Friedrich von Gentz

Friedrich von Gentz (1764 to 1832) was a Prussian-Austrian diplomat and writer. Born in Breslau and educated in Berlin and at the University of Königsberg, where he became acquainted with the thought of Immanuel Kant, he entered Prussian service as a secretary to the royal Generaldirektorium. He greeted the French Revolution with enthusiasm but was converted to more conservative views by Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, which he translated into German in 1794, and he founded and edited the monthly journal Neue deutsche Monatsschrift. With the Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich he was one of the main forces behind the organisation, management and protocol of the Congress of Vienna.