File No. 6807/8–10.
Ambassador Tower to the Secretary of State.
Berlin , February 6, 1908 .
Sir: I have the honor to report to you that in compliance with the instructions contained in your dispatch No. 663, of the 14th of June, 1907, relating to the case of one Carlos Stoetzel, a native of Mulhausen, in Alsace-Lorraine, who came to the United States when he was 4 years of age with his father, George Stoetzel, the latter having been admitted to citizenship of the United States in the year 1901, and the said Carlos Stoetzel, claiming American citizenship through the naturalization of his father by reason of his having lived in the United States during his own minority and subsequently to his father’s naturalization, I addressed a note to the imperial German ministry for foreign affairs, in which I presented this case to it and requested that, if the facts should be found to be substantially as stated, the American citizenship of Carlos Stoetzel should be recognized and his name stricken from the German military lists.
I have received from the imperial German ministry for foreign affairs a reply to my note, under date of the 4th of February, 1908, a copy of which and a translation into English are respectfully herewith inclosed, in which the ministry declares that Carlos Stoetzel was born at Mulhausen on the 24th day of March, 1889, and not 1887, as stated by him, and that he is in consequence still a minor; also that he acquired German nationality as a native of Alsace-Lorraine by inheritance, and that he still retains that nationality. The ministry adds that the father of Carlos Stoetzel emigrated to America in the year 1891 with a military passport which entitled him to go abroad, and that he had this passport extended regularly until the year 1899, but that he is still regarded here as a German subject because he has not lived abroad uninterruptedly for a period of 10 years.
This case falls within the category of those military cases which have been treated through this embassy for many years past relating to naturalized American citizens born in the Reichsland of Alsace and Lorraine, upon which I have had the honor to communicate with you somewhat frequently heretofore, notably in my dispatch No. 1121, of the 15th of March, 1907.1 The German Government still refuses to recognize the right of a German subject, native of Alsace or Lorraine, to renounce his allegiance to Germany by acquiring citizenship in the United States, upon the ground that the Reichsland of Alsace and Lorraine is not included within the provisions of the Bancroft treaties. The ministry for foreign affairs decides, therefore, in the present case that Carlos Stoetzel can not be stricken from the German military lists in accordance with the request made in his behalf by his father, George Stoetzel, who addressed a letter to you from New York on the 29th day of May, 1907.
I inclose also herewith the certificate of naturalization of George Stoetzel before the district court of the United States, in and for [Page 375] the southern district of New York, on the 1st of October, 1901, which accompanied your dispatch of the 14th of June, 1907.
I respectfully await your further instructions upon this subject.
I have, etc.,