Max von Gagern

Who was Max von Gagern?

Max von Gagern was a German liberal politician.

He was the son of Hans Christoph von Gagern, minister of state in Nassau; he attended the gymnasiums at Kreuznach, Mannheim, and Weilburg, and studied law from 1826 at Heidelberg, Utrecht, and Göttingen. After a stay in Paris he received in 1829 a position in the cabinet of William I, King of the Netherlands. At the outbreak of the Belgian Revolution he joined the Dutch army as a volunteer and took part in the war against Belgium. In 1833 he retired from the service of the Netherlands, married Franzina Lambert, of The Hague, and took up historical studies in order to fit himself for the position of Privatdozent at Bonn University. He was at Bonn during the years 1837-40. In 1837, although still a Protestant, he sided with the imprisoned Archbishop of Cologne, Droste-Vischering, and thus lost the favour of the Prussian Government. In 1840 he was appointed ministerial successor with the title of Legationsrat by the Duke of Nassau.

On 28 August 1843, he joined the Roman Catholic Church. Although naturally very religious he had grown indifferent to religion during his student life and his residence in the Netherlands. Acquaintance with Catholics and with the historian George Frederick Böhmer, who was friendly to Catholicism, awakened in him respect and veneration for the Church. The chief sources of his Catholic knowledge were, as he himself says, the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, the study of Johann Möhler's Symbolik, and the New Testament. His conversion did not affect the favour of the Duke of Nassau who appointed him in 1844 extraordinary envoy to the Courts of the Netherlands and Belgium.