Hermann Speck von Sternburg

1904 Sketch of von Sternburg, by Bob Satterfield

Hermann Speck von Sternburg (21 August 1852 Leeds, England – 23 August 1908 Heidelberg, Germany) was a German diplomat.

Education

Sterburg was educated in the Fürstenschule Saint Afra, Meissen, Saxony, and the military academy of Potsdam.

Career

Sternburg served in the military and fought through the Franco-Prussian War in the Second Saxon dragoons, and remained in the military service until 1885.

In 1890 Sternburg began his diplomatic career, being made successively first secretary of legation at Beijing, chargé d'affaires at Belgrade, Serbia, and first secretary of the embassy at Washington. In 1898 he was high commissioner on the Samoan Commission; became consul general for British India and Ceylon in 1900, minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary to the United States in 1903, and ambassador in July 1903, succeeding Theodor von Holleben. After navy bombardment of San Carlos island (Venezuela) by Kriegsmarine battleships on January 31, 1903 the U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt castigated von Sternburg for Germany's actions. Von Sternburg reported to Berlin that Germany had sacrificed what little sympathy it had in the United States.

Personal life

In December 1904, Sternburg married Lillian Langham, an American citizen.[1]

Sternburg died of complications from lupus in Heidelberg on August 23, 1908.[2]

His connoisseurship as an art collector became evident upon an auction of his collection after his death. The illustrated catalogue of The Important Collection of Art Treasures, formed by his Excellency the late Baron Speck von Sternberg, German Ambassador to the United States <https://archive.org/details/b1500532> demonstrates that as a cultured aristocrat and German Ambassador in many countries he collected works of art all over the world. The list of buyers of his collection is most impressive and some of his collections survive in museums today.

See also

Referenced

  1. ↑ WEDS BARON VON STERNBURG at the New York Times; published December 6, 1900; retrieved 7 December 2014
  2. ↑ (25 August 1908). Sternburg, Kaiser's Ambassador, Dead, The New York Times

Additional sources

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