Wilfred Hansford Gallienne

Wilfred Hansford Gallienne (born May 20, 1897 in Guernsey , † July 17, 1956 there ) was a British diplomat .

Life and activity

Gallienne was a son of Peter and Lily Gallienne. From 1914 to 1917 he took part in the First World War with the Royal Field Artillery . After being seriously wounded, he was transferred to the War Department in London in 1917 .

In 1919 Gallienne joined the British diplomatic service. He began his career in 1920 as the British Vice Consul in Marseille . After he had initially exercised this position on probation, he was permanently appointed to her on July 22, 1920. This was followed by uses in Algiers (transfer on June 14, 1922) and Chicago (transfer on November 10, 1925).

On February 18, 1929 Gallienne was appointed British Chargé d'Affaires and consul in Santo Domingo ( Dominican Republic ). In the same year he represented the British government as a specially appointed special envoy at the inauguration of the island nation's president. This was followed by periods of service as executive consul in Los Angeles (transferred to there on July 8, 1931) and Detroit (transferred to there on December 10, 1932). On June 3, 1933, Gallienne was promoted to interim chargé d'affaires and consul in Tegucigalpa , Honduras. On October 9, 1933, he was given the rank of 2nd Secretary in the diplomatic service.

From September 9, 1935, Gallienne held the post of Acting Consul with the rank of 1st Secretary (Acting Consul with the Rank of 1st Secretary) in Estonia . His regular appointment to this post took place on February 2, 1936. Together with the representative of Estonia, he lived in May 1937 at the coronation of George VI. to the King of Great Britain.

Due to the military development of this time, Gallienne Estonia had to be promoted to the rank of special envoy (envoy extraordinary) and plenipotentiary minister (minister plenipotentiary) of the British government at the Estonian government in Tallinn shortly before on June 7, 1940 - left in autumn 1940.

In the spring of 1940, the National Socialist police officers put Galienne on the special wanted list GB drawn up by the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin , a directory of people who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, would be located by a special SS commando following the occupation troops with special priority should be made and arrested.

Instead, Gallienne was sent to New York as consul of the United Kingdom on January 21, 1941. In January 1942 he was then transferred to the post of British Consul in Chicago, where he remained for more than five years. On September 23, 1942 he was appointed acting consul (Acting Consul-General) and officially promoted to this rank on November 16, 1944. On November 14, 1947, he moved to Guatemala as a British Special Plenipotentiary, Plenipotentiary Minister and Consul General (Envoy Extraordinary, Minister Plenipotentiary and Consul General) to Guatemala , where he worked until March 1954.

In 1954, Gallienne reached the high point of his career when he was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Cuba on May 20, 1954. He remained in this post until his death.

Gallienne was Commander of the British Empire from January 1, 1931 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts from 1949 .

family

Since 1921 Gallienne was married to Rose Estick.

literature

• Obituary in: Journal of the Royal Society of Arts , Vol. 104, 1956, p. 751.
• "WH Gallienne Dies. Ex-British Consul in City", in: Chicago Tribune, July 19, 1956 ( digitized version )
• Foreign Office: The Foreign Office List and Diplomatic and Consular Year Book , 1963, p. 256.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Gallienne on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .