Clemens von Ketteler (diplomat)

The Kettelerbogen was built in 1903 over the place of death

The arch was moved to Zhongshan Park in 1918 (status in 2005)

Clemens von Ketteler's grave in the Münster Central Cemetery .

Baron Clemens August von Ketteler (born November 22, 1853 in Potsdam , † June 20, 1900 in Beijing ) was a German diplomat .

origin

Clemens von Ketteler came from the noble von Ketteler family from the Münsterland. Shortly after his birth in Potsdam, the family moved to Münster . His uncle was the bishop and central politician Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler , his nephew the diplomat Wilhelm Freiherr von Ketteler and another relative of the French marshal Louis Franchet d'Esperey . Ketteler's American wife Matilda Cass Ledyard had common ancestors with US Presidents George Bush and George W. Bush .

Life

After attending grammar schools in Münster and Coesfeld , where he passed his Abitur in 1873, Clemens von Ketteler joined the Prussian army . In 1879 he was appointed to the Foreign Service: from 1880 to 1889 he was initially an interpreter at the German consulates in Canton and Tientsin . After a brief activity in the Foreign Office, he served as envoy to the United States from 1892 to 1896 , and then from 1896 to 1899 in the same capacity in Mexico . On April 11, 1899, Ketteler was appointed German envoy in Beijing .

Circumstances of death

On the morning of June 20, 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion , he wanted to go to Zongli Yamen , the Chinese Foreign Ministry, accompanied by his interpreter Heinrich Cordes , to conduct negotiations. Previously, on June 17, the first real fighting between international armed forces and Chinese government troops occurred with the shelling and storming of the Taku forts near Tianjin after an ultimatum from the united eight states to the Chinese government had expired. The Qing government then declared war on these states. Despite warnings, Ketteler refrained from using a military escort.

After leaving the Legation Quarter and passing the Ha-Ta-Men Gate, Ketteler was shot dead at close range by a corporal of the Manchurian regiment on duty there called En-Hai. The perpetrator later stated that he acted on the orders of his superiors and because of a promised monetary reward. He was executed by beheading in December 1900. The course and background of the crime are still controversial today. Chinese historians even blame Ketteler for his death because he carried a pistol with him and shot immediately when he was stopped.

aftermath

The Ketteler assassination is part of a chain of incidents between boxers and foreigners in Beijing that began when the former advanced into the inner city districts in early June and foreign troops arrived to protect the embassies. On June 11, for example, the secretary of the Japanese embassy, ​​Sugiyama Akira, was murdered by General Dong Fuxiang's Muslim troops at the Yongding Gate . Ketteler's death marked the beginning of the siege of the Beijing Legation Quarter , which lasted until August 14, when Allied troops stormed the city.

The German Reich took part in the military intervention with an expeditionary force and claimed a leadership role - not least in the context of Ketteler's death. The intervention ended with the defeat of the Chinese and the conclusion of the so-called " Boxer Protocol " in September 1901. In Article I, the Chinese government undertook to apologize for the murder, to send an "expiatory mission" to Germany and one with the rank of Diplomats to erect a corresponding memorial at the site of the murder. In September 1901, Prince Chun II. Traveled to Potsdam to perform a ceremonial “act of atonement”.

Ketteler's successor as envoy in Beijing was Alfons Mumm von Schwarzenstein . Ketteler's body was first buried in a wooden box by the Chinese, after the uprising it was buried in the garden of the German embassy in Beijing before it was transferred to Germany. His grave is now in the central cemetery in Münster .

Commemoration

A memorial has been in memory of him in the castle garden in Münster since 1903. The memorial turned out to be significantly smaller than originally planned, as the large-scale fundraising campaign only generated a fraction of the estimated construction cost.

The Kettelerstraße in Münster is named after Clemens von Ketteler.

literature

Technical and non-fiction literature

• Susanne Kuss, Bernd Martin (Ed.): The German Reich and the Boxer Rebellion. Iudicium-Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-89129-781-5 ( Erfurt series on the history of Asia 2).
• Jean Mabire: Bloody Summer in Beijing. The Boxer Rebellion in eyewitness accounts. CA Koch's Verlag Nachf., Berlin, Darmstadt, Vienna 1978.

Fiction

• Hermann Schreiber: Sacrifice in Beijing - A book about the death of the envoy von Ketteler. Scherl, Berlin 1936.

filming

The US film 55 Days in Beijing with Charlton Heston , Ava Gardner and David Niven , shot in 1963 , deals with the assassination attempt on Freiherr von Ketteler and his interpreter Heinrich Cordes .

See also

• List of killed ambassadors

Web links

Commons : Clemens von Ketteler  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Walter Boy-Ed: Beijing and the surrounding area in 1900 ; Heckners Verlag, 1908 Wolfenbüttel
2. ↑ German State Handbook , 1963, p. 652.
3. ↑ wargs.com: Ancestry of George W. Bush , William Addams Reitwiesner
4. ^ Thomas Morlang: Denied memory - The Ketteler monument in Münster . In: Ulrich van der Heyden, Joachim Zeller (ed.): Colonialism in this country. A search for clues in Germany. Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-86680-269-8 , pp. 288–292 (here: pp. 289f., See also end note 8 with various sources on the possible course of events).
5. ↑ 1901, Boxer Protocol - Multilateral. Retrieved December 14, 2016 . 
6. ↑ Morlang 2007, p. 291.
7. ^ Kettelerstraße in street names in Münster. Meanings and backgrounds , accessed June 29, 2019.

predecessor	Office	successor
Theodor von Holleben	Envoy of the German Empire in Washington DC 1892–1896
Kurd von Schlözer	Envoy of the German Empire in Mexico City 1896–1899	Paul von Hintze
Edmund Friedrich Gustav von Heyking	German envoy in Beijing 1899–1900	Alfons Mumm von Schwarzenstein