Clemens von Ketteler

Clemens August Freiherr von Ketteler (22 November 1853 – 20 June 1900) was a German career diplomat. He was murdered during the Boxer Rebellion.

Born at Münster in western Germany, Ketteler was born into a noble Münsterland family.

He was married to the American heiress Matilda Cass Ledyard, a descendant of the Livingston family and the Schuyler family.

His uncle Wilhelm Emmanuel Freiherr von Ketteler was a Zentrum party politician. His nephew, the diplomat Wilhelm Freiherr von Ketteler, was murdered by the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS (SD) in Vienna in 1938 for his opposition to Hitler. Another relative was the French marshal Louis Franchet d'Espèrey.

Following his graduation in Münster and Coesfeld in 1873, Ketteler entered the Prussian Army and served in it until he was appointed to join the Imperial German diplomatic corps in 1882.

Between 1880 and 1889 he served as an interpreter in the German consulates in Canton (Guangzhou) and Tientsin. After working in the German Department of Foreign Affairs for a short period, he was posted to Washington, D.C., between 1892 and 1896 and then to Mexico from 1896 to 1899.

Ketteler returned to China in 1899 as Plenipotentiary at Beijing, from where he pointed out in vain the dangerous situation for the Europeans. On 12 June 1900, when the Boxers moved to the inner city and burned down Christian 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.

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