Andreas Peter Bernstorff (28 August 173521 June 1797), also known as Andreas Peter Graf von Bernstorff, was a Danish diplomat and Foreign Minister. He was a guardian of civil and political liberty.

Background and early career

Bernstorff was born in Hanover as a nephew of the statesman Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff (1712-72), whose position probably introduced him to Danish politics. His uncle induced him to study in the German and Swiss universities and travel for some years in Italy, France, England and Holland, to prepare himself for a statesman’s career. During these years he made the acquaintance of the poets Gellert and Jacobi<!-- Johann Georg, born 1740? -->, the writer Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, the duc de Choiseul, and Gottfried Achenwall, the statistician. After his European tour, he joined the Danish state service, first as a courtier and then from 1760 as a state official, both in foreign political and financial matters. His career was slow but steady. During the 1760s, he placed himself as an able but not outstanding official closely connected to his uncle. In the Struensee years from 1770–71, he was dismissed, but soon he was recalled by the new regime of Ove Høegh-Guldberg. He worked at first in the financial and economical departments, and took a special interest in agriculture. The improvements he introduced in the tenures of his peasantry anticipated in some respects the agricultural reforms of the next generation.

In 1773, Bernstorff was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and his real Danish career began. He carried through the final solution of the Gottorp question through an exchange of territory with the Russian imperial family (in the 1773 Treaty of Tsarskoye Selo) and a Russian alliance. In general he supported a pro-Russian (but independent) line trying to hold Sweden in check. Since he saw Sweden as "Denmark-Norway's most active and irreconcilable enemy" and France as a Swedish ally,

Posthumous honours

Bernstorff Fjord and Bernstorff Glacier in Eastern Greenland were named after Andreas Peter Bernstorff.

The Bernstorff-Gymnasium Satrup, a school in Schleswig-Holstein, is named after both Andreas Peter von Bernstorff and his uncle Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff.

References

;Attribution

Sources

  • Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, vol. 2., 1980.