New Ambassador

Inquired the German Foreign Office of the U. S. Department of State, "Will Baron Doktor Friedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz (preetveets) und Gaffron be persona grata to you as Ambassador?"

U.S. Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg was for the moment uncertain. Who might this Dr. von Prittwitz be? Research showed him to be no more than Counselor of Embassy at the German Embassy at Rome. Was the German Government actually proposing to elevate a man of such minor rank to be an ambassador? Well, why not? He was evidently a capable, brilliant, clever diplomat. There was no reason why the U. S. should object to the appointment. The U. S. Secretary of State caused the German Government to be informed by cable that the President and Government of the U. S. considered Dr. von Prittwitz persona grata.

Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, delighted, informed Reichsprasident General-feldmarschall Paul Ludwig Hans von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg that the appointment of Dr. von Prittwitz might now be signed, and letters of credential to President Coolidge were forthwith made out officially naming him German Ambassador to succeed Baron Ago von Maltzan, recently killed in an airplane accident (TIME, Oct. 3).

The Nationalists, however, were angered. They recalled that Dr. von Prittwitz welcomed the advent of the German Republic in 1918 a trifle too enthusiastically and that even now, as a Democrat, he was a member of the November Ninth Club, a republican organization. Faced by a fait accompli, however, they drew in their horns and decided for the most part to "await events" before passing judgment on him.

Dr. von Prittwitz, as he likes to be known, is 44 years old, scion of an old Prussian family, the son of Colonel Max von Prittwitz.

After completing his legal studies he entered the diplomatic corps, being stationed at Washington and Petrograd before the War. During the conflict he was attached to the Chancellor's office and in 1920 he was appointed consul at Trieste. In the following year he was made Counselor of the Embassy at Rome, a post that he has held ever since.

In 1920 he married the wealthy and charming Grafin Marie Luise Strachwitz (strarkveets), daughter of the late Graf (Count) Adalbert Strachwitz von Gross-Zauche und Comminetz. They have a daughter, aged four.

It is seldom that a young diplomat is appointed to an ambassadorship without first having served as a minister to some relatively unimportant country. A recent case in the German diplomatic service is that of the now German Ambassador to France, Dr. von Hoesch, who was Counselor of the Embassy in Paris before being elevated to his present rank. However, Dr. von Prittwitz is reputedly one of the cleverest diplomats in the employ of the Reich and one that apparently enjoys the full confidence of his superiors in the Wilhelmstrasse.

He is said not only to be brilliant and adroit but a genial host, a good horseman and a "fair" tennis player.

Since the War, Germany has not always been fortunate in the choice of her diplomatic representatives to the U. S. The first post-war Ambassador was Dr. Otto Wiedfeldt, who incurred some sharp criticism when he refused to lower the German flag to half mast on the occasion of ex-President Woodrow Wilson's death. The second was Baron von Maltzan, who, although starting his diplomatic mission under the cloud of his predecessor, finally had achieved conspicuous success and popularity at the time of his death--an event which occasioned nationwide sympathy and sorrow in the U.S.