attracted much attention. In 1806 he published the first part of his well known collection of German Popular Legends; and in 1808 his work on the mythology of the Asiatic nations, and a further contribution to the legendary literature of Germany. From these studies, however, in common with the great body of the German nation, he was aroused to the hope of liberation from French tyranny, by the reverses of the French arms in the Russian expedition. Gorres was not slow to appeal to the national sentiment of his countrymen in the Rhenish Mercury, one of the most spirit-stirring journals which Germany had ever possessed; he became, in truth, the literary center of the national movement. After the re-establishment of German independence Giirres continued the
career of a journalist, and addressed himself against the encroachments of domestic absolutism with the same energy with which he had denounced the tyranny of foreign occupation; until, having drawn upon himself the displeasure of the government, he was obliged to flee to France, and afterwards to Switzerland. In 1827 lie gladly accepted the professorship of the history of literature in the new university just then founded at Munich by the liberal king Ludwig of Bavaria. From this date, Gorres made Munich his home, and his later years were devoted to literature, and in part also to the animated religions controversies occasioned inSermany by the contests between the archbishop of„Cologne and the Prussian government on the subject of mixed mar riages and Hermesianism. See HERMES. In all these controversies, Gorres, who was an ardent Roman Catholic, took an active and influential part. He was, if not the orig inator, at least the main supporter of the well-known Roman Catholic journal, the Ilistori,:vit-Politische _Matter. His last work of importance was his Ghristlische llfristik (Ratisbon, 1836-12). He died Jan. 27,1848. See the Ilistorisch-Poliiische Bliitter, 1848, and Herzog's 1?,ealencyclopadie.