biography
| name: |
Metternich, Klemens (Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar), Fürst von (Prince of)
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pronunciation:
[meternikh]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1773–1859)
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| biography:
| Austrian statesman, born in Koblenz, W Germany. He studied at Strasburg and Mainz, was attached to the Austrian embassy at The Hague, and became Austrian minister at Dresden, Berlin, and Paris. In 1809 he was appointed Austrian chancellor and foreign minister, and negotiated the marriage between Napoleon and Princess Marie Louise. He took a prominent part in the Congress of Vienna (1814), obstructing Russia's intended annexation of Poland and Prussia's acquisition of the state of Saxony. Between 1815 and 1848 he was the most powerful influence for conservatism in Europe. In setting up a German confederation under Austrian leadership, he managed to maintain the status quo in Germany (‘papering over the cracks’), but failed in his attempt to use the Quadruple Alliance as a means of preventing revolution. However, he remained Europe's leading statesman until he was ousted by the 1848 Revolutions, having contributed much to the tension that produced those upheavals. After the fall of the imperial government in that year, he fled to England, and in 1851 retired to his castle of Johannesberg on the Rhine. |
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