The Secretary of State to Ambassador Meyer.
Washington, March 20, 1906.
Sir: The department has received your No. 445, of February 15, 1906, asking whether you should issue a passport to John George Joseph Albert von Mertzenfeld, who was born in Germany, naturalized as a citizen of the United States on September 16, 1856, and received a passport, No. 14602, from this department September 17, 1856. He subsequently received another passport from the legation at St. Petersburg July 30, 1874, and has continued to use these old passports up to the present time, having been ignorant until recently that their validity had expired.
You submit a certificate from a physician to the effect that Mr. von Mertzenfeld’s age and physical ailments are such as to render it dangerous for him to undertake a journey to the United States. The department is of the opinion, however, that at this late day this is an unimportant circumstance in determining whether he should receive a passport. As he has been resident abroad for half a century, and left the United States the day after he acquired his citizenship, the department is not inclined to believe that the animus revertendi has ever existed in his case.
You state that he has been employed on several occasions by American firms to make translations, but such employment obviously does not bring him within the category of those who are residing abroad in extension of legitimate American enterprises, and who, consequently, receive prolonged protection from this Government.
The old passports which Mr. Mertzenfeld holds were not at the time they were issued intended to be indefinitely effective. When the passport of 1856 was issued a person was expected to receive a new passport each time he might go abroad and to renew his passport while he was abroad at a legation or consulate annually. By the department’s circular of September 1, 1873, the duration of the passport was limited to a period of two years; but it is only since 1892 that the statement “Good only for two years from date “has been printed on each passport issued. (See The American Passport, p. 75.)
[Page 1290]The recognition as an American citizen which Mr. Mertzenfeld now receives from the Russian Government through these old passports is due to ignorance on the part of the Russian officials of the regulation of this Government limiting the duration of passports. The continued use of the passports by Mr. von Mertzenfeld is, therefore, improper, and they should be surrendered to your embassy, and, if there be no other circumstances than those set forth in your dispatch to excuse the prolonged residence of Mr. von Mertzenfeld outside of the United States, you are instructed to refuse to issue him another passport.
I am, etc.,