Karl Ernst Jarcke

Karl Ernst Jarcke (10 November 1801, in Danzig, Prussia – 27 December 1852, in Vienna) was a German publisher and professor of criminal law, who took a conservative stance towards revolutionary movements in the early nineteenth century.

It met the emphatic approval of the circle of friends of the then Crown Prince (later King Frederick William IV of Prussia), which was composed of men of anti-revolutionary views, influenced by Romanticism and by Karl Ludwig von Haller.

In 1832 Metternich called him to the State Chancery in Vienna to succeed the late Friedrich von Gentz.

Jarcke's ideal was the "Germanic State" of the Middle Ages; at its head an hereditary monarch, all claims of the princes on their subjects to be regulated by treaties, the state to be occupied only with the defence in war and the administration of justice; in domestic affairs entirely unrestricted opportunities for development within the confederacy.

Of "political necessities", "measures for the welfare of the state", and of a "constitution" Jarcke wished to know nothing, except perhaps of a restriction of the royal prerogative by an advisory popular assembly, which however must be representative of the professions and the interests at stake, not merely founded on a general or property qualification franchise.