Charles Augustus

Charles Augustus (born September 3, 1757, Weimar, Eisenach—died June 14, 1828, Schloss Graditz, near Torgau, Weimar) was the Grossherzog (grand duke) of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, an enlightened ruler, and patron of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He made his court and the University of Jena leading intellectual centres of Germany during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Introduced to Goethe in 1774, Charles Augustus formed a lifelong friendship with the poet, who shared the grand duke’s patronage at Weimar with such other intellectuals as the philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder and the poet Friedrich Schiller.

A supporter of Prussia, Charles Augustus took part in the wars against Revolutionary France. After the battles of Jena and Auerstädt (1806), he was forced to join the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine. In 1813, however, he sided once again with a resurgent Germany, commanding a corps against Napoleon in the Netherlands. Weimar’s territories were increased at the Congress of Vienna (1815), and though he became a grand duke, Charles protested the congress’s reactionary spirit. The following year he granted his state a liberal constitution, becoming the first German ruler to do so.

Guaranteeing increased freedom of the press, the document made Weimar a focus for journalistic agitation against the prevailing conservatism of the system established at Vienna until Russian, Prussian, and Austrian pressure and the repressive Carlsbad Decrees (1819), passed by a conference of ministers of the more important German states, forced Charles Augustus to curtail his subjects’ liberties once again. Nevertheless, his patronage of the Allgemeine Deutsche Burschenschaft (Young Germany Movement), a liberal, idealistic student association, from 1818 helped launch that organization into national prominence.