August von Dönhoff


August Karl Graf von Dönhoff-Friedrichstein was a Prussian nobleman and politician.

Life

Born in Frankfurt Dönhoff descended from the East Prussian branch of the Dönhoff. His father was the diplomat and Prussian foreign minister August Heinrich Hermann von Dönhoff, his mother Pauline, née Countess von Lehndorff. Dönhoff grew up on the family castle Friedrichstein not far from Königsberg and attended the Kneiphof Gymnasium. After the Abitur he studied law at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. In 1865 he became a member of the Corps Borussia Bonn. As a Prussian major he took part in the Austro-Prussian War at the age of 21. From 1868 to 1870 he was an articled clerk at the Kammergericht and then served again as a major in the Franco-Prussian War. Like his father, Dönhoff also embarked on a diplomatic career and worked as secretary of legation for the Empire in Paris, Vienna, London, Saint Petersburg and Washington. In Washington he made friends with the Interior Minister Carl Schurz and accompanied him on an adventurous journey to the American West. Dönhoff laid down his diplomatic duties when, after his father's death in 1874, he took over his hereditary seat in the Prussian House of Lords. At the 1881 German federal election he moved as representative of the German Conservative Party into the Reichstag. He was elected in the. He belonged to this group until 1903, representing the interests of the East Elbian nobility and large estates. In 1906 he became a Prussian landowner. In 1917 August von Dönhoff was one of the founding members of the German Fatherland Party, which advocated a perseverance policy and a peace of victory in the First World War. Dönhoff died at the age of 75 at the.

Family

In 1896 Dönhoff married in Karwitz the 24 years younger Maria von Lepel, with whom he had eight children: