I stumbled upon Muriel White while watching Julie Montagu’s YouTube series, American Countess, where she explores some of Britain’s finest treasure houses.
The American heiress and countess Margaret “Muriel” White was born in 1880, in Paris. Her father, Henry White, was a world-famous diplomat. (He signed the Versailles Peace Treaty on behalf of the U.S.) Her mother, Margaret “Daisy” Stuyvesant Rutherfurd, was a celebrated society beauty. In fact, so influential was her family that after they commissioned John Singer Sargent, a relatively unknown, to paint Daisy’s life-size portrait, Sargent became overloaded with commissions.
Muriel grew up in elite European society, fluent in six languages and often serving as her father’s hostess in diplomatic circles. At a party in Berlin, Muriel met 29-year-old Hermann “Manni” Seherr-Thoss, a count with a seat in the House of Lords and a job at the German embassy in Vienna. He was “good-looking & charming & amusing & brave & . . . full of tender beautiful poetic thoughts which touch one’s heart,” Muriel, then 28, wrote to her aunt.
She married Manni in 1909 in Paris —Muriel revoked her American citizenship to do so. They moved to one of the count’s castles in Silesia, a region that spans parts of modern-day Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany.
She was known as “the most charming listener in society.” However, she became disenchanted quickly. She and Seherr-Thoss divorced. He allowed her to remain in their palace, Dobrau, only as an unpaid housekeeper, even though it was her fortune that had restored the estate. Her U.S. passport was confiscated and she was virtually a prisoner.
Muriel is known for her courageous resistance to the Nazi regime during the 1930s and World War II. White recognized the danger of Adolf Hitler early, refusing to fly the swastika flag and directly confronting him at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by declaring she knew his aims and would work against him.
She used her connections and resources to help Jewish families escape, hid escaped British soldiers and American pilots, smuggled her ex-husband to safety. She helped the Queen of Albania flee to the mountains after the Italians invaded her country.
In Muriel’s last year, she barely went out of the house, due to the soldiers surrounding the estate. Her biggest fear was being deported to a concentration camp. In fact, on March 15, 1943, fearing torture and believing that she might be forced to reveal the location of her sons, Muriel acted quickly when she saw a Gestapo car turn into Dobrau’s entrance. As they walked up the drive, Muriel White climbed to the second floor of her palace and jumped out of a tower window to her death. She was sixty-three.
https://www.rickhutto.com/articles/RoyalDigestQuarterly12-2022.pdf
https://nypost.com/2025/03/08/lifestyle/the-american-aristrocrat-who-stood-up-to-hitler
