Karl Stein

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The Prussian statesman Baron Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein (1757-1831) was the initiator and planner of the Prussian recovery after the collapse of 1806.

Baron Stein was born in Nassau on Oct. 26, 1757, the scion of an ancient knightly family. He studied at the University of Göttingen and entered the Prussian administrative service as an expert on mining in 1780. He served reliably but without extraordinary distinction in that capacity for a quarter century. Most of his service was in the detached Prussian provinces of Cleves and Jülich, a circumstance that led him to conclude that centralized absolutism of the sort that characterized most 18th-century states could not be made to work very well. In 1804 he was appointed minister of commerce but was dismissed after 2 years by Frederick William III for insisting too stridently on administrative reform.

Stein retired to his residence at Nassau and composed a memorandum in which he declared that the only way that Prussia could recover from its collapse at the hands of Napoleon was to turn away once and for all from sterile absolutism and to associate all of its people with the Crown in the great work of regeneration. This argument so impressed the King that he not only recalled Stein but appointed him prime minister with extensive and unprecedented powers (1807). Stein at once proclaimed an end to serfdom and opened all professions to every citizen. He decentralized the administration, transforming the larger towns into practically self-governing units, while standardizing administrative procedures throughout the realm. He also laid plans for calling to life elective assemblies which would share in the power of the Crown and which would be elected by all landowners.

Stein was unable to effect this last reform, as his conduct of foreign policy brought about his fall. Unable to obtain from a victorious Napoleon a reduction of the enormous indemnities he was demanding from Prussia, Stein tried to convince the Austrians to join Prussia in a renewal of the war. These negotiations came to the attention of the French, and at their insistence, Stein was once again dismissed (1808). Four years later he was called to Russia as special adviser to Czar Alexander I and there worked on behalf of the Russian government to bring Prussia back into the war against Napoleon, which he succeeded in doing in 1813. In his exile he had concluded that only a united Germany could prevail among its more powerful neighbors. But, as this notion pleased neither his King nor the all-powerful Austrian chancellor Prince Metternich, who preferred to see Germany continue divided into a multitude of independent and powerless states, many of which would be dependent on Austria's goodwill, Stein found himself isolated at the Congress of Vienna. He retired into private life in 1816 and died at his castle, Kappenberg, on June 29, 1831.

Further Reading

Information on Stein and his times can be found in Guy S. Ford, Stein and the Era of Reform in Prussia (1922); Walter M. Simon, The Failure of the Prussian Reform Movement, 1807-1819 (1955); Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 2 (1964); R. C. Raack, The Fall of Stein (1965); and K. S. Pinson, Modern Germany (2d ed. 1966).

Stein, Karl, Reichsfreiherr vom und zum (Nassau/Lahn, 1757-1831, Schloß Kappenberg, Westphalia), Prussian statesman, who planned far-reaching reforms of the Prussian administrative system during the Napoleonic occupation (see Napoleonic Wars).

Having studied law and politics at Göttingen University, Stein began his career in the Prussian civil service in 1780. His experience in various, administrative branches and a study tour to England strengthened his belief that the state should be a community of free citizens entrusted with responsibility as well as service. Unlike the French revolutionaries, he believed in an emancipation of the subjects within the existing class system. It needed the crisis of Jena (1806) to convince Friedrich Wilhelm III of the necessity of such radical changes as Stein envisaged. Even so it was not until after the Peace of Tilsit (July 1807) that the King entrusted Stein with hitherto unparalleled ministerial authority. Stein's three edicts laid the new foundations of the Prussian state: that of 9 October 1807 effected the emancipation of the peasants, which included the abolition of serfdom; that of 19 November 1808 established municipal self-government by elected councils; and that of 24 November introduced the centralization and reorganization of the machinery of government, aiming at a parliamentary constitution. On the same day, however, Friedrich Wilhelm yielded to Napoleon's demand to dismiss Stein. Napoleon's suspicions were well founded, for, like Scharnhorst, Stein was preparing a move against the French, and a letter revealing his intentions had been intercepted by the French. Banned by Napoleon, Stein went into exile in Bohemia. He never returned to high office, but in the critical years to come he proved an important agent in the rapprochement between Prussia and Russia.

At the opening of Napoleon's Russian campaign, Alexander I called Stein as an unofficial adviser to St Petersburg, where he worked out plans for the reorganization of Germany, and on the victorious advance of the Russian troops he won the Tsar's support for an alliance with Prussia and an all-out campaign against Napoleon. It was more difficult to win the support of the Prussian king. Both Hardenberg, since 1810 Stein's successor as chancellor, and General von Yorck brought pressure upon the King, while public opinion, stirred up by Stein in East Prussia, became likewise a factor in the new alliance which led to the Wars of Liberation. But Stein's plans for the reorganization of Germany remained unrealized in spite of his presidency of the Central Administration (October 1813) responsible for occupied territory. And although he attended the Congress of Vienna (1815, see Wiener Kongress) as the unofficial adviser of Alexander, he had no authority to curb the overriding influence of the Austrian minister Metternich. Stein spent the remainder of his years at Schloß Kappenberg. A few years before his death he accepted an appointment as marshal of the Provincial Estates (Provinziallandtag) in Westphalia. The Prussian king marked Stein's visit to Berlin in 1827, after eighteen years of absence, by naming him a member of the Council of State (Staatsrat).

In 1815 Stein met Goethe in Cologne Cathedral (which both happened to visit after the city's liberation) and in Nassau; he asked Goethe to submit (without reference to his name) a memorandum to Hardenberg urging Prussia to acquire Sulpiz Boisserée's collection of medieval German works of art, which, however, went to Munich. In 1819 Stein founded the Gesellschaft für Deutschlands ältere Geschichtskunde, for which he achieved recognition in 1827 by being elected honorary member of the Berlin Academy. The idea that led to the foundation of the Monumenta Germaniae historica arose from his desire to teach his daughter history based on facts and documents. The insistence on facts was a characteristic feature of this statesman, who had inspired his age with the idea of German unification while standing aloof from Romantic fantasy and idealism as well as from Prussian bureaucracy, and who (as Hardenberg stated) combined the rare qualities of learning, intellect, and common sense. Unlike Bismarck, to whom he is comparable in stature, Stein was always at heart a German rather than a Prussian. In 1858 E. M. Arndt published a book of recollections.

Briefe und Schriften (6 vols.), ed. G. H. Pertz, appeared 1849-55, and Briefe und sämtliche Schriften (10 vols.), ed. W. Hubatsch, 1957-73.

Karl Stein may refer to:

• Karl Stein (politician)
• Karl Stein (mathematician), eponym of Stein manifold

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