Hitler’s foreign minister spent his youth as part of Ottawa’s high society
There has certainly been no shortage of cads, crooks, swindlers, murderers and worse who over the years have called Ottawa home, but none has come close to reaching the infamy attached to a young man who, a century ago, floated through this city’s social circles with a handsome and athletic ease.
It’s highly unlikely that guests at the Rideau Hall parties he attended back then had any inkling of what the “great future” of which he boasted actually held in store for him, that Joachim Ribbentrop would one day become one of Adolf Hitler’s closest right-hand men and most rabid bootlickers as well as Nazi Germany’s minister of foreign affairs and that, following the Second World War, he would be hanged for crimes against peace, deliberately planning a war of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“Rib” or “Ribben,” as his friends called him (he acquired the noble “von” prefix to his surname later, in his 30s, when a childless aunt adopted him), was 20 when he arrived in Ottawa. Five-foot-10 and slim, with blue eyes and wavy blond hair, he was considered, according to one account, “quite a catch” among the eligible young women of Centretown.
Born in 1893 in Prussia, Ribbentrop’s family moved to Switzerland in 1908, when his father, a career army officer, was dismissed for repeatedly criticizing Kaiser Wilhelm II for his alleged homosexuality. Eighteen months later, Ribbentrop and his older brother, Lothar, both of whom spoke German, English and French, were sent to London to improve their English.
In 1910, he came to Montreal, where he worked as a clerk for The Molsons Bank and for an engineering firm reconstructing the Quebec Bridge. He worked, too, as a railway car-checker and, in British Columbia, a logger. A bout of tuberculosis forced him home to Germany, but by 1913 he was back in Canada, this time settling in Ottawa.
Exactly how he earned his living here remains open to speculation. He reportedly worked briefly as a public servant, a position obtained, according to an Ottawa Journal article following his death in 1946, “by ‘a word in the right place’ from an influential friend.” He may have also resumed working for the Molsons Bank, which had a branch on Metcalfe Street at Wellington. He also started his own business here, importing and selling German wines and champagne.
At any rate, he quickly insinuated himself into Ottawa’s social class. In December 1913, he helped Santa Claus hand out gifts at a May Court Club charity event. An accomplished violinist, he joined a local orchestra and soon found his name splashed in the social columns: “Mr. Joachim Ribbenstrop (sp) made his initial bow to Morning Music Club goers,” the Journal wrote in April 1914. “In Romance, by Johan Svendsen, Pierrot’s Serenade, and Wagner’s Traume, he more than delighted his audience.”
The following month, he took a role in the Kermess, a large charity theatrical production staged at the Russell Theatre to benefit the Victorian Order of Nurses. He dined, too, at least twice, at Rideau Hall, where he spoke with Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia, the wife of the Governor General, in her native German.
He lived for a while at The Sherbrooke, a rooming house at the corner of O’Connor and Slater streets, where he installed a vaulting box, swing and parallel bars in his room and entertained friends with his gymnastic feats. After moving to a private home on Daly Avenue, he returned regularly to the Sherbrooke and its residents with whom he had formed a regular “luncheon club,” including a banker, a newspaperman, an Ashbury College master, an architect and public servants. They would occasionally go for evening walks or, some Saturday nights, play low-stakes poker. “Ribbons” encouraged them to start a consortium with him to open a chain of movie theatres.
He especially shone at athletics, competing at both the Minto Skating Club and the Rideau Lawn Tennis Club. With the former, he joined the national figure skating team in Boston, although he did not compete, for the international Ellis Memorial trophy. At the Rideau, he reached the semifinals of the city championships, nattily attired in court whites and a black bow tie.
His time in Ottawa was cut short when Britain, and thus Canada, declared war on Germany on Aug. 4, 1914. He was reportedly playing mixed doubles at the tennis club when he heard news of the declaration, whereupon he went home to pack, dined at the Château Laurier and left for New York.
A fortnight later, he returned to Germany, where he enlisted in the 12th Torgau Hussars, the same regiment to which his grandfather belonged. There, he wrote letters indicating his hope to return to Ottawa following the war, saying that he was “indescribably happy” during his time in Canada. “I left behind my property, my brother who was seriously ill, the business prospects which had just opened up, many friends, and a young girl I had wanted to marry.”
He also left behind a few unpaid bills, including $10 he borrowed from James Sherwood, son of Dominion Police Force commissioner Col. Sir Arthur Percy Sherwood, shortly before his departure. Another debt — $156 to an Ottawa doctor — was later repaid, from Switzerland, while a third — 38 cents owed Ottawa pharmacist Harry Skinner for goods purchased by Ribbentrop on the eve of his departure — was reimbursed by an anonymous woman in Bath, Ont., in 1946, after the Ottawa Citizen revealed the debt following Rib’s death sentence at Nuremberg. “Enclosed in this registered letter,” the woman wrote in German, “you will find 38 cents as you have said that Herr Von Ribbentrop owed you that. It shall never be said that a German ambassador has not paid his debts.”
Von Ribbentrop was hanged on Oct. 16, 1946.
This story is part of a series of 26 stories about Ottawa, one for each letter of the alphabet. Stay tuned. Next in the series: O is for Over the Top, as in arm wrestling. bdeachman@postmedia.com