Origin Born on 2 July 1871, in
Bad Ischl, to a Catholic Rhenan aristocratic family, he was a scion of , founder of the
Knight academy. His parents were Ernst Graf von Mirbach and his wife Wilhelmine von Thun-Hohenstein (1851–1929).
Career Mirbach started his diplomatic career in
London, where he was
Third Secretary at the German Embassy from 1899 to 1902, when he transferred to
The Hague. From 1908 to 1911, Mirbach served as the embassy clerk in
Saint Petersburg, and then as political councillor for the German military command in
Bucharest. In 1915, he became the German ambassador in Greece, before being expelled from Athens in December 1916 when the
Entente-leaning government of
Eleftherios Venizelos took power. He participated in the
Russian-German negotiations in
Brest-Litovsk from December 1917 to March 1918. He was appointed German
ambassador to Russia in April 1918.
Assassination Mirbach was
assassinated at the German embassy in Moscow by
Yakov Grigorevich Blumkin and Nikolai Andreyev at the request of the Central Committee of the
Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were trying to reignite the war between Russia and Germany. Blumkin entered Mirbach's residence in
Moscow using forged papers and shot his victim at point blank range. As Mirbach tried to escape, Andreyev fired a second bullet and both of the assassins leapt out of the window and then drove away in a
Cheka car. Mirbach's assassination signaled the beginning of the
revolt of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in Moscow, on 6 July 1918. The leader of the
Cheka,
Felix Dzerzhinsky, briefly resigned his post after the assassination of Mirbach, with
Jēkabs Peterss briefly taking over as Cheka leader from 7 July 1918. Dzerzhinsky had wanted harsher
Red Terror measures against Left SR terrorists. Dzerzhinsky returned to the Cheka leadership on 22 August 1918, and soon got his wish for harsher measures after 30 August 1918, when the head of the
Petrograd Cheka,
Moisei Uritsky, was assassinated, on the same day that
Vladimir Lenin was the victim of a failed assassination attempt where he was shot with bullets. Mirbach was succeeded as German ambassador to Russia by
Karl Helfferich. Coincidentally, a later relative,
Andreas von Mirbach, would be murdered by the
Red Army Faction at the
West German Embassy siege in
Stockholm in 1975. ==Honours==