Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 8, 1908

File No. 13014.

The Ambassador of Austria-Hungary to the Secretary of State.

[Translation.]

Austro-Hungarian Embassy,
Washington, April 11, 1908.

No. 827.]

Excellency: By a note No. 49 of the 23d of December, 1903,¹ relative to the resumption of the Hungarian nationality by the American citizen Joseph Fuchs, the State Department informed me that the Federal Government did not regard it as necessary, notwithstanding Article IV of the treaty concluded September 20, 1870, between Austria-Hungary and the United States, that a Hungarian naturalized in the United States, who wishes to resume his allegiance to his parent country, produce before such resumption a certificate of acceptance of the renunciation of his American citizenship.

Contrary to this interpretation, the American consul general at Budapest addressed on the 29th of October last to the royal Hungarian ministry of the interior the inclosed letter, by which he requests, under that very article of the treaty above cited, that one Samuel Stark Meisels, who was naturalized in America but subsequently wished to be restored to the Hungarian nationality, be required formally to renounce his American citizenship and that the consulate general be furnished with a certificate to that effect.

I am now instructed in consequence by my Government to obtain authenticated information as to this apparent contradiction and especially to inquire whether the Federal Government has now reached an opinion different from that announced in 1903, and, if so, in what form and before what authority a Hungarian seeking naturalization should declare his renunciation of American citizenship and especially whether a renunciation before Hungarian authority would be considered operative.

I have the honor to apply for your excellency’s obliging intercession in this matter, and with a request that the inclosed letter of the American consul general at Budapest be kindly returned to me in due course, I avail, etc.,

Hengelmüller.

[Inclosure—Translation.]

Consul General Chester to the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior.

American Consulate General,
Budapest, October 29, 1907.

No. 6789.]

The Hungarian Ministry of the Interior:

Having learned that Samual Stark Meisels, a naturalized American citizen, said to have been born at Verocze, Croatia, on August 29, 1859, and to have emigrated to the United States in June, 1891, where he was naturalized in the Federal court of the southern district of New York on April 16, 1898, notwithstanding which he obtained an American passport from me in 1899, has since secured Budapest citizenship papers and become a Hungarian aulic councilor, in consequence whereof I have the honor to request that you take Mr. Meisels’s declaration of renunciation as soon as possible, in accordance with Article IV of the naturalization treaty with Hungary of 1871, inserted in XLII tl. cz., and forward the declaration to me officially, since section 2 of the American law, dated March 2 of this year, requires me in such cases to send the declaration, together with the certificate of American citizenship, to Washington.

Inasmuch as a new American law provides similarly with regard to the loss of citizenship by naturalized citizens of the United States, I have the honor to request your ministry, and through it, the Croatian and Fiume governments, to kindly send me all consular certificates in cases where Hungarians or Croatians have remained in America over five years and then applied for Hungarian citizenship papers.

Very respectfully,

Frank Dyer Chester.

1. See Foreign Relations, 1903, p. 20.