Baron Julius von Szilassy


Julius Szilassy von Szilas und Pilis was an Austro-Hungarian diplomat of Hungarian origin serving in various posts including as an envoy to Greece during World War I and, for many years, as Secretary of the Austro-Hungary Legation to Washington, D.C. He was a direct descendant of the British Hope family which owned the famous Hope Diamond.

Life

Born in Bex in Switzerland on 21 August 1870 but spent much of his early childhood in Hungary. After studies in Switzerland and at Harrow, he entered the Austro-Hungarian foreign service and served subsequently in a number of diplomatic missions abroad. In 1898, he married Louise-May Hecker, daughter of Frank J. Hecker, in Detroit. They had one child, Charles Henry de Szillasy but Hecker asked for divorce in 1905.
In 1907, Szilassy was a member of the Austro-Hungarian delegation to the Second Hague Peace Conference and was appointed the following year to serve as counsellor in St. Petersburg before returning to Vienna in 1912. In November 1913, he was appointed to serve as Austro-Hungarian Minister at Athens and had to manage war-time complexities in Greece. In November 1916, he was expelled by the Entente from Athens.
After his return to Vienna at the end of 1916, he served for a year in the Ballhausplatz before being dispatched to Constantinople as counsellor in October 1917, where he remained until the end of the war. There had been several rumours of his appointment as Imperial Foreign Minister in 1917/1918 but his ties to Károlyi had prevented this. On 1 May 1918, he was created a Baron.
As one of few professional diplomats who remained in service following the fall of the Habsburg Empire in 1918, he served as the first Hungarian envoy to Switzerland from February to April 1919. After Béla Kun's revolution, he went into exile but did not return to Hungary during the Horthy years and devoted his remaining life to write several books on diplomacy as well as his memoirs. The latter are unusually frank, in particular the criticism of Count von Berchtold, the Imperial Foreign Minister from 1912 to 1915.
Baron Szilassy died in 1935.

Works