Eyre Crowe
Sir Eyre Alexander Barby Wichart Crowe GCB GCMG (30 July 1864 – 28 April 1925) was a British diplomat, an expert on Germany in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He is best known for his vehement warning, in 1907, that Germany's expansionism was motivated by animosity towards Britain and should provoke a closer Entente Cordiale between the British Empire and France.
For the British artist, see Eyre Crowe (painter).
Sir Eyre Crowe
At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Crowe worked with the French President Georges Clemenceau. Although Lloyd George and Crowe's rivals in the Foreign Office tried to prevent his promotion and lessen his influence, Crowe served as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1920 until his death in 1925, as a consequence of his patronage by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon.
Early life[edit]
Half-German, Crowe was born in Leipzig in 1864. He was educated at Düsseldorf, at Berlin, and in France. His father, Joseph Archer Crowe (1825–1896), was a British Consul-General and Chief European Commercial Attaché between 1882 and 1896, and also an art historian. His mother was Asta von Barby (c. 1841 – 1908).[1] His grandfather Eyre Evans Crowe was a journalist and historian, and his uncle, Eyre Crowe, was an artist.
Crowe first visited England in 1882, when he was seventeen, to cram for the Foreign Office examination. At the time, he was not fully fluent in English.[2] Even later in life it was reported that when angry he spoke English with a German accent.
Personal life[edit]
In 1903, Crowe married his widowed maternal first cousin Clema Gerhardt, a niece of Henning von Holtzendorff, who was to become the Chief of the German Naval Staff in the First World War. Due to being half-German and having other German connections, Crowe was often attacked in the press during the First World War, especially by Christabel Pankhurst and William le Queux.
In popular culture[edit]
In the 2014 BBC mini-series 37 Days, Crowe is portrayed by actor Nicholas Farrell.[14][15] Crowe is depicted as a competent and shrewd administrator but one who is exasperated and confused by the Foreign Secretary's (Sir Edward Grey; portrayed by Ian McDiarmid) superior diplomatic prowess.[16] The narrator of the series, a Second Division Clerk in the Foreign Office (portrayed by actor James McArdle), also describes Crowe as: "German born, educated in Berlin, but...more British than any one of us".