Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Delbrück, Martin Friedrich Rudolf von

DELBRÜCK, MARTIN FRIEDRICH RUDOLF VON, a Prussian statesman, born in 1817. After serving for 15 years with the Prussian Bureau of Commerce, he became, in 1859, Director of the Department of Commerce and Industry, in which capacity he consolidated German industry and negotiated important treaties with France, England, Belgium, and other countries. In 1867 he was appointed president of the Chancery of the North-German Confederation, and in the following year was appointed a Prussian minister of state. He was strongly under the influence of Bismarck and was in reality a representative of that statesman. He carried out several important missions to foreign courts. He had much to do with the conclusion of the treaties of Versailles in November, 1870. Until 1876 he was President of the Imperial Chancellery, when he came in conflict with Bismarck over the policy of state railway ownership. In 1881 he retired to private life and died in 1903.