Oh, The Irony

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Wilhelm von Humboldt was an ardent patriot, and had put his faith in Prussia as the only agency through which the German lands could be freed. A prominent literary figure and a close friend of Schiller, he had neglected his career as a writer to become a Prussian minister and, in 1810, Prussia’s ambassador in Vienna. He was now forty-six years old and somewhat overshadowed by the reputation of his younger brother, the renowned naturalist and traveller Alexander von Humboldt. He was highly intelligent and dedicated, yet many found him difficult to like. He was censorious and at times priggish, which did not prevent him from liberally indulging a seedy taste for preferably fat lower-class girls whom he could treat as objects while writing curiously high-minded letters to his wife Caroline, his ‘dearest Li’.

Great book!
Adam Zamoyski
Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna