Christian Alexander von Berg

Christian Alexander von Berg (14 September 1866 - 4 August 1935) was a German politician and member of the Nationalliberale Partei from 1900 to 1935.

Biography
Christian Alexander von Berg was born on September 14 1866 in Schloß Wahn in Köln. As the only child to a family of Rhenish nobles, Christian Alexander was afforded a high quality of education, including time spent at several boarding schools both in Germany and in Scotland and the presence of many tutors at his family estate by Meerbusch. He excelled at mathematics and philosophy, but was always bored by agricultural and military matters, angering his staunchly conservative and aristocratic father. His father sent him to the Prussian military academy to make a soldier of him. Christian Alexander performed poorly and was ultimately expelled after a riding accident left him with a limp. Christian then attended economics courses at the university of Berlin in spite of his father, graduating with a degree in 1889. He then began attending courses on philosophy, but left the university after his father’s passing in 1892. He then began selling off parts of his family’s estate to gather capital with which to build his fortune. In 1900, von Berg joined the Nationalliberale Partei and quickly rose through its ranks. In 1905, he was elected to the Reichstag and was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs. During his time in office, German diplomacy failed to prevent the outbreak of the Great War in 1909. In 1911, when the threat of an army coup was looming due to their opposition to Chancellor Elinor von Märchenlied, Kaiser Heinrich I called von Berg to the palace, along with the DNVP's Hermann zu Muskau and the SPD's Konstantin Brenner to get them to form a government of national unity. The meeting failed, but such a government was still formed after new elections were called. Christian Alexander von Berg continued to play a minor role in interbellum politics, his legacy mostly tainted by the Great War. He died on August 4 1935.