Friedrich von Holstein
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Friedrich August von Holstein (24 April 1837 – 8 May 1909)[1] was a statesman of the German Empire and served as the head of the political department of the Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) for over thirty years.
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[edit] Biography
Holstein was born in Schwedt, Province of Brandenburg on 24 April 1837[1], the son of a Prussian officer. He studied jurisprudence at the Frederick William University of Berlin, graduating in 1856. Holstein joined the diplomatic service and in 1860 became an attaché at the Prussian embassy in Saint Petersburg under the authority of Otto von Bismarck and later served as a member of the legations at Rio de Janeiro, London, Washington, Florence and Copenhagen. During his time at Washington 1866/67 his relationship with Alice Mason Hooper, wife of Senator Charles Sumner, led to Holstein's withdrawal and the divorce of the couple.
With the establishment of the German Empire in 1871 Holstein became secretary of the ambassador in Paris, Harry von Arnim, a patroniser of the French royalists and a fierce opponent of Chancellor Bismarck, who finally enforced Arnim's discharge and conviction for breach of secrecy. Thereafter Holstein returned to Berlin, where he assumed office as legation secretary at the Auswärtiges Amt in 1876, both an essential and suspiciously eyed associate of Bismarck, who behind his back called him a "hyena". Holstein's career as an éminence grise was promoted by Bismarck's dismissal in 1890. The new chancellor, Leo von Caprivi, was ignorant of foreign affairs; and Holstein, as a repository of the Bismarckian tradition, became indispensable.
Holstein remained a bachelor all his life, regarded as a skilful though devious man. His reluctance to emerge into publicity has been ascribed to the part he had played under Bismarck in the Arnim scandal, which had made him powerful enemies; it was, however, possibly due to a shrinking from the responsibility of office. Yet the weakness of his position lay just in the fact that he was not ultimately responsible. He protested against the despatch of the Kruger telegram, but protested in vain. On the other hand, where his ideas were acceptable, he was generally able to realize them. Thus it was almost entirely due to him that Germany acquired Qingdao and asserted her interests in China, and the acquisition of Samoa was also largely his work.
If the skill and pertinacity with which Holstein carried through his plans in these matters was learned in the school of Bismarck, he had not acquired Bismarck's faculty for foreseeing their ultimate consequences. This is true of the abandonement of the Reinsurance Treaty with the Russian Empire in 1890, his Chinese policy and true also of his part in the First Moroccan Crisis which led to the Algeciras Conference in 1906. The emperor William II's journey to Tangier was undertaken on his advice, as a protest against the supposed attempt at the isolation of Germany; but of the later developments of German policy in the Morocco question he did not approve, on the ground that the result would merely be to strengthen the Anglo-French entente. From 12 March 1906 onwards he took no active part in the matter and resigned one month later.
To the last he believed that the position of Germany would remain unsafe until an understanding had been arrived at with British Empire, and it was this belief that determined his attitude towards the expansion of the Imperial Navy, beside which, he wrote in February 1909, all other questions are of lesser account. His views on this question were summarized in a memorandum of December 1907, of which Rath gives a resume. He objected to the programme of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and the Navy League on three main grounds: (I) the ill-feeling likely to be aroused in South Germany, (2) the inevitable dislocation of the finances through the huge additional charges involved, (3) the suspicion of Germany's motives in foreign countries, which would bind Britain still closer to France. As for the idea that Germany's power would be increased, he wrote in reply to a letter from Tirpitz' opponent Admiral Karl Galster, this was a simple question of arithmetic; for how would the sea-power of Germany be relatively increased if for every new German ship Britain built two?
Holstein died on 8 May 1909 in Berlin and is buried at the Invalidenfriedhof. His assets included extensive secret dossiers concerning German statesmen that were not published until 1956. Rumours that he may had been an informant of journalist Maximilian Harden in the Harden-Eulenburg Affair have never been conclusively established.
[edit] Literature
- Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War by Robert K. Massie. He is the subject of Chapter 6, "The Monster of the Labyrinth."
[edit] See also
- Fall of Eagles; he is portrayed in the 3rd episode under the name "Holstein."
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
