Eric Berthoud

Eric Alfred Berthoud (born December 10, 1900 in Kensington , London , † April 29, 1989 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent) was a British industrialist and diplomat . He officiated a. a. as British ambassador to Denmark (1952–1956) and Poland (1956–1960).

Life and activity

Berthoud was the second of three sons of the banker Alfred Edward Berthoud and his wife Hélène, nee. Christ, who came from a Swiss banking family. After visiting the Gresham's School in Holt, Norfolk , he studied at Magdalen College of Oxford University , which he in 1922 with a degree in chemistry left.

From 1922 to 1926 Berthoud worked for the Anglo-Autrian Bank in Vienna and Milan. In 1926 he joined the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP), for which he worked successively in Paris (1926 to 1929 and 1935 to 1939) and Berlin (1929 to 1935).

In 1939, Berthoud moved from business to civil service by making himself available to the British Ministry of Fuel and Power. He then worked as an expert on oil matters at the British mission in Bucharest until diplomatic relations between Great Britain and Romania were broken off. In secret he was in the service of the Special Operations Executive, an organization of the British government responsible for secret warfare measures in German-occupied Europe. He paid particular attention to the destruction of the Romanian oil wells in order to remove them from the reach of the German armies. From 1942 until the end of the Second World War, Berthoud was involved in tasks related to securing gasoline supplies for the Allies. For this purpose he was used, among other things, as the Commercial Secretary in Cairo.

After the end of the Second World War, Berthoud was assigned to the Allied Control Commission for Austria. He spent the following years working on the drafting of the post-war peace treaties and the Marshall Plan .

From 1948 to 1952 Berthoud served as one of several assistant under-secretaries of the Foreign Office in London, where he was primarily responsible for the management of economic areas of foreign policy. In November 1952 he was appointed British Ambassador to Denmark, where he worked until 1956. In October 1956 he was transferred to Poland, where he served as ambassador until 1960. As ambassador to Poland, he was an early advocate of reconciliation between Poland and Germany, considering the recognition of the Oder-Neisse border by the (West) German state and the rejection of the Hallstein Doctrine as necessary prerequisites for achieving this goal. He retired in May 1960.

Berthoud continued to work for BP in retirement. He was also a member of the Anglo-Polish Round Table Conference. He was also the founding chairman of the University of Essex Education in 1965.

family

In 1927 Berthoud married Ruth Tilston, a daughter of the engineer Charles Bright. The marriage resulted in three sons and two daughters.

Fonts

• An unexpected life. Anchor Press, Tiptree 1980. (Memoirs)

literature

• Julian Bullard: Entry on Eric Berthoud in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , 2004.