Ellis Loring Dresel

Who was Ellis Loring Dresel?

Ellis Loring Dresel was an American lawyer and diplomat. During World War I, from 1915 to 1917, Dresel was attaché to the U.S. embassy in Berlin.

The son of German pianist and composer Otto Dresel, Ellis Dresel handled the affairs of the U.S. embassy in Vienna after the United States entered the war, and was responsible for relations between the German government and British prisoners of war from 1917 to 1918. During that time, in Berne, Dresel also worked with the American Red Cross, the American Legation, and its War Trade Board.

Dresel led the political information section of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. From 1919 to 1921, he was the United States commissioner to Germany. Dresel was the first American diplomatic observer to visit Germany after World War I.

In 1921, his title was changed to chargé d'affaires, and he signed the formal peace treaty. The following year he returned to the United States.

Dresel died of cancer on September 19, 1925. He is buried in Beverly Central Cemetery, in Beverly, Massachusetts.

An alumnus of Harvard University, Dresel's papers are preserved in the Houghton Library, including correspondence with William Richards Castle, Joseph Clark Grew, Hugh S. Gibson, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Allen Welsh Dulles.