Heinrich von Gagern

Heinrich Wilhelm August Freiherr von Gagern (20 August 1799 – 22 May 1880) was a statesman who argued for the unification of Germany.

The third son of Hans Christoph Ernst, Baron von Gagern, a liberal statesman from Hesse, Heinrich von Gagern was born at Bayreuth, educated at the military academy at Munich and, as an officer in the service of the duke of Nassau, fought at Waterloo.

Leaving the service after the war, he studied jurisprudence at Heidelberg, Göttingen and Jena, where he became a member of the Urburschenschaft. In 1819, he went for a while to Geneva to complete his studies. In 1821 he began his official career as a lawyer in the grand-duchy of Hesse, and in 1832 was elected to the second chamber. Already at the universities he had proclaimed his Liberal sympathies as a member of the Burschenschaft, and he now threw himself into open opposition to the unconstitutional spirit of the Hessian government, an attitude which led to his dismissal from the state service in 1833. Henceforth he lived in comparative tiny a farm rented by his father at Monsheim, and occasionally publishing criticisms of public affairs, until the February revolution of 1848 and its echoes in Germany recalled him to active political life. For a short while he was at the head of the new Hessian administration; but his ambition was to share in the creation of a united Germany.

At the Heidelberg meeting and the preliminary convention (Vorparlament) of Frankfurt he deeply impressed the assemblies with the breadth and moderation of his views; with the result that when the German national parliament met (18 May), he was elected its first president. His influence was at first paramount, both with the Unionist party and with the more moderate elements of the Left, and it was he who was mainly instrumental in imposing the principle of a united empire with a common parliament, and in carrying the election of the Archduke John as regent. With the growing split between the Great Germans (Grossdeutschen), who wished the new empire to include the Austrian provinces, and the Little Germans (Kleindeutschen), who realized that German unity could only be attained by excluding them, his position was shaken.

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