this connexion that Napoleon referred to him as “a wretched scribe named Gentz, one of those men without honour who sell themselves for money.” In this mission Gentz had no official mandate from the Austrian government, and whatever hopes he may have cherished of privately influencing the situation in the direction of an alliance between the two German powers were speedily dashed by the campaign of Jena.
The downfall of Prussia left Austria the sole hope of Germany and of Europe. Gentz, who from the winter of 1806 onwards divided his time between Prague and the Bohemian watering-places, seemed to devote himself wholly to the pleasures of society, his fascinating personality gaining him a ready reception in those exalted circles which were to prove of use to him later on in Vienna. But, though he published nothing, his pen was not idle, and he was occupied with a series of essays on the future of Austria and the best means of liberating Germany and redressing the balance of Europe; though he himself confessed to his friend Adam Müller (August 4th, 1806) that, in the miserable circumstances of the time, his essay on “the principles of a general pacification” must be taken as a “political poem.”
In 1809, on the outbreak of war between Austria and France, Gentz was for the first time actively employed by the Austrian government under Stadion; he drafted the proclamation announcing the declaration of war (15th of April), and during the continuance of hostilities his pen was ceaselessly employed. But the peace of 1810 and the fall of Stadion once more dashed his hopes, and, disillusioned and “hellishly blasé,” he once more retired to comparative inactivity at Prague. Of Metternich, Stadion’s successor, he had at the outset no high opinion, and it was not till 1812 that there sprang up between the two men the close relations that were to ripen into life-long friendship. But when Gentz returned to Vienna as Metternich’s adviser and henchman, he was no longer the fiery patriot who had sympathized and corresponded with Stein in the darkest days of German depression and in fiery periods called upon all Europe to free itself from foreign rule. Disillusioned and cynical, though clear-sighted as ever, he was henceforth before all things an Austrian, more Austrian on occasion even than Metternich; as, e.g., when, during the final stages of the campaign of 1814, he expressed the hope that Metternich would substitute “Austria” for “Europe” in his diplomacy and—strange advice from the old hater of Napoleon and of France—secure an Austro-French alliance by maintaining the husband of Marie Louise on the throne of France.
For ten years, from 1812 onward, Gentz was in closest touch with all the great affairs of European history, the assistant, confidant, and adviser of Metternich. He accompanied the chancellor on all his journeys; was present at all the conferences that preceded and followed the war; no political secrets were hidden from him; and his hand drafted all important diplomatic documents. He was secretary to the congress of Vienna (1814–1815) and to all the congresses and conferences that followed, up to that of Verona (1822), and in all his vast knowledge of men and affairs made him a power. He was under no illusion as to their achievements; his memoir on the work of the congress of Vienna is at once an incisive piece of criticism and a monument of his own disillusionment. But the Liberalism of his early years was gone for ever, and he had become reconciled to Metternich’s view that, in an age of decay, the sole function of a statesman was to “prop up mouldering institutions.” It was the hand of the author of that offensive Missive to Frederick William III., on the liberty of the press, that drafted the Carlsbad decrees; it was he who inspired the policy of repressing the freedom of the universities; and he noted in his diary as “a day more important than that of Leipzig” the session of the Vienna conference of 1819, in which it was decided to make the convocation of representative assemblies in the German states impossible, by enforcing the letter of Article XIII. of the Act of Confederation.
As to Gentz’s private life there is not much to be said. He remained to the last a man of the world, though tormented with an exaggerated terror of death. His wife he had never seen again since their parting at Berlin, and his relations with other women, mostly of the highest rank, were too numerous to record. But passion tormented him to the end, and his infatuation for Fanny Elssler, the celebrated danseuse, forms the subject of some remarkable letters to his friend Rahel, the wife of Varnhagen von Ense (1830–1831). He died on the 9th of June 1832.
Gentz has been very aptly described as a mercenary of the pen, and assuredly no other such mercenary has ever carved out for himself a more remarkable career. To have done so would have been impossible, in spite of his brilliant gifts, had he been no more than the “wretched scribe” sneered at by Napoleon. Though by birth belonging to the middle class in a country of hide-bound aristocracy, he lived to move on equal terms in the society of princes and statesmen; which would never have been the case had he been notoriously “bought and sold.” Yet that he was in the habit of receiving gifts from all and sundry who hoped for his backing is beyond dispute. He notes that at the congress of Vienna he received 22,000 florins through Talleyrand from Louis XVIII., while Castlereagh gave him £600, accompanied by les plus folles promesses; and his diary is full of such entries. Yet he never made any secret of these gifts; Metternich was aware of them, and he never suspected Gentz of writing or acting in consequence against his convictions. As a matter of fact, no man was more free or outspoken in his criticism of the policy of his employers than this apparently venal writer. These gifts and pensions were rather in the nature of subsidies than bribes; they were the recognition by various powers of the value of an ally whose pen had proved itself so potent a weapon in their cause.
It is, indeed, the very impartiality and objectivity of his attitude that make the writings of Gentz such illuminating documents for the period of history which they cover. Allowance must of course be made for his point of view, but less so perhaps than in the case of any other writer so intimately concerned with the policies which he criticizes. And, apart from their value as historical documents, Gentz’s writings are literary monuments, classical examples of nervous and luminous German prose, or of French which is a model for diplomatic style.
A selection of Gentz’s works (Ausgewählte Schriften) was published by Weick in 5 vols. (1836–1838); his lesser works (Mannheim, 1838–1840) in 5 vols. and Mémoires et lettres inédites (Stuttgart, 1841) were edited by G. Schlesier. Subsequently there have appeared Briefe an Chr. Garve (Breslau, 1857); correspondence (Briefwechsel) with Adam Müller (Stuttgart, 1857); Briefe an Pilat (2 vols., Leipzig, 1868); Aus dem Nachlass Friedrichs von Gentz (2 vols.), edited by Count Anton Prokesch-Osten (Vienna, 1867); Aus der alten Registratur der Staats-Kanzlei: Briefe politischen Inhalts von und an Friedrich von Gentz, edited by C. von Klinkowström (Vienna, 1870); Dépêches inédites du chev. de Gentz aux Hospodars de Valachie 1813–1828 (a correspondence on current affairs commissioned by the Austrian government), edited by Count Anton von Prokesch-Osten the younger (3 vols., Paris, 1876), incomplete, but partly supplemented in Österreichs Teilnahme an den Befreiungskriegen (Vienna, 1887), a collection of documents of the greatest value; Zur Geschichte der orientalischen Frage: Briefe aus dem Nachlass Friedrichs von Gentz (Vienna, 1877), edited by Count Prokesch-Osten the younger. Finally Gentz’s diaries, from 1800 to 1828, an invaluable mine of authentic material, were edited by Varnhagen von Ense and published after his death under the title Tagebücher, &c. (Leipzig, 1861; new ed., 4 vols., ib. 1873). Several lives of Gentz exist. The latest is by E. Guglia, Friedrich von Gentz (Vienna, 1901). (W. A. P.)
GEOCENTRIC, referred to the centre of the earth (Gr. γῆ) as an origin; a term designating especially the co-ordinates of a heavenly body referred to this origin.
GEODESY (from the Gr. γῆ, the earth, and δαίειν, to divide), the science of surveying (q.v.) extended to large tracts of country, having in view not only the production of a system of maps of very great accuracy, but the determination of the curvature of the surface of the earth, and eventually of the figure and dimensions of the earth. This last, indeed, may be the sole object in view, as was the case in the operations conducted in Peru and in Lapland by the celebrated French astronomers P. Bouguer, C. M. de la Condamine, P. L. M. de Maupertuis, A. C. Clairault and others; and the measurement of the meridian
