Six months ago swart, dynamic, 70-year-old Sir Henri Wilhelm August Deterding, Director-General of Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., one of the world's largest producers of crude petroleum, married his third wife, Charlotte Mina Knack, a German (TIME, June 15).
Sir Henri, who was knighted by King George V in 1920, has for many years had his chief residence in London's swank Mayfair, but last week he was sitting in his new house near the German capital and showed signs of developing into a good Berliner. His big Germanic gesture as 1937 opened was to place 10,000,000 Dutch guilders ($5.475,000) at the disposal of Dutch farmers so that they might export their superfluous green stuffs, fruit and cattle to Germany without loss to themselves and with cost to food-starved Nazis much reduced. This "non-political and exclusively humanitarian" gift received the special commendation of The Netherlands Government.
Sir Henri's second wife was a White Russian, Lydia Pavlovna Koudoyarov. No sooner had they been married than Oilman Deterding assumed the role of Fairy Godfather to destitute White Russians all over the world, glad-handed them thousands from his ample purse. Pleased Nazis, attributing Sir Henri's latest outburst of munificence to "petticoat philanthropy," felt grateful last week that the new Lady Deterding is not Chinese or French.
Though Sir Henri last week retired from his Royal Dutch Director Generalship, it was being said in London financial circles last week that he is not the sort of man to be idle very long, that he is probably laying bait to hock concessions and contracts from Dictator Hitler as soon as Germany gets back her "stolen" colonies.