Gustav von Blome

File:Gustav-Graf-Blome.jpg

Gustav von Blome, c. 1900

Otto Paul Julius Gustav Lehnsgraf von Blome (18 May 1829 – 24 August 1906) was a German-born Austrian diplomat, politician, and social reformer.

Biography

Blome was descended from the Blome noble family based on the Salzau estate in Schleswig-Holstein. He was the eldest son and heir of the Danish Privy Conference Councillor and Chamberlain Count Otto von Blome (1795–1884) and Princess Klementine Bagration (1810–1829). Their parents were Georgian Prince Pyotr Bagration and Princess Catherine Bagration, née Countess Skavronskaya, but it was generally known that Klementine was descended from her mother's liaison with Austrian Chancellor Prince Klemens von Metternich. Klementine Blome died shortly after the birth of her son Gustav. His father was elevated to the rank of Danish liege count on September 11, 1819, with a grant dated May 1, 1820.

Gustav Blome first attended the Knight academy at Lüneburg and then studied law at the University of Bonn. His participation in the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1848/1849 as a lieutenant in the Schleswig-Holstein army and orderly officer to General Eduard von Bonin made his entry into the Danish diplomatic service impossible. So he entered the diplomatic service of Austria, which took him to Saint Petersburg as attaché, to the legation in Paris as secretary, and to the Foreign Ministry in Vienna. In 1860, he came to Hamburg as envoy to the Hanseatic cities, and in 1864 to Munich as minister plenipotentiary to the Bavarian royal court. In 1865 he was the Austrian negotiator in those negotiations that finally led to the Gastein Convention on the Elbe Duchies on August 14, 1865. In the following year, 1866, he finally resigned from the diplomatic service.

Blome acquired Montpreis Castle in Lower Styria (today Planina pri Sevnici, Municipality of Šentjur, Slovenia) in 1862. He became royal imperial chamberlain, privy councillor, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary for disposition. From April 1867, he was a lifetime member of the Austrian House of Lords, where he represented Catholic conservative positions. He also became an honorary knight of the Order of Malta.

Gustav Graf Blome was strongly committed to sociopolitical reforms in the manor house and advocated, among other things, a reduction of working hours to a maximum of 10 hours, the professional organization of the economy, workers' accident insurance, Sunday rest and a ban on night work for women. On his own estate, he was already implementing these ideas himself wherever possible. He worked as a journalist for the daily newspaper Vaterland.

Against the energetic resistance of his father and under the encouragement of his aunt, the writer Ida Hahn-Hahn, Blome had converted to the Catholic faith in 1857. He married Josephine Countess von Buol-Schauenstein (1835–1916), the daughter of the Austrian ambassador and prime minister Karl Count von Buol-Schauenstein (1797–1865) and Caroline Countess von Isenburg-Birstein (1809–1861), in Maria Enzersdorf (Lower Austria) on September 1, 1858. The latter was the granddaughter of the Bavarian Lieutenant General Friedrich Wilhelm zu Isenburg und Büdingen (1730–1804) and his wife Karoline Franziska Dorothea von Parkstein (1762–1816), a natural daughter of Elector Charles Theodore von Kurpfalz-Bayern. Gustav and Josephine von Blome had a total of 10 children (4 boys and 6 girls). One of their daughters, Carola von Blome (1877–1951), became a nun, and Carola-Blome-Strasse in Salzburg is named after her.

Gustav von Blome is buried in the Kapellenfriedhof cemetery in Bad Kissingen.

References

• Lamberts, Emiel (2006). "A Peculiar Heir of Metternich: Gustav von Blome (1829–1906)". In: Bernhard Löffler, Karsten Ruppert (eds.), Religiöse Prägung und politische Ordnung in der Neuzeit. Festschrift für Winfried Becker zum 65. Geburtstag (= Passauer Historische Forschungen, 15). Köln: Böhlau.
• Lamberts, Emiel (2016). The Struggle with Leviathan. Social Responses to the Omnipotence of the State, 1815-1965. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
• Lamberts, Emiel (2018). Les Catholiques et l'État. Un Tableau Europeen. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.
• Preradovich, Nikolaus von (1955). "Blome, Gustav Lehnsgraf von". In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). 2. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, p. 315.
• Wurzbach, Constantin von (1870). "Blome, Otto Paul Julius Graf". In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich. 22. Wien: Kaiserlich-königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, p. 485.

External links

• Blome, Gustav Graf
• Online catalog at Berlin State Library