Sir Rudolph Slatin Pasha, an Austrian Jew who adopted the Christian faith and attained high honors in the services of his own country and that of Great Britain, died here yesterday at the age of seventy-five.
Sir Rudolph succumbed to a stomach ailment for which he underwent an operation a month ago.
Sir Rudolph was born Rudolph Carl Slatin and although he never renounced his Austrian citizenship, he achieved renown for his services to Great Britain as Governor General of Darfur and Inspector General of the Sudan. In recognition of his contributions to the history of Great Britain in Egypt and Africa, King Edward VII knighted the man who by this time had attained the rank of Major General in the British Army.
This did not deter the Austrian government from making him a Baron in 1906.
Sir Rudolph was visiting Austria when the World War broke out. He thereupon renounced all his British titles, but refused to fight against the Allies. Instead he took a post with the Red Cross, later becoming European head of the Red Cross work aid to prisoners of war.
Sir Rudolph started on his career of adventure as a boy of sixteen when he went to Egypt where he made the acquaintance of the explorers Schweinfurth, Rohlfs and Heuglin and Emin Pasha who in turn introduced and recommended him to the English General Gordon.
He returned to Austria from Egypt and served in the Bosnian campaign as a lieutenant. In 1879, however, he returned to the Sudan upon the invitation of General Gordon. At the age of twenty-two the latter made him Governor of Dara, a province of Darfur, and at twenty-six, Governor General of Darfur.
For fourteen years he served as Inspector General of the entire Sudan. He achieved great popularity through his capture and eleven years imprisonment by the Mahdi, the savage Moslem, who conducted a struggle against British supremacy in North Africa. He escaped in 1895, was made a Pasha by the Khedive and later served as Chief of the British Intelligence service under Lord Kitchener.
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