Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich (German: Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar Fürst von Metternich-Winneburg zu Beilstein) (May 15, 1773 – June 11, 1859) was a German-Austrian politician and statesman, and one of the most important diplomats of his era. He was a major figure in the negotiations leading to and at the Congress of Vienna and is considered both a paradigm of foreign policy management and a major figure on the development of diplomacy. He was the prime practitioner of 19th century diplomatic realism, deeply rooted on the balance of power postulates. Metternich for generations was castigated as a blind reactionary. After World War Two some historians pointed out that one of the main reasons for his opposition to the peoples’ power was his apprehension that eventually it will lead to the political dominance of German nationalism.

Metternich was born in Coblenz. His father, Count Franz George Karl von Metternich-Winneburge zu Beilstein, was a diplomat who had passed from the service of the Archbishopric of Trier to that of the court of Vienna. His mother was Countess Maria Beatrice Aloisia von Kagenegg.

At the time of Metternich's birth, and for some time after that, his father was Austrian ambassador to the courts of the three Rhenish electors, and the boy was at first brought up under the influence of the tone and ideas flourishing in the small German courts that lay within the French sphere of influence under the Ancien Regime.

In 1788, Metternich attended the University of Strasbourg, but the outbreak of the French Revolution caused him to leave after two years. In 1790, he was deputed by the Catholic bench of the Westphalian Circle to act as their Master of the Ceremonies at the coronation of the new Emperor Leopold II at Frankfurt, a function he repeated at the coronation of Francis II in 1792. He then found employment in the Chancery of the Austrian minister to the Government of the Netherlands.

The position of Austria, reduced by the Treaty of Schönbrunn to the level of a second-rate power, was one of great difficulty and danger, and of this Metternich was fully conscious. His first goal was to gain time and separate Napoleon from the Tsar. The power that seemed to attract him was France, Austria's late enemy, although he was determined not to lose his freedom of action by making great concessions.

Napoleon's request for the hand of the Austrian Emperor’s daughter, the Archduchess Marie Louise, fitted Metternich's plans admirably, and he accompanied the princess to Paris on March 13, 1810. The concessions that he wrung for Austria were quite small, but Metternich had managed to restore Austria's freedom to move. Metternich hurried back to Vienna on October 10, just in time to stop the pro-Russian party at the Austrian court from compromising this liberty by concluding an alliance with Russia and to win over the Emperor for his policy of armed abstention.

With the Franco-Russian War approaching, this policy became increasingly difficult to maintain in its entirety. Although Metternich concluded an alliance with Napoleon on March 14, 1813, promising military assistance in return for concessions that France was now obliged to offer, he at once informed Russia that Austria's troops would act only on the defensive and held out the prospect of a renewal of the old alliance of the conservative powers. When Napoleon suffered a catastrophe in Russia, Metternich extracted Austria from her alliance, reverted to neutrality, and soon maneuvered his country into the position of arbiter of Europe. When Metternich visited Napoleon at Dresden on June 26, he still served as an impartial mediator in an attempt to end the war and re-establish good relations between the three countries. Napoleon, however, was now interested only in taking complete control of Austria and Russia and stated, "We shall meet in Vienna."

After this meeting, Metternich understood that it was necessary to protect Austria. In the war that followed, he was chiefly anxious to ensure that the balance of power did not swing too far in any direction, strengthening neither Russia nor Prussia. The course of events forced him, against his wishes, to agree to the restoration of the Bourbons, but he was successful in ensuring the creation of a Federation of German states. Metternich also tempered the fear of a Russian dictatorship by promoting the principle of concerted action by the Great Powers according to international interests. This principle, after Napoleon's fall, governed the European political system.

The Liberal Revolutions of 1848 marked the end of Metternich's career. The Vienna mob stood thundering at the door of his cabinet demanding his resignation. This resignation was accepted by the Emperor on March 18, 1848, after which Metternich and his family left for England. There he lived in retirement, at Brighton and London, until October, 1849, when he moved to Brussels. In May, 1851, he travelled to his estate of Johannesberg, and in September he returned to Vienna. He was to die there.

Probably no statesman in his own day was as praised and spattered with abuse as Metternich, known as The Coachman of Europe. In one view, he was revered as the infallible oracle of diplomatic inspiration; in another, he was loathed and despised as the very incarnation of the spirit of obscurantism and oppression. The victories of democracy have brought the latter view into fashion, and to the liberal historians of the latter part of the 19th century, the name Metternich was synonymous with a system in which they could recognize nothing but senseless opposition. Reaction against this view found its fullest expression in the work of Heinrich Ritter von Srbik. Of the techniques of diplomacy, for example, Metternich was a master; his dispatches were models of diplomatic style. They were certainly sententious, over-elaborate, and excessively lengthy, but their phrase-making was often the result of astute calculation.

Metternich has earned the admiration of succeeding generations for his brilliant management of foreign policy. Henry Kissinger idolized Metternich, and studied him closely. He wrote his Harvard University Ph.D. dissertation, later published in 1957 under the title A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of the Peace 1812-1822, on the European negotiations for achieving a balance of power after Waterloo and praised Metternich's role in holding together the crumbling Austrian Empire.