Volume 14 , Issue 50

1912 - Feared American Wife

Also, one hundred years ago there was talk about the feared American wife as it pertained to German diplomats that married foreign women, American women. American women were paid a handsome left-handed compliment by the Kaiser in reviving Bismarck's decree that German diplomats shall not marry foreign women.

Germany's diplomatic service had been to no small degree Americanized int he past. The wife of the present (1912) ambassador at WAshington, Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, was an American and a great-grand daughter of John Jay. The wife of the late Ambassador Baron Speck von Sternberg was a Kentucky woman. The wives of General Hans Other von Schweinitz, soldier and ambassador; of Count Paul von Hatzfeldt-Wildenberg, once ambassador to England and afterward Foeign Minister; of Baron von Ketteler, minister to China, and Baron Ferdinand von Stamm, second secretary to the German embassy in America, were American women.

The danger to German diplomacy from such women is obvious. The influence of the American wife might eventually wean her German husband from monarchistic institutions and woo him to republican institutions. It was spoken, thought, that marrying an American woman was too much like adopting the American point of view.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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