Arnim, Harry Karl Kurt Eduard, Count of

ARNIM, HARRY KARL KURT EDUARD, conte di. - Prussian diplomat, b. at Moitzelfitz (Pomerania) on 3 Oct. 1824, d. at Nice on 19 May 1881. From 1853 to 1855 he was secretary of legation in Rome, then until 1858 he served at the Prussian foreign ministry. Promoted in 1859 to first counsellor at the Prussian embassy in Vienna, after two years in the Austrian capital he was appointed to represent the court of Berlin in Lisbon, whence he moved in 1864 to Munich. In Oct. of the same year he was accredited as Prussian representative in Rome, and, during the Italo-Prussian alliance of 1866, he succeeded with great skill in avoiding political complications that could have been raised by the Holy See. In 1868 A. was reconfirmed as minister in Rome in representation of the North German Confederation. In 1870, during the proceedings of the XX Ecumenical Council, A. carried on a feverish activity, uncertain however whether to advise his own government, after the proclamation of papal infallibility, to recall him from Rome. In any case A. remained, behaving ambiguously during the Italian occupation of Rome. While indeed in Roman circles the rumor was spreading that Prussia, on A.'s suggestions, would have intervened in Florence in favor of the Holy See, on the morning of 19 Sept. A. had gone to General Cadorna, also attempting to convince the Pope to yield without offering resistance. Appointed in Jan. 1872 ambassador to Paris, he soon had serious disagreements with Bismarck that led in 1874 to his being placed on the retired list. The personal rivalry between the two men grew ever more acute, until Bismarck, taking as a pretext the disappearance of some diplomatic documents from the archive of the Paris embassy, had A. subjected to trial. An exile first in Switzerland and in Italy, A. died at Nice.

Silvio Furlani