Cornelius Van Hemert Engert (December 31, 1887 – May 12, 1985) was an American diplomat who served in Ethiopia, Iran, and Afghanistan.
Early life and education
Adolf Cornelius van Hemert Engert was born in Vienna, Austria on New Year's Eve 1887, to a Russian citizen father and a Hungarian Jewish mother. His father, John Cornelius Engert, a trader by profession, was of Dutch origin; he died within a year, leaving his mother, Irma Babetz, to raise him in Austria-Hungary. As his granddaughter, Jane, would later state, however, Engert had a habit of "trying to purge all records and accounts that conflicted with the [...] identity he was trying to create": by sixteen, after attending gymnasium in Zurich, Engert's given name was spelled Adolph. That was the name under which he and his mother, a physician, emigrated to the United States in 1904, on the SS Kaiser Wilhelm II; he would later claim that he had been brought to the United States as a child.
As Engert had only attended gymnasium for three years, he claimed to have attended Ferndale High School in California for one year, 1905, though Ferndale had no graduating class until 1906. Nevertheless, he matriculated into the University of California system, graduating from Berkeley with a Bachelor of Letters in 1908, and his master's (again, in letters) the next year. Though his professor of Slavic languages, George Rapall Noyes, would later describe him as "[t]he best student of those early years [of teaching]" and a "youth of many talents", Jane Engert would describe her grandfather's academic performance as "not at all distinguished", though "decent enough". He then proceeded to study law and teach until 1911, when he took the Le Conte Memorial Fellowship then offered by the University to study for a year at Harvard University, where he befriended A. Lawrence Lowell, the President of Harvard University at the time.
Although he left his heart in San Francisco, Engert would modify his background as it suited him throughout his life: to The New York Times and other newspapers, he was of "Dutch parentage"; to others, he presented himself as having German relatives, or English and Dutch parentage. Indeed, though it was preserved in federal records, including his naturalization papers in 1910, by the time of his entry into graduate school, Engert had dropped his misspelled first name.
All the same, in 1912, when Engert began his service in the American diplomatic corps, he declared his state of residence to be California and his name to be "Adolph Cornelius". Only in 1924 was he finally able to remove his first name from State Department records.
Early career
In March 1912, Engert began his career as a student interpreter in Constantinople; after becoming a full-fledged interpreter, he would become vice consul there two years later.
As Engert himself would later note: he had a "Foreign Service career that went from one calamity to another—and was always exciting."
Indeed, he would have the misfortune of serving as vice-consul during World War I, during which he witnessed the sinking of the Mesudiye by a British submarine. He later struck up an acquaintance with the British sailor commanding the submarine during the attack, Norman Douglas Holbrook.
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Engert returned to the newly-established state of Turkey, where he continued to serve in the consulate in Constantinople as vice-consul; he later became consul.
Interwar years
In the early 1920s, Engert briefly served in Iran as acting U.S. minister; as he was proceeding to his post, he happened to witness the Iraqi revolt of 1920 against Arnold Wilson.
During his time in Iran, before and after the 1921 Persian coup d'état, he catalogued the rise of Reza Shah.
In 1922, upon leaving his Persian post, Engert became the first U.S. diplomat to travel through Afghanistan, ostensibly to search for business opportunities through oil drilling. He also successfully convinced Amanullah Khan to allow Lowell Thomas and David Wooster King through as well. Thomas would later write Beyond Khyber Pass from this experience, and Engert a report for the State Department; Thomas's book was a popular success, as was Engert's report (though in different circumstances). The former would be forgotten; the latter used even into the twentieth century by Harry S. Truman.
Engert later served at The Hague, in Peking, and in Latin America.
Ethiopia
In the summer of 1935, Engert was assigned to Addis Ababa, to serve as the United States chargé d'affaires there; he was received by Emperor Haile Selassie in August.