Käte Stresemann
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Käte Stresemann (née Kleefeld; 15 July 1883 – 23 July 1970) was the wife of the German Chancellor, Foreign Minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Gustav Stresemann. Widely admired for her elegance and intelligence, she was a prominent figure of society in the 1920s. As the wife of the foreign minister she made her
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at
Tauentzienstraße Tauentzienstraße (colloquially: ''der Tauentzien''; en, Tauentzien Street) is a major shopping street in the City West area of Berlin, Germany. With a length of about , it runs between two important squares, Wittenbergplatz in the east and Brei ...
12a a meeting place of diplomats. She was the daughter of a prominent
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
industrialist, Adolf (also known as Arthur, born Aaron) Kleefeld. Both of her parents were born Jewish, but they raised their children as Lutherans. In 1903 she married Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929), who later became Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the
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, and bore him two sons,
Wolfgang Wolfgang is a German male given name traditionally popular in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The name is a combination of the Old High German words ''wolf'', meaning "wolf", and ''gang'', meaning "path", "journey", "travel". Besides the regula ...
(1904–1998) and Hans-Joachim (1908–1999). Her brother,
Kurt von Kleefeld Kurt von Kleefeld (born 16 October 1881 in Kassel as Kurt Kleefeld, died 1934 in Berlin) was a German lawyer, executive director of the House, President of the Chamber and executive director of the princely mines and industrial activities of the p ...
, was the last person in Germany to be ennobled, when he was raised to the hereditary nobility of the
Principality of Lippe Lippe (later Lippe-Detmold and then again Lippe) was a historical state in Germany, ruled by the House of Lippe. It was located between the Weser river and the southeast part of the Teutoburg Forest. It was founded in the 1640s under a separa ...
by
Leopold IV, Prince of Lippe Leopold IV, Prince of Lippe (''Leopold Julius Bernhard Adalbert Otto Karl Gustav''; 30 May 1871 – 30 December 1949) was the final sovereign of the Principality of Lippe. Succeeding to the throne in 1905 he had been governing the state since ...
"in recognition of his loyal service" to his noble lord, Christian Kraft of Hohenlohe-Ohringen, Duke of Ujest, on request by the latter, on 12 November 1918, the same day as the Prince's abdication. Kleefeld is mentioned in one of the fictitious quotes the 8 November 1926 issue of ''Time'' satirically attributed to quite a number of prominent people under the headline: ''Had they been interviewed, some people who figured in last week's news might have related certain of their doings as follows:'' Gustav Stresemann, Foreign Minister of Germany: "A story went the rounds of Berlin last week that my ability to entertain lavishly on a salary of $6,400 a year is due to the kindly furtherance of my affairs by the multimillionaire Dr. von Kleefeld, my bachelor brother-in-law." In August 1929, when Käte Stresemann hosted the program for spouses at the 25th World Advertising Congress in Berlin, ''Time'' described her as "no hausfrau, but a young, elegant, cosmopolite, English speaking Jewess, a woman equipped with the conversation of the polite world, equal to parlor or nightclub." In the autumn of 1939 she fled Nazi Germany with her son Wolfgang and his family and settled in the United States, where her son Hans-Joachim had already found refuge. She lived in
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until her death on a visit to Germany.


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Date of birth
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stresemann, Gustav 1883 births 1970 deaths People from Berlin German Protestants German people of Jewish descent Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States