Klemens Wenzel Prince von Metternich 1773 – 1859

Klemens Wenzel Prince von Metternich 1773 – 1859 was a German Austrian politician and statesman who was one of the most important diplomats of his era.

…Schmit assures me of, namely. that Metternich has taken globules of Cuprum as a prophylactic…

Metternich’s wife was a patient of Matthias Marenzeller,

In fact, homeopathic medicine was prohibited under Metternich in 1819 due to the old medical legislation which threatened penalties to doctors who produced their own remedies ( Hahnemann: the adventurous career of a medical rebel.__ _Martin Gumpert. L.B. Fischer, 1945. Page 176 onwards), though Metternich and his family became strong advocates of homeopathy (The British Journal of  Homeopathy. Vol. XI. _John James Drysdale , John Rutherford Russell, Robert Ellis Dudgeon. 1853. Page 494).

Metternich had good reason to be grateful to homeopathy for the life of his General Johann Josef Wenzel Graf Radetzky von Radetz, and in 1870 a second hospital for homeopathy opened its gates in Pest. Its benefactress was Countess Zichy (nee von Metternich).

Metternich also consulted his allopathic physician Friedrich Jaeger von Jaxtthal, who was open minded enough to discuss Metternich with his homeopathic colleague, Charles Neidhard (the same Friedrich Jaeger von Jaxtthal who advised Johann Josef Wenzel Graf Radetzky von Radetz to consult homeopath Christophe Hartung).

Metternich knew Henry William Paget 1st Marquess of Anglesey, Napoleon Bonaparte, Baron Franz von Koller, David Ferdinand Koreff, Lajos Kossuth, Adam Heinrich Muller Ritter von Nittersdorf, Saloman Meyer Rothschild, Karl Philipp Schwarzenberg,

Metternich was a major figure in the negotiations before and during the Congress of Vienna and is considered both a paradigm of foreign-policy management and a major figure in the development of diplomatic praxis.

He was the archetypal practitioner of 19th century diplomatic realism, being deeply rooted in the postulates of the balance of power.

For generations, Metternich was castigated as a blind reactionary. After World War I, some historians suggested that one of the main reasons for his opposition to giving power to the people was his apprehension that it would eventually lead to the political dominance of German nationalism…

Probably no statesman was so praised, or so reviled, in his own day as Metternich. In one perspective, he was revered as the infallible oracle of diplomatic inspiration; in another, he was loathed and despised as an incarnation of the spirit of obscurantism and oppression.

The victories of democracy have made the latter view fashionable, and to the liberal historians of the latter part of the 19th century the very name Metternich was synonymous with a system in which nothing but senseless opposition to progress could be discerned. Reaction against this view found its fullest expression in the work of Heinrich Ritter von Srbik…

Metternich was a master of the techniques of diplomacy: for instance, his dispatches were models of diplomatic style. Although they could be excessively moralizing, over-elaborate and verbose, their phrasing was often the result of astute calculation.

Of interest:

Honore de Balzac wrote about a supposed meeting between Samuel Hahnemann and Metternich in Honoré de Balzac,