Gustav, Count of Schlabrendorf (22 March 1750 – 21 August 1824), described in various sources as a "citizen of the world" ("Weltbürger"), was a political author and an enlightenment thinker. During or shortly before the first part of 1789 he relocated to Paris from where he enjoyed a ringside seat for the unfolding phases of the French Revolution which, initially, he enthusiastically supported. He backed the revolutionary precepts of "Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood". He soon had reason to become mistrustful of the revolution's radicalisation, however, and during the "Terror" ("Terreur") period spent more than 17 months in prison, avoiding a terminal rendezvous with the guillotine only through an administrative oversight. He subsequently wrote several critical works about Napoléon Bonaparte. It was a reflection of his increasingly idiosyncratic lifestyle that by the 1820s he was becoming known as "The Hermit of Paris" (or, in certain more scholarly contemporary sources, "Eremita Parisiensis"): he was happy to endorse the soubriquet, on occasion using it to describe himself.
Life
Provenance and early years
was born in Stettin, at that time a recovering war-ravaged port city in the Prussian Province of Pomerania (and since 1945 a Polish city known internationally by its Polish-language name as Szczecin). He was the third son of Ernst Wilhelm von Schlabrendorf by his marriage to Anna Carolina von Otterstaedt, from the aristocratic Dahlwitz family. The two families had been close for a number of generations. Soon after Gustav's birth, his father was appointed First Minister of Silesia. As a result of the promotion the family moved, in 1755, to the Silesian capital, Breslau (as Wrocław was known at that time). The job of integrating the prosperous and recently annexed Silesian territories into the Kingdom of Prussia was a major challenge, but it was one for which Ernst Wilhelm von Schlabrendorf was apparently well rewarded in various ways. On 20 March 1763 the king made him a special gift of 50,000 Thalers. By the time he died in 1769 his family was, by the standards of the time and place, conspicuously wealthy. Gustav von Schlabrendorf spent most of his childhood in Silesia. He received a thorough and comprehensive schooling from tutors and then, in 1767, moved on to Hochschule (university) level education in Frankfurt am Oder where he remained till 1769. Between 1769 and 1772 he continued his studies at Halle. He had enrolled to study Law, which would have provided a conventional preparation for a career in public administration. Gustav von Schlabrendorf, however, interpreted his curricular opportunities more widely, studying ancient and Modern Languages along with Philosophy and the Arts. He was also drawn to Freemasonry which had arrived in Prussia from England and Scotland earlier that century. In 1777 he was accepted into the "Minerva zu den drei Palmen" ("Minerva of the three palm trees") lodge in Leipzig.
Travels
His father's death at the end of 1769 left Gustav von Schlabrendorf well provided for. Since 1766 he had also been receiving income from a benefice in Magdeburg which his father had set up for him back in 1753. He could therefore afford to broaden his education with a succession of lengthy trips across the German lands, the Swiss Confederacy, France and England. In the end he based himself in England for six years. He was, in particular, intrigued and impressed by the uniqueness of the country, by its constitutional structure, its highly developed industries and, not least by its philanthropic institutions based around its national church For some of his time in England he was accompanied by the distinguished anglophile aristocrat, Baron vom Stein. During this period he also established what would become a long-lasting friendships with the enlightenment philosopher, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. and the radical old-Etonian polemicist Horne Tooke.