METTERNICH, PRINCE KLEMENS WENZEL VON°

METTERNICH, PRINCE KLEMENS WENZEL VON° (1773–1859), Austrian statesman. A supporter of Jewish rights in the German Confederation and abroad – although in Austria   itself he did little for the Jews – at the Congress of Vienna he consistently supported the liberal policy of karl august von hardenberg and wilhelm humboldt (see congress of vienna ). He repeatedly warned the senate of frankfurt on the Main not to infringe upon the rights of its Jewish community and sent letters of protest to hamburg , luebeck , and bremen when they deprived their Jewish citizens of their civil rights. During the 1819 Hep\! Hep\! riots he cautioned the Frankfurt authorities against letting matters get out of control. Metternich ordered his diplomatic agents to reveal France's complicity in the 1840 Damascus blood libel affair. A frequenter of the sophisticated Jewish salons of Vienna, he associated, for business and pleasure, with the patrician Jewish banking families to such a degree that the rothschilds were suspected of aiding his escape from revolutionary vienna in 1848. His right-hand man, Friedrich von Gentz, was also sympathetic to Jewish causes. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: M.J. Kohler, Jewish Rights at the Vienna Congress (1918), index; S. Baron, Die Judenfrage auf dem Wiener Kongress (1920), index; N.M. Gelber, Aktenstuecke zur Judenfrage am Wiener Kongress (1920); idem, in: JJLG, 18 (1926), 217–64; I. Kracauer, Geschichte der Juden in Frankfurt a. M., 2 (1927), 498–521; M. Gruenwald, Vienna (1936), index. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: E. Timms, in: YLBI 46 (2001), 3–18; N. Ferguson, ibid., 19–54.