Baron Jules de Koenigswarter

Who was Baron Jules de Koenigswarter?

Lt.-Col. Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, was a French soldier and diplomat of Jewish descent.

He was the son of Baron Louis de Koenigswarter. He studied at the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris, becoming a civil engineer and diplomat by profession. He married the noted jazz patroness Nica de Koenigswarter, née Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild, in 1935. They lived together in a château in north-west France. De Koenigswarter joined the Free French Forces at the outbreak of World War II and led troops in Africa and Europe. Much of his extended family perished in the Holocaust. After the war he held diplomatic positions in Norway and Mexico. From 1953 to 1957 he held the position of French Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States and to Canada. Jules and Nica separated in 1951 and divorced in 1956, after which Nica lived on her own in New York City, where she was a patroness of the Bebop jazz community.