Background
Gottlieb von Jagow was bom in Berlin on June 22, 1863, the son of an army officer and estate owner; the family belonged to ancient Mark Brandenburg nobility.
Gottlieb von Jagow was bom in Berlin on June 22, 1863, the son of an army officer and estate owner; the family belonged to ancient Mark Brandenburg nobility.
Jagow studied law and then entered the Prussian bureaucracy, but in 1895 his patron, Bernhard von Biilow, convinced Jagow to transfer to the diplomatic corps.
By 1907 Jagow was envoy to Luxembourg; two years later he served in similar capacity in Rome. Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg appointed Jagow state secretary of the Foreign Office in January 1913. The diminutive aristocrat reluctantly accepted the call, plaintively writing Biilow: "Nothing has helped, I am appointed." Wilhelm II accepted the "little man" partly because of Jagow's self-effacing blandness and partly because he was the kaiser's fraternity brother in the Bonn Borussen.
Jagow was thoroughly convinced that a clash with Russia was inevitable, that a natural antagonism existed between the Germanic and Slavic peoples, and hence he encouraged Austria-Hungary against Russia while desiring an accommodation with England. This policy quickly brought Jagow into conflict with Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's vast fleet plans and led the foreign secretary to doubt the wisdom of the Schlieffen plan that called for violation of Belgian neutrality, guaranteed by both London and Berlin in 1839. However, Jagow's attempt to rethink the matter early in 1913 was hastily shelved. On the eve of the Great War, the state secretary still hoped to reach a colonial agreement with Britain, especially over Portugal's African possessions, and he worked hard to localize the Second Balkan War in 1913.
News of the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand reached Jagow during his honeymoon, and he returned to Berlin on July 6, 1914, only to learn that Wilhelm II and Bethmann Hollweg had already presented Count Leopold Berchtold in Vienna the famous "blank check," offering the Dual Monarchy full German backing in any European conflict arising from the Serbian question. Jagow was sufficiently realistic to see that Britain would not remain neutral in a general European war, but he hoped that Russia might at the last moment back down and allow Austria-Hungary to strengthen its position in the Balkans. While convinced that war with Russia was unavoidable, Jagow nevertheless did not believe that the summer of 1914 was the most propitious moment in which to strike. In the end, he bowed to the dictates of military mobilization.
Jagow became pessimistic about the outcome of the war as early as mid-September 1914, after the First Battle of the Marne. Thereafter, he counseled a moderate peace in the west and worked against those elements that desired the outright annexation of Belgium, the Channel coast, and Longwy-Briey. In the east, on the other hand, Jagow favored the creation of a satellite German Polish state and sought annexation of Courland and Lithuania. Generally speaking, the foreign secretary favored Bethmann Hollweg's Mitteleuropa concept, that is, the notion of a Central Europe dominated by Germany economically and politically from the North Sea to the Black Sea, and from Flanders to the Ukraine. But when Jagow opposed the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in November 1916 because it would lead to America's entry into the war, he was dismissed. Jagow regarded the decision of January 9, 1917, to resume the undersea campaign as the cardinal error of the war.
Gottlieb von Jagow was hardly a statesman of the Bismarckian mold. He accepted the post only reluctantly in 1913, aware that a frail constitution, precarious health, lack of parliamentary experience, and poor debating skills would greatly inhibit his effectiveness. The July crisis of 1914 fully revealed these shortcomings as Jagow proved unable to master the situation; above all, he failed miserably to uphold the primacy of politics. On the positive side, it should be noted that he faithfully supported the chancellor. The distorted negative portrait sketched of Jagow by Biilow and Tirpitz in their memoirs is unjust. Jagow died in Potsdam on January 11,1935.
He married Countess Luitgard Ernestine zu Solms-Laubach (Arnsburg, 17 December 1873 - Arnsburg, 24 January 1954) in Arnsburg on 18 June 1914.