Count Anton Alexander von Auersperg, also known under the name Anastasius Grün (11 April 1806 – 12 September 1876), was an Austrian poet and liberal politician from Carniola, a former Habsburg crown land in today's Slovenia.

[2] Anton's maternal uncle in law, and also paternal first cousin, was Count Rihard Ursini von Blagay, a Slovene aristocrat, botanist and patron of the arts.

Prešeren also dedicated an ironic short poem to Auersperg, called Tri želje Anastazija Zelenca ("Three Wishes of the Green Anastasius"), in which he made fun of the friend's bohemian lifestyle.

In 1860 he was summoned to the remodelled Reichsrat by the emperor, and next year nominated him a life member of the Austrian upper house (Herrenhaus), where, while remaining a keen upholder of the German centralized empire, as against the federalism the Slavs and Magyars, he greatly distinguished himself as one of the most intrepid and influential supporters of the cause of Realism, in both political and religious matters.

But Auersperg's fame rests almost exclusively on his political poetry; two collections entitled Spaziergänge eines Wiener Poeten (1831), an attack upon the Metternich regime, and Schutt (1835) created a sensation in Germany by their originality and bold Realism.