Karl Ferdinand von Buol was an Austrian Empire diplomatist and statesman, who served as Foreign Minister of Austrian Empire from 1852 to 1859.
Occupation
diplomat, politician, foreign minister
Position held
Minister-President of Austria, foreign minister of Austrian Empire, ambassador of the Austrian Empire to Great Britain
Citizenship
Austrian Empire
Born
May 17, 1797, May 17, 1794
Died
October 28, 1865
Overview
Karl Ferdinand von Buol (; 17 May 1797 – 28 October 1865) was an Austrian diplomatist and statesman, who served as Foreign Minister of Austrian Empire from 1852 to 1859.
Early life
Karl was born in Vienna, a scion of a Grisons noble family descending from Fürstenau. His father Count Johann Rudolf von Buol-Schauenstein (1763–1834) from 1816 until 1823 chaired the Austrian delegation to the Bundesversammlung of the German Confederation. His mother was Countess Alexandrine von und zu Lerchenfeld (b. 1769).
Biography
He joined the Austrian foreign service and served successively as envoy to Baden at Karlsruhe (1828–1838), to Württemberg at Stuttgart (1838–1844), to Sardinia-Piedmont at Turin (1844–1848), to Russia at Saint Petersburg (1848–1850), to the German ministerial conference at Dresden 1850/51, and to the United Kingdom at London (1851–1852). He became an increasingly close associate of the Austrian Minister-President, Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg, and when Schwarzenberg suddenly died in April 1852, Buol succeeded him as foreign minister, although not as Premier, as the young Emperor Franz Joseph himself now took a more direct role in directing cabinet affairs than he had previously.
