The Countess and the Nazis, published by Lyons Press, is set for release on February 18, 2025. This extraordinary biography tells the story of Muriel White Seherr-Thoss—a Gilded Age American heiress who transformed her privilege into a weapon against tyranny, ultimately becoming a fierce Nazi resistance fighter.
Richard Jay Hutto draws on never-before-published memoirs and declassified CIA documents to resurrect Muriel’s incredible journey. As the daughter of a revered American diplomat and wife to a Prussian count, Muriel moved seamlessly among Europe’s elite until the specter of Nazism cast its long shadow. Faced with unspeakable evil, she leveraged her aristocratic connections to secure escape routes for Jewish families, mentored emerging royalty like the future Queen Geraldine of Albania, and ultimately sacrificed everything to protect her children from Hitler’s regime.
You can learn more in this interview.
New money in New York City and in other industrial U.S. cities – considered “tainted” - was not accepted by the old guard and social elite. Very often the ambitious wives, finding the doors closed to them in the U.S., would take their daughters abroad where so many titled young men were in desperate need of cash to replenish their family coffers and maintain large and expensive homes. There were a few “love matches” but most of these marriages were merely exchanges of money for titles. Muriel’s marriage fell outside the usual formula as her socially prestigious family, while also wealthy, did not have the resources of the Astors and Vanderbilts (although Muriel’s step-mother was a granddaughter of Commodore Vanderbilt). Muriel, however, was worldly, attractive, well-read and articulate in several languages. Those assets opened doors to her that would have been closed to many of her colleagues. In the end, her fortune did, indeed, pay for the complete renovation of two of her husband’s family castles and the payment for their servants.
Why did many aristocratic and wealthy Germans support Hitler, and how did these political leanings impact personal loyalties and relationships within high society?
When the monarchy and titled nobility in German were abolished as legally defined classes in 1918 and 1919, triggered by Germany’s defeat in World War I, many aristocratic Germans merely wanted to find a way to return to their old privileged ways of life. Many believed that Hitler, with his retinue of titled staff and supporters, would re-introduce the aristocracy and return to them their privileges. He was very clever at making them believe their assumption and most thought that the Kaiser’s son would be placed upon his father’s throne.
How did institutional decisions—such as the Catholic Church denying Muriel a second Protestant ceremony—and the loss of wealth among American expatriates affect her ability to navigate these turbulent times?
Muriel’s husband’s family was greatly diminished by Germany’s defeat in World War I. Her father, while U.S. Ambassador to Italy, had angered the conservative wing of the Catholic church and they made sure his daughter was allowed only one marriage service and that one would be Catholic. While embarrassing, that 1909 incident did not cause lasting harm to her prestige. However, once her husband’s family was greatly dispossessed of their privileges in 1919, her new name and family were no longer advantageous outside their narrowing milieu of friends and acquaintances. Once her income was cut off by the U.S. Congress, who took away access to the fortunes of American wives of foreigners who had been at war with the U.S., she was placed in an impossible position of feeding, clothing, and housing not only her husband’s family but all their servants as well. She made a valiant effort to do so while making sure she did everything she could for many others, most of whom were barely known to her. If the German government had not confiscated her newly-reissued American passport (and even the knowledge that it had been received) two years before her death, she should have been free to leave Germany at any time, joining her three children and their families in the U.S.
About the Author:
Richard Jay Hutto served as White House Appointments Secretary to the Carter family and was chairman of the Georgia Council for the Arts. One of the foremost historians of the Gilded Age, he is the author of Crowning Glory: American Wives of Princes and Dukes, and Their Gilded Cage: The Jekyll Island Club Members. A frequent international lecturer, his book A Peculiar Tribe of People: Murder and Madness in the Heart of Georgia was adapted for television—the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described it as “a southern grotesque that comes complete with stately mansions, murder most vile, forbidden sex, a pot-boiling trial and a denouement worthy of a Greek tragedy [with] an ending that even Sophocles wouldn't wish on his worst enemy” (November 3, 2010). He is also a regular contributor to Royalty Digest Quarterly. Check out Rick's website @ www.rickhutto.com and the book site at www.TheCountess.net - You can also get social with Rick on Facebook.
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