Biography
Wilhelm von Brincken was a German diplomat and military attaché who in 1915 was assigned to the German Consulate in San Francisco. He was arrested on April 8, 1917 along with Consul-General Franz Bopp and Vice-Consul Eckhardt von Schack. At the Hindu-German Conspiracy trial (November 20, 1917 - April 24, 1918) he was convicted and sentenced to two years in federal prison for plotting to foment an insurrection against British colonial rule in India. The two-year sentence was set to run concurrently with a similar conviction for his alleged participation in bombing and dynamiting plots against the government of Canada. After his release in 1920, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1921 and went on to a long Hollywood career as a character actor specializing in stiff Prussian military officers, appearing in roughly 90 films across the silent and talkie eras and serving as a technical advisor on the Academy Award-winning All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). He died in 1946. His mug shot was published in Butterick's Delineator (July 1918) in the Huns, Spies and Traitors gallery.
