The Reading Room
The OLL blog explores the fascinating, vital, and often surprising texts and people that fill our library. Come talk in our library!
OLL’s May Birthday: Friedrich von Gentz (May 2, 1764 – June 9, 1832)
This May’s Birthday Essay is in honor of the political journalist and statesman Friedrich Gentz. Though born a commoner, he called himself von Gentz after he was knighted by the Swedish crown in 1804. Gentz made an intellectual journey over the course of his life, from revolutionary liberal, to Whiggish “conservative liberal,” to reactionary practitioner of Realpolitik, all in the context of the Napoleonic age.