Johann Georg Rist (23 November 1775 - 5 February 1847) was a Danish author, diplomat and statesman, originally from Holstein.
[1] Johann Georg Rist was born in Niendorf, at that time a prosperous village on the edge of Altona in Holstein, and today a quarter in Hamburg.
He also found time for frequent visits to the theatre in nearby Weimar, where he often encountered Goethe, already a celebrity, who made a great impression on Rist.
[1] In 1797, invited by another of his student friends, he visited Copenhagen where he made the acquaintance of the Danish Finance Minister, Ernst Heinrich von Schimmelmann.
At this time, to the frustration of more enthusiastic belligerent nations, Denmark and Russia were both navigating a path through the shifting alliances of the Napoleonic Wars based on armed neutrality, as a result of which they were allied with each other.
[1] In 1828 he relocated to Altona in Holstein which, though close in terms of geography, was politically very separate from Hamburg which had recovered and then built on much of its traditional autonomy after 1815.
[2] When a regional government for Schleswig-Holstein was established at Schleswig on 1 October 1834,[3] Rist became First Councillor, a position he would retain till 7 September 1846.