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Prince Karl Max von Lichnowsky

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"PRINCE KARL MAX VON LICHNOWSKY (1860-), German diplomatist, was born March 8 1860 at Kreuzenort in Upper Silesia. He entered the German Foreign Office in 1884 and from 1904 to 1911 held secretarial posts in different German embassies abroad. In 1912 he was sent to London as ambassador, and remained at that post until the outbreak of the World War. He took part in the negotiations for a convention with Great Britain regarding the Bagdad railway and various colonial questions, which was on the point of being signed when the crisis of July and August 1914 became acute. Lichnowsky was convinced that for years the relations between Germany and Great Britain had been mismanaged and misunderstood by the Foreign Office in Berlin, and, in particular, he believed that Bethmann Hollweg and his advisers failed to appreciate the pacific attitude and intentions of Sir Edward Grey and the British Government during the crisis that ended in the World War. He embodied his views in the pamphlet entitled Meine Londoner Mission, which he circulated privately in manuscript among his German friends. This document came into the hands of a harebrained enthusiast, Capt. von Beerfelde, who was the means of its being published, without authorization, in 1917. The publication exercised a very prejudicial effect upon the German war spirit and there were loud demands among the Conservative and National Liberals for the prosecution of the author. The Prussian Upper House, of which Lichnowsky was a member, passed a resolution excluding him from that assembly. It became impossible for him to live in Germany, and he sought refuge in Switzerland.