- Source: Edgar L. G. Prochnik
Edgar Leo Gustav Prochnik (21 January 1879 – 12 April 1964) was an Austrian diplomat and writer.
Early life
Prochnik was born on 21 January 1879 in Amborina, Dutch East Indies. He was the son of Therese Keller and Leo Johann Prochnik.
He graduated from the Consular School in Vienna in 1904.
Career
From 1905 to 1912, Prochnik was the Austrian consular attaché and consul in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago. On 2 January 1912, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria approved the establishment of an Imperial and Royal Consulate in St. Paul, Minnesota and appointed Prochnik as consul. He held this position until June 1920 when he was appointed Austrian Consul General in Washington, D.C. He was promoted to Chargés d'affaires ad interim on 2 December 1921. On 7 May 1925, he was accredited as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary and presented his credentials to President Calvin Coolidge the next day, 8 May 1925. He served as Envoy and Minister until 13 March 1938 when the legation was closed and his mission was terminated due to the Anschluss with Germany.
= Later life
=Prochnik, who was opposed the Nazi regime, was left "a man without a country". He remained in the United States where he lectured on diplomatic history in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University until 1960.
After he left the diplomatic service, his wife went "into the trousseau and lingerie business".
Personal life
Prochnik was twice married, both times to American woman. His first wife was Mary Seibert Batchelder (1889–1912), a daughter of David James Batchelder Jr., vice-president of Tremont Lumber Company of Chicago which had mills in Eros, Louisiana. Before her death in 1912, they were the parents of a daughter:
Loranda Stephanie Prochnik (1911–1988), who married Francis Lecompte Spalding Sr. in 1931. They divorced and she married Kenneth Kershner Leavitt.
In 1915 in Boston, he married Gretchen Stirling James (1892–1984), a daughter of Edward Preston James and Lillian Stirling (née Price) James. After they left the Embassy, they lived at 1813 24th Street in Washington. Together, they were the parents of:
Valerie Stirling Prochnik (1916–2006), who married Jean Raymond Louis De Sibour, a son of Viscount Jules Henri de Sibour, in 1936. They divorced and she married Thomas Rush Ragland Jr. in 1968.
Edgar Stirling Prochnik (1920–1996), an executive with Union Carbide who married Martha Holman, a daughter of H. Russell Holman, in 1954.
Patricia Stirling Prochnik (1921–1996), who married economist Samuel Nakasian, who was previously married to Patricia Dohrenwend, in 1951.
Prochnik died at his home in Washington, D.C. on 12 April 1964.
Published works
La Question d'Orient
The Diplomatic History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, Part IV
The Prime Ministers and Governments of England
References
External links
Edgar L. Prochnik Papers at Georgetown University
Edgar L. G. Prochnik, Austrian Minister--outtakes at the University of South Carolina
Kata Kunci Pencarian:
- Edgar L. G. Prochnik
- Ludwig Kleinwächter
- List of ambassadors of Austria to the United States
- List of The New Yorker contributors
