German career diplomat who served in Europe and the Middle East during World War I and World War II, becoming a spy for the Nazis in the latter war.
The son of an Army General from Württemberg, he studied at Leipzig University, receiving a Doctor of Law degree. He also studied at the University of Strasbourg and the School of Political Sciences in Paris.
In 1909, he joined the German diplomatic corps, becoming attaché of the embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria. In 1910, he was transferred to London, and in 1912 to Brussels. After a short period of time in Berlin with the central office of the Imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he moved to Madrid, where he learned to speak fluent Spanish and organized an intelligence network closely associated, apparently, to German Ambassador Leopold von Hoesch.
After World War I, he moved to Berlin, and rose through the ranks of the diplomatic corps. In 1927, he was named Germany’s envoy to Egypt, and he negotiated a treaty of friendship between Germany and the Kingdom of Hijaz in 1929.
During the Spanish Civil War from July 1936 to April 1939, he stayed in Madrid, acting as an observer and spy of the Second Spanish Republic and reporting news to the Nazi government in Berlin.
He was then appointed German ambassador to Romania, where he served until 1939, when he returned to Berlin. He participated in Operation Willi, the German plot to kidnap the Duke of Windsor. He participated in the role during negotiations between the two countries, earlier than 8 July 1940, about Operation Felix, the proposed German seizure of Gibraltar.
He was one of the organizers of the Meeting at Hendaye on the Spanish-French border, 23 October 1940, of Adolf Hitler and Joachim von Ribbentrop, with General Francisco Franco and Franco´s brother-in-law Ramón Serrano Suñer.
Eberhard von Stohrer died on 7 March 1953 at age 70 in Konstanz (English: Constance), a city located at the western end of Lake Constance in the south of Germany, bordering Switzerland.
Link to Wikipedia biography