Ulrich von Gienanth

Ulrich Ernst Kurt, Baron of Gienanth Ulrich Ernst Kurt, Freiherr von Gienanth
Gienanth in Eisenberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, West Germany, 1954. Photo by Robert Mottar (1919–1967).
Born	6 June 1907 Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia, Germany
Died	10 December 1996 (aged 89) Eisenberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
Nationality	German

Not to be confused with his uncle, Curt Ludwig Freiherr von Gienanth.

Ulrich Ernst Kurt, Freiherr von Gienanth (6 June 1907 – 10 December 1996) was a Nazi diplomat, factory director, and SS-Hauptsturmführer who served as the second secretary of the German embassy in Washington, D.C. during the Second World War. He was often described as the "head of the Gestapo in the United States" and the "personal American representative of Heinrich Himmler."

Life

Ulrich Ernst Kurt Freiherr von Gienanth was born in Berlin on 6 June 1907. Some sources claim he was the son or nephew of ambassador Friedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz und Gaffron; however, this is false. Ulrich was actually the son of Karl Friedrich Eugen Freiherr von Gienanth (1873–1949) and Freda Freifrau von Gienanth (née Freiin Varnbüler von und zu Hemmingen; 1877–1959). His father was a factory director, former Leutnant in the Prussian Landwehr, and a Knight of Honour of the Order of Saint John; both his father and his grandfather were Royal Bavarian Commerce Councilors. He had an older brother named Conrad-Eugen Friedrich Axel Freiherr von Gienanth (1903–1942).

Gienanth joined the Nazi Party in 1930. He arrived at Johns Hopkins University as an exchange student from the University of Munich in 1931. In 1936, the German Library of Information (a Nazi propaganda agency) was established, and Gienanth began working there as its director. That same year he served at the German Consulate General in New York. Later in 1937, Gienanth started working at the German embassy in Washington, quickly rising through the ranks and succeeding Richard Sallet as second secretary.

On 19 April 1937, Gienanth's car struck and killed one William Osterman near the Barclay–Vesey Building in New York City. Witnesses testified that his car was moving at a moderate speed and that Osterman had stepped in front of the vehicle. Gienanth was charged with homicide, but later acquitted on 30 April.

Gienanth attended the tenth Nuremberg rally in September 1937.

As the second secretary of the German embassy, Gienanth worked to keep the U.S. out of the Second World War. It was widely-reported in the Statesian media that one Laura Ingalls was being paid hundreds of dollars a month by the German embassy to spread pro-German, anti-interventionist propaganda. It was also reported that Gienanth threatened legal action against Statesian filmmaker Louis de Rochement for including parts of the Nazi propaganda film "Feuertaufe" (1940) in The Ramparts We Watch (1940), likely since it made the Nazis look bad.

Following the German, Italian, and Japanese declarations of war on the United States in December 1941, Axis diplomats in the United States were arrested and interned at The Greenbrier, a luxury hotel in West Virginia. While interned there, Gienanth married Karin von Vietinghoff-Riesch, age 34, on 19 December 1941 in Alexandria, Virginia.

Gienanth returned to Germany in May 1942.

In December 1942, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that he had received a report from a Gienanth (most certainly Ulrich Freiherr von Gienanth) testifying to a lack of experience and morale among the Statesian and British POWs whom he had interrogated at the Transit Camp of the Luftwaffe in Oberursel.

At the end of World War II, his family iron and steel foundry, Gienanth Eisenberg, was seized by French occupation forces. In 1949, Ulrich's father died, and in 1950, Ulrich was given back the factory, serving as its managing director until 1972.

In 1987, he was made an honourary citisen of the city of Eisenberg.

Gienanth died on 10 December 1996.

Gallery

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  Gienanth (left) and Lawrence Dennis (right) at the 9th Reich Party Congress in Nuremberg in September 1937

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  Ulrich von Gienanth and Karin von Vietinghoff-Riesch outside the German embassy (taken over by Switzerland) on the day of their wedding

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  German women and children outside a schoolhouse at The Greenbrier. Gienanth is left of Hans Thomsen (standing, top row, light suit).

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  Gienanth's signature