It makes no difference if the world is offended because I have made Dr Goethe a member of my most important collegium without his having passed through the stages of minor official professor and councillor of state.

To this end Herder was summoned to Weimar to reform the educational system and the University of Jena attained the zenith of its fame under his rule.

[3] Meanwhile, in the affairs of Germany and of Europe the character of Karl August gave him an influence out of all proportion to his position as a sovereign prince.

[citation needed] He had early faced the problem presented by the decay of the Holy Roman Empire, and began to work for the unity of Germany.

After this, dissatisfied with the attitude of the powers, he resigned, but rejoined on the accession of his friend King Frederick William III to the Prussian throne.

On 14 October, the day after the battle, Weimar was sacked, and Karl August, to prevent the confiscation of his territories, was forced to join the Confederation of the Rhine.

He was the first of the German princes to grant a liberal constitution to his state under Article XIII of the Act of Confederation (5 May 1816) and his concession of liberty to the press made Weimar for a while the focus of journalistic agitation against the existing order.

Metternich dubbed him contemptuously der grosse Bursche for his patronage of the revolutionary Burschenschaften, and the celebrated festival held at the Wartburg by his permission in 1817, though in effect the mildest of political demonstrations, brought down upon him the wrath of the great powers.

[3] He left two surviving sons: Karl Frederick, by whom he was succeeded, and Karl Bernhard, a soldier, who, after the Congress of Vienna, became colonel of a regiment in the service of the King of the Netherlands, served as commander of the Dutch troops in the Belgian campaign of 1830 (the Ten Days' Campaign), and from 1847 to 1850 held the command of the forces in the Dutch East Indies.