Clemens von Ketteler

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Clemens August Freiherr von Ketteler 22 November 1853 - 20 June 1900) was a German career diplomat. He was murdered during the Boxer Rebellion, an event which prompted the Eight-Nation Alliance to declare war on China.

1 Family and early career
2 Death in Beijing
3 The Ketteler-Denkmal in Beijing
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Family and early career

Born at Potsdam, was born into a Prussian military family and his uncle Wilhelm Emmanuel Freiherr von Ketteler was a bishop and a prominent politician. Ketteler was educated for the army, but he resigned his commission and entered the Imperial German diplomatic corps in 1882. He served in China, Washington, D.C. and Mexico. He married an American woman, Matilda Cass Ledyard^[1].

[edit] Death in Beijing

Ketteler returned to China in 1899 as Plenipotentiary at Beijing, from where he pointed out in vain the dangerous situation for the Europeans.^[2] On 12 June 1900, when the Boxers moved to the inner city and burned down church buildings, Ketteler reacted by ordering German embassy guards to hunt them down. On 18 June, German troops captured a Chinese civilian suspected of being a Boxer in the inner city and took him to the Legation Quarter, where he was detained. The crowd which later gathered to demand his release were fired upon by Austrian guards; many were wounded. On 14 June Ketteler ordered guards to shoot at Boxers walking through the Legation Quarter and managed to kill 20 of them.

At 8.00 a.m. on 20 June, Ketteler, together with his interpreter and other associates, headed for the Zongli Yamen (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) accompanied by armed escorts. At the western end of Xizhongbu Hutong, only one block away from the ministry, the party ran into an Imperial Guards Brigade and were fired upon. Ketteler was killed in the ensuing firefight. Captain En Hai, the commander of the brigade, later gave himself up to the Allied occupying forces. He was subsequently tried and convicted, and was executed in Beijing on 31 December 1900.

[edit] The Ketteler-Denkmal in Beijing

After China's loss to the Eight-Nation Alliance in 1901, treaties were signed between China and eleven nations (the Eight Nations plus Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands). Prince Chun, father of the last emperor Puyi, travelled to Germany in his official capacity as ambassador extraordinary to express the regrets of Emperor Guangxu over the death of Ketteler to Kaiser Wilhelm II. A paifang or "memorial gate" called Ketteler-Denkmal (German: "Ketteler Memorial") was erected at the location where he fell. Work on this gate began on 25 June 1901 and was completed on 8 January 1903. On 13 November 1918, two days after Germany signed an armistice with the Allies, Ketteler-Denkmal was officially abolished. The following year, the gate was renamed "The Victory of Virtue Gate" and, later still, to "The Protection of Peace Gate" in 1953. [[]]