Freiherr Klemens August von Ketteler

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clemens_von_Ketteler http://genealogics.org/getperson.php?personID=I00388559&tree=LEO

BIOGRAPHY Son of Freiherr August von Ketteler and Cäcilie von Luck und Witten, Klemens August was born posthumously 22 November 1853 in Potsdam. Educated for the army, he resigned his commission and entered the diplomatic corps in 1882. He worked in China, at Washington D.C., and in Mexico. He married Maud Cass Ledyard 24 February 1897 in Detroit, Michigan. He returned to China in 1899 as Plenipotentiary at Peking, and was killed when shot in his sedan chair by a Chinese officer on 16 June 1900. His death triggered the declaration of war on China by the foreign powers.

Due to an inferior army and navy, China had been forced to sign agreements known as the 'Unequal Treaties'. These include the Treaty of Nanking (1842), the Treaty of Aigun (1858), the Treaty of Tientsin (1858), the Convention of Peking (1860), the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), and the Second Convention of Peking (1898). The Catholic Church's prohibition on some Chinese rituals and traditions was one of the issues of contention. This resentment gradually increased and resulted in civil disobedience and violence towards both foreigners and Chinese Christians. The rebellion was started by the 'Righteous Harmony Society', known as the 'Boxers'. The Boxer rebellion concentrated in northern China where the European powers had begun to demand territorial, rail and mining concessions. Imperial Germany responded to the killing of two missionaries in Shandong province in November 1897 by seizing the port of Quingdao. Russia then took possession of Lushun, Britain took Weihar and France took Zhanjiang.

In a small village in Shandong province, there had been a long dispute over the property rights of a temple between locals and Catholic authorities. The Catholics claimed the temple was originally a church abandoned decades before when Christianity was banned in China. The local court ruled in favour of the Church, angering the villagers. After the local authorities seized the temple and gave it to the Catholics, villagers under the leadership of the Boxers attacked the church.

The Boxers, after having been defeated by imperial troops in October 1898, dropped their anti-government slogans and turned their attention to foreign missionaries and their converts. The Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi decided to use the Boxers to remove the foreign powers from China and issued edicts in defence of the Boxers, which brought heated complaints from foreign diplomats in January 1900.

In June 1900 the Boxers, joined by elements of the Imperial army, attacked foreign compounds within the cities of Tianjin and Peking. The legations of the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, Russia and Japan were all located on the same city block close to the Forbidden City, built there so that Chinese officials could keep an eye on the ministers. The legations themselves were strong structures surrounded by walls. Hurriedly the legations were linked into a fortified compound and became a refuge for foreign citizens in Peking.

However the Spanish, Belgian, and German legations were not in the same compound. Although the Spanish and Belgian legations were only a few streets away and their staff were able to arrive safely at the compound, the German legation was on the other side of the city and was stormed before the staff could escape. When the Envoy for the German Empire, Klemens, Freiherr von Ketteler, was kidnapped and killed, on 20 June the foreign powers declared open war against China.

The Chinese Court in turn proclaimed hostilities against those nations, who began to prepare military forces to relieve the besieged embassies. In Peking, the fortified legation compound remained under siege from Boxer forces from 20 June to 14 August. Under the command of the British minister to China, Claude Maxwell MacDonald, the legation staff and security personnel defended the compound with one old muzzle-loaded cannon and small arms. Despite their efforts, the Boxer rebels were unable to break into the compound, which was relieved by the international army of the Eight-Nation Alliance. Troops from all nations engaged in plunder, looting and rape. German troops in particular were criticized for their enthusiasm in carrying out Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany's 27 July order to 'make the name German remembered in China for a thousand years so that no Chinaman will ever again dare to even squint at a German'. This speech, in which Wilhelm invoked the memory of the 5th-century Huns, gave rise to the British derogatory name 'Hun' for their German enemy during the First World War.

On 7 September 1901, the Quing court was compelled to sign the 'Boxer Protocol', also known as Peace Agreement between the Eight-Nation Alliance and China, undertaking to execute ten officials linked to the outbreak and to pay war reparations of 333 million dollars. The court's humiliating failure to defend China against the foreign powers contributed to the growth of republican feeling, which was to culminate a decade later in the dynasty's overthrow and the establishment of the Republic of China.

Ketteler's widow died 30 November 1960 in Detroit.