LOTHAR

BUCHER (1817–1892)  , German publicist, was born on the 25th of October 1817 at Neu Stettin, in Pomerania, his father being master at a gymnasium . After studying at the university of Berlin he adopted the legal profession . Elected a member of the National Assembly in Berlin in 1848, he was an active leader of the extreme democratic party . With others of his colleagues he was in 185o brought to trial for having taken part in organizing a movement for refusal to pay taxes; he was condemned to fifteen months' imprisonment in a fortress, but left the country before the sentence was executed . For ten years he lived in exile, chiefly in London; he acted as special correspondent of the National Zeitung, and gained a great knowledge of English life; and he published a work, Der Parliamentarismus wie er ist, a criticism of parliamentary government, which shows a marked change in his political opinions . In 186o he returned to Germany, and became intimate with Lassalle, who made him his literary executor . In 1864 he was offered by Bismarck, and accepted, a high position in the Prussian foreign office . The reasons that led him to a step which involved so complete a break with his earlier friends and associations are not clearly known . From this time till his death he acted as Bismarck's secretary, and was the man who probably enjoyed the greatest amount of his confidence . It was he who drew up the text of the constitution of the North German Confederation; in 187o he was sent on a very confidential mission to Spain in connexion with the Hohenzollern candidature for the Spanish crown; he assisted Bismarck at the final negotiations for the treaty of Frankfort, and was one of the secretaries to the congress of Berlin; he also assisted Bismarck in the composition of his memoirs . Bucher, who was a man of great ability, had considerable influence, which was especially directed against the economic doctrines of the Liberals; in 1881 he published a pamphlet criticizing the influence and principles of the Cobden Club . He identified him-self completely with Bismarck's later commercial and colonial policy, and probably had much to do with introducing it, and he did much to encourage anti-British feeling in Germany .

He died at Glion, in

Switzerland, on the 12th of October 1892 . See Heinrich v . Poschinger, Fin 48er: Lothar Buchers Leben and Werke (3 vols., Berlin, 189o) ; Busch, Bismarck: some Secret Pages of his History (London, 1898) . (J . W .