Heinrich von Gagern

Who was Heinrich von Gagern?

Heinrich Wilhelm August Freiherr von Gagern 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, and in 1819 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.