August Franz Ludwig Maria, Baron von Haxthausen-Abbenburg (February 3, 1792, in Bökendorf, Prince-Bishopric of Paderborn – December 31, 1866, in Hanover) was a German agricultural scientist, economist, lawyer, writer, and collector of folk songs, best known for his account of conditions in Russia as revealed by his 1843 visit.
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Life
August was the last of eight sons of Werner Adolf, Freiherr von Haxthausen (1744-1823), "a typical prosperous backwater planter," and the Baroness Luise Marianne von Westphalen zu Heidelbeck (d. 1793), who also had nine daughters. Born on the family estate in Abbenburg, Haxthausen was sent to the Warburg estate of his uncle, Baron von Kalenberg, to be reared; there he received a traditional Catholic Liberal arts education while living in rural surroundings.
Haxthausen studied in University of Halle, where he joined the Corps Guestphalia Halle in 1810. He completed his studies under the Bökendorf priest and at the mining school at Clausthal, where he studied until 1812. In that same year, the Haxthausen estates were affected by the peasant uprising against the Bonapartist client state, the Kingdom of Westphalia. While this revolt has since been alleged to have been, "in some measure a rebuke to the dominant landed class", the Haxthausen family chose to support the rebellion, which they admired, "as an act of defiance by true Germans against conditions created by the foreign domination". This view strongly influenced the young August and inspired his participation in what are now known in the Germanosphere as the Wars of Liberation against the First French Empire. His literary activities as part of the poets and writers devoted to German Romanticism who met at Schloss Bökerhoff at this time are recorded by his closest friends, the Brothers Grimm, with whom he shared a passion in German folklore, mythology, and fairy tales, which he collected from his fellow soldiers and hoped to publish (some selections from his planned collection were published posthumously). Haxthausen was a direct contributor to the Brothers Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM). He personally supplied KHM 10 (Das Lumpengesindel) ("The Pack of Ragamuffins"), recorded from the Paderborn region on 19 May 1812 and included in the collection's first edition that same year. The von Haxthausen family also provided two of the oral accounts behind KHM 27 (Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten) ("The Bremen Town Musicians"), added to the second edition in 1819.