Augustus Charles was the son of Constantine, duke of Saxe-Weimar- Eisenach, and Anna Amalia of Brunswick, was born on the 3rd of September 1757.
His father died when he was only nine months old, and the boy was brought up under the regency and supervision of his mother, a woman of enlightened but masterful temperament.
Charles' governor was Count Eustach von Gorz, a German nobleman of the old strait-laced school; but a more humane element was introduced into his training when, in 1771, Wieland was appointed his tutor.
In 1774 the poet Karl Ludwig von Knebel came to Weimar as tutor to the young Prince Constantine; and in the same year the two princes set out, with Count Gorz and Knebel, for Paris.
At Frankfort, Knebel introduced Karl August to the young Goethe: the beginning of a momentous friendship.
One of the first acts of the young grand-duke was to summon Goethe to Weimar, and in 1776 he was made a member of the privy council. "
People of discernment, " he said, " congratulate me on possessing this man.
His intellect, his genius is known.
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 the undiscerning, the beneficial effect of this appointment was not at once apparent.
With Goethe the " storm and stress " spirit descended upon Weimar, and the stiff traditions of the little court dissolved in a riot of youthful exuberance.
Karl August, however, had more serious tastes.
He had early faced the problem presented by the decay of the Empire, and began to work for the unity of Germany.
The plans of the emperor Joseph II, which threatened to absorb a great part of Germany into the heterogeneous Habsburg monarchy, threw him into the arms of Prussia, and he was the prime mover in the establishment of the league of princes (Furstenbund) in 1785, by which, under the leadership of Frederick the Great, Joseph's intrigues were frustrated.
He was, however, under no illusion as to the power of Austria, and he wisely refused the offer of the Hungarian crown, made to him in 1787 by Prussia at the instance of the Magyar malcontents, with the dry remark that he had no desire to be another " Winter King. "
As such he was present, with Goethe, at the cannonade of Valmy in 1792, and in 1794 at the siege of Mainz and the battles of Pirmasenz (September 14) and Kaiserslautern (October 28-30).
The disastrous campaign of Jena (1806) followed; on the 14th of 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.
His services in the war of liberation were rewarded with an extension of territory and the title of grand-duke; but his liberal attitude had already made him suspect, and his subsequent action brought him still further into antagonism to the reactionary powers.
He was the first of the German princes to grant a liberal constitution to his state under Article XIII of the Act of Confederation (May 5, 1816); and his concession of ftxll 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 1818, though in effect the mildest of political demonstrations, brought down upon him the wrath of the great powers.
Karl von Dalberg, the prince-primate, who owed the coadjutorship of Mainz to the dixke's friendship, said that he had never met a prince " with so much understanding, character, frankness and true-heartedness "; the Milanese, when he visited their city, called him the " uomo principe"; and Goethe himself said of him " he had the gift of discriminating intellects and characters and setting each one in his place.
Charles was inspired by the noblest good-will, the purest humanity, and with his whole soxd desired only what was best.
He would gladly have wrought the happiness of all mankind.
And finally, he was greater than his surroundings, .
at Weimar in 1863.
In Karlsruhe on 3 October 1775, after Charles returned to Weimar, he married Luise Auguste.
Karl August's only daughter, Caroline, married Frederick Louis, hereditary grand-duke of Mecklenburg- Schwerin, and was the mother of Helene (1814 - 1858), wife of Ferdinand, duke of Orleans, eldest son of King Louis Philippe.
