Prince Karl August von Hardenberg (1750-1822) served as chief minister of Prussia. He presided over the recovery of Prussia after the collapse of 1806 and guided the state's diplomacy.

Karl August von Hardenberg was born in Essenrode on May 31, 1750, and, as a young man, served in the bureaucracies of a number of small German states, including Hanover, Braunschweig, and Ansbach-Bayreuth. When the last was incorporated into Prussia in 1791, he was taken into the Prussian services, with the chief responsibility for governing that province. He also distinguished himself in various diplomatic assignments, so that by 1804 he was appointed Prussian foreign minister. The policy he recommended--strict neutrality in the Napoleonic Wars, combined with an attempt to acquire Hanover--would have been possible only with the help of Napoleon and was, to say the least, contradictory. Hardenberg was soon dropped by Frederick William III.

Hardenberg was recalled after the Prussian military collapse at...