John E. Kehl: A U.S. Consul’s Diplomatic Passports

The Consul Who Served Eight Presidents: John E. Kehl’s Diplomatic Passports

What you see here is the result of another vivid exchange with a reader of my website, and honestly, these are the messages I live for. An American gentleman reached out after cleaning out his grandmother’s house and stumbling on a small archive he had no idea what to do with.

Eight Presidents, Thirty-Six Years: Who Was John E. Kehl?

John Elwin Kehl spent thirty-six unbroken years in the American Consular Service, a run few diplomats of his era could match. Born in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, on October 10, 1870, he started out as a bookkeeper and printer before entering government service in 1897. From there his postings read like a tour of pre-war Europe: U.S. Consul in Stettin from 1897 to 1908, Sydney from 1908 to 1911, Salonika from 1911 to 1918, Aarhus from 1918 to 1920, Stuttgart from around 1926 to 1929, and finally U.S. Consul General in Hamburg from 1931 to 1932.

His passport application tells a small immigrant story of its own. His father, also named John Kehl, was born in Germany and emigrated from Bremen around 1848, settling the family in Cincinnati until 1905. That German ancestry likely shaped, at least in part, why so much of the son’s career unfolded inside German consular jurisdiction, in Stettin, Stuttgart, and Hamburg alike.

By 1925, according to the State Department’s official Register, Kehl was earning an annual salary of USD 7,000 as U.S. Consul, roughly USD 103,000 in 2020 purchasing power. He died at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore on April 2, 1936, at age 65, and was laid to rest at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

An Ambassador Who Would Later Face Pearl Harbor Signed His Passport

The consular passport issued to Kehl at the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen for his temporary return to the United States carries the signature of Ambassador Joseph C. Grew, a name that would echo far beyond Denmark. Grew is best remembered as U.S. Ambassador to Japan between 1932 and 1941, a posting that placed him in Tokyo at the moment of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941. He was interned until the formal exchange of American and Japanese diplomats in 1942.

Back in Washington, Grew rose to Under Secretary of State, the department’s number-two post, and at times served as Acting Secretary of State. He championed a softened peace with Japan that would let the Emperor retain his status, a position that ultimately became official policy and helped pave the way for the Emperor’s decision to surrender in 1945. More details on Grew’s career here.

The Passports

A Wartime Diplomatic Passport, Issued to a Neutral Country

Kehl’s diplomatic assignment passport for Denmark was issued on April 16, 1918, while the First World War still raged across Europe. Denmark held its neutrality throughout the conflict, as did Norway and Sweden, along with four other nations, which made a diplomatic posting there a rare pocket of calm in an otherwise burning continent.

In 1920, Kehl returned temporarily to the United States on an ordinary consular passport rather than a diplomatic one, issued and signed by Ambassador Grew at the United States legation in Copenhagen on September 21, 1920. Why he traveled on a consular passport rather than a diplomatic one that trip is genuinely unclear to me, though the document itself plainly states he “is a Consul of the United States.”

From Berlin to Kovno: A Passport That Tracked a Career in Flux

Kehl’s next diplomatic passport, issued March 3, 1921, is the most heavily used document in the set, packed with visas and carrying two sealed extension pages. At the time it was issued, it seems his next posting hadn’t even been settled yet.

The original record shows him assigned as U.S. Consul in Berlin, Germany. A follow-up document from the U.S. Consulate in Berlin, dated June 8, 1922, redesignates him “American Consul in Breslau, Germany.” Another, dated October 26, 1923, names him “American Consul in Kovno, Lithuania.” And a final notation, again from the Berlin consulate, confirms his designation as Consul for Stuttgart, Germany. The passport also carries visas from Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, and France, tracing a diplomat bounced across a continent still redrawing its borders after the First World War. His wife carried her own matching passport with the identical visa run, though I’m not displaying that one here.

The Final Diplomatic Passport: Hamburg, 1929 to 1933

Kehl’s last diplomatic passport, issued in September 1929, designates him “a Consul General assigned to Hamburg, Germany.” It carries visas from Czechoslovakia, Germany, France, Austria, and Hungary, and its final stamp is a German re-entry permit issued in Hamburg on September 14, 1933, valid for one year. Page four, the photograph page, bears a U.S. immigration stamp dated October 19, 1933, marking the day he finally set foot back on American soil. He wouldn’t enjoy retirement for long. Two and a half years later he died at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore.

Without a doubt, this is the most extensive diplomatic passport set I have ever come across. It is a fantastic document lot that traces the life of a long-serving American consul, thirty-six years in the field, and his wife. The large diplomatic folio passport is genuinely rare, and his final red diplomatic passport is in superb condition. This set is a true gem in my collection.

What a Consul’s Report Reveals About 1901 Stettin Wages

A wage report Kehl filed while stationed in Stettin gives a rare, granular look at working-class earnings in early twentieth-century Pomerania. At Stettin, home to excellent shipbuilding yards, ironworks, and a range of other manufactories, a carpenter in the shipyards earned about ninety cents a day for eleven hours of work. As Kehl informed a visiting writer, an American carpenter of the period commonly expected $2.50 to $3 a day for eight hours of work, sometimes more. A blacksmith in the German city earned less than the carpenter, a molder earned more, around a dollar a day, a painter earned about seventy-five cents, and a laborer did well to bring home fifty-five to sixty cents a day. Workers not employed on a regular basis, or paid by piecework, commonly earned more. Wages ran higher in parts of the Rhine districts than the figures given here, and lower in other regions. It’s a small dispatch, but it’s genuinely great insight into costs and wages of the era.

The Graf Zeppelin Incident: When Consul Kehl Said No

On October 11, 1928, during the Graf Zeppelin’s (LZ 127) transatlantic flight, Consul Kehl found himself at the center of an unexpected diplomatic dispute over a missing visa. Among the airship’s passengers was Colonel Emil Herrera, a Spanish airplane and airship pilot and the leading figure in Spain’s military and civil aviation program. “I am going on this trip,” he explained, “to make a thorough investigation connected with the proposed airship line from Seville to Buenos Aires.” The Spanish government intended to subsidize the route, and construction was already underway on what would be the two largest airship hangars in the world, one in Seville and one in Buenos Aires.

Herrera boarded without an American visa, hoping officials would understand the circumstances that prevented him from obtaining one on arrival at Lakehurst. The decision to fly on the Graf Zeppelin had come together suddenly, leaving him no time to secure a visa in Madrid. He hoped Consul Kehl would issue one when Kehl came to process the Zeppelin’s officers and crew.

Kehl declined. He insisted Herrera travel to Stuttgart instead, a trip there simply wasn’t time for given the airship’s expected Wednesday departure. Kehl was almost certainly within his formal rights, but the decision exposed him to criticism from those who felt he might have extended the courtesy to a Spanish official traveling on to Buenos Aires from New York. When Herrera couldn’t travel for lack of the visa, Dr. Eckener stepped in, offering to take responsibility for satisfying the immigration department and ensuring Herrera wouldn’t remain in America in violation of immigration law.

Years later, as American Consul General in Hamburg, Kehl documented a very different kind of clash in a dispatch he titled “Communist Terrorism in Hamburg,” detailing a confrontation between opposing political forces at a National Socialist meeting.*

A Send-Off Fit for a Diplomat: Retirement in Hamburg, 1933

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Tom Topol | Passport Historian & Author
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