Prince Hermann Ludwig Heinrich von Pückler-Muskau (30 October 1785 - 4 February 1871) was a German nobleman who who wrote books about his travels.

He was born at Muskau in Lusatia. He served for some time in the bodyguard at Dresden, and afterwards travelled in France and Italy. In 1811, after the death of his father, he inherited the barony of Muskau and a considerable fortune. As an officer under the duke of Saxe-Weimar he distinguished himself in the war of liberation and was made military and civil governor of Bruges.

After the war he retired from the army and visited England, where he remained about a year. In 1822, in compensation for certain privileges which he resigned, he was raised to the rank of Fürst by the king of Prussia. In 1817 he had married the Dowager Countess Lucie von Pappenheim, née von Hardenberg, daughter of Prussian statesman Prince Karl August von Hardenberg; the marriage was legally dissolved after nine years, in 1826, though the parties did not separate and remained on amicable terms.

He again visited England and travelled in America and Asia Minor, living after his return at Muskau, which he spent much time in cultivating and improving. In 1845 he sold this estate to Prince Frederick of the Netherlands , and, although he afterwards lived from time to time at various places in Germany and Italy, his principal residence was his seat, Schloss Branitz near Kottbus , where he laid out splendid gardens as he had already done at Muskau.

In 1863 he was made an hereditary member of the Prussian Herrenhaus, and in 1866 he attended the Prussian general staff in the war with Austria. He died at Branitz on the in 1871, and, in accordance with instructions in his will, his body was cremated.

As a writer of books of travel he held a high position, his power of observation being keen and his style lucid and animated. His first work was Briefe eines Verstorbenen (4 vols., 1830-1831), in which he expressed many independent judgments about England and other countries he had visited and about prominent persons whom he had met. Among his later books of travel were Semilassos vorleiter Weltgang (3 vols., 1835), Semilasso in Afrika (5 vols., 1836), Aus Mehemed Ali's Reich (3 vols., 1844) and Die Rückkehr (3 vols., 1846-1848). He was also the author of Andeutungen über Landschaftsgärtnerei (1834).

References

• Ludmilla Assing-Grimelli , ed.,, Pückler-Muskaus Briefwechsel und Tagebücher (9 vols., Hamburg 1873-1876, reprinted Bern 1971)
• Fürst Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (1873)
• Eduard Petzold , Fürst Hermann von Pückler-Muskau in seiner Bedeutung fur die bildende Gartenkunst (1874)