The diplomat’s lady

MANILA, Philippines - At the recent celebration marking 60 years of diplomatic relations between the Philippines and Germany, German Ambassador to the Philippines Thomas Ossowski acknowledged Gretchen del Rosario for the special part she has played in the cordial relations between the two countries. Beyond her role as the wife of Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario, she was a witness to the beginning of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

The young Gretchen was with her father, the late Policronio de Venecia, when he opened the first Philippine representation to Germany on Nov. 8, 1954. It would later become the Philippine consulate general in Hamburg with jurisdiction over Northern Germany and the city of West Berlin.

“Since then you and your family have been always close to Germany and we would like to thank you very much for that,” Ossowski said at the reception for the 60th anniversary of Philippines-Germany relations last month.

Del Rosario tells STARweek how her father, a doctor, ended up being a diplomat. After a big fire in Dagupan, Dr. de Venecia decided to move to Zambales and open a hospital there. Among his patients were the family of Ramon Magsaysay Sr., whose son and namesake would become president of the country in 1953.

President Ramon Magsaysay Jr., shortly after assuming office, invited the De Venecias to Malacañang, and at that meeting, the President offered the doctor a diplomatic posting in Europe.

“He asked my father, ‘Doctor, what would you prefer? Switzerland or a post in Germany?’ and it was my mother who answered,” recalls Gretchen. De Venecia had been sent by his parents to Germany to study medicine, and there he met and fell in love with Erna Baer, who was born in Berlin. They got married and settled back in the Philippines when he completed his medical studies.

“My mother said Germany since she hadn’t been back for 22 years and she missed her mother and brother. So that’s how he was posted in Germany.”

In 1954, De Venecia left the country with his wife and youngest daughter for his posting in Hamburg. An older daughter who was pregnant at that time stayed behind in Dagupan. Gretchen and two sisters and two brothers followed shortly after.

Arriving in Hamburg, her parents looked for a place to live and a place for the Philippine consulate general. They found a place very close to the city hall for the consulate in Neuerwall.

Gretchen, who was just 16 at the time, had finished high school in Dagupan and was entering college. The consulate general, fortunately, was very close to the university, and she recalls enjoying walking to school everyday near the river Alster. She pursued a degree in fashion design at the Meisterschule Fuer Mode in Hamburg.

But first they had to learn German. “It was of course very difficult. We never knew any German words but when we arrived in Germany, I think we had like six months’ tutorial and then we could speak it already,” she says.

She remembers receptions her father hosted and other diplomatic functions they attended.

“I was the oldest girl of the family that came over and they would take me with them to receptions, and that’s where I met the Shah of Iran with Queen Soraya with the bluish green eyes. So it was very exciting for me, being only 16 years old then,” she says.

“My mother would entertain at home and she would do the cooking. We had no maid. She never got a maid and we helped around the house. She wanted us to help out,” she adds. Being in fashion design, Gretchen also made clothes for her mother and sisters.

“My dad opened up the relationship with Germany and made possible the exchange of Filipino and German students in the field of medicine. He also made it possible that boats coming in to port would fly the Filipino flag,” she says.

After his posting in Hamburg, De Venecia was appointed consul general to Vancouver, Canada.

That posting turned out to be most significant – especially for his daughter Gretchen. After graduation from college in June 1959, she was sent to Paris for two months. She headed to New York City in late October 1959 to work in the fashion industry. There in the big city she met – at Manhattan’s Tavern on the Green – an insurance executive named Albert del Rosario.

“I was working in New York and he would come and visit me. We would go out to dinner and we would go dancing sometimes,” she recalls. They would also go biking or walking around the city.

The secretary points out that that was about all he could afford for their dates; “She was making more money than I was,” he says, noting that she was working at a noted fashion atelier in New York.

“And every lunch time I met him, and he picked me up for dinner,” after which he would bring her back to her place, making sure she reached home safely. “And then he would go home. He lived quite far. He would take the train. Maybe by the time he got home it was close to midnight.”

They dated for a year before they decided to get married.

Her parents passed by New York on their way to take up the new post in Vancouver.

“That’s when they met my husband. In the train, he ran after my father and said, ‘Doctor, Doctor.’ My father asked, ‘Yes?’ Then he told my father, ‘Can I ask for the hand of your daughter Gretchen?’” she recalls.

“My father said ‘yes, yes,’ because he did not hear it properly. And then my mother asked my dad if he knew what he (Albert) was asking him,” she says, her mother making clear that the young Albert was asking for his daughter’s hand and he had given his approval.

“‘Why did you do that?’ My mom told my dad he should have given him a hard time,” she laughs.

Albert gave up his prized possession – a Jaguar – to pay for the wedding – following the Filipino custom of the groom paying – which was held in Vancouver. They set up house in New York, and a year later their first son was born. He shares that their food budget was $2 a week, including milk for the baby – but of course $2 in 1963 went a lot farther.

Gretchen took on the role of the gracious corporate wife and mother for many years as her husband rose up in the corporate world, primarily in the insurance industry, the diplomatic world part of her past.

The couple, together with their five children, were already in the Philippines when the People Power revolution happened in 1986. They helped prepare and distribute food to the people who took a stand at EDSA.

“We were packing sandwiches. We were part of that. When there were tora-toras already, my husband said let’s bring the kids with us, we might as well be together and die together if we get hit. So we brought them all to EDSA,” she says.

Gretchen rejoined the diplomatic community when her husband became the Philippine ambassador to the United States in May 2001. In February 2011, her husband was appointed secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs – the Philippines’ top diplomat.

“We also entertained a lot just like what I used to do,” she likens the days as an ambassador’s wife to those as daughter of a consul general.

“And the Filipinos there (in Washington) were very nice. Up to now I still join their Feed the Hungry program when the Filipino-American volunteers would come. They pay their own way and they bring books and doctors with them and we would go all over for medical service,” she says. The volunteers and the doctors were in Bicol during their last visit, and rendered free medical service in several communities.

During the formal opening of the Philippine honorary consulate in Dresden in December 2011, then Philippine Ambassador to Germany Maria Cleofe Natividad said of the secretary’s wife: “Nobody can embody the ideal Philippine-German spirit in unity better than she, because of the dual nationalities of her parentage; her mother is a German, her father, a Filipino. This makes the Philippines her Motherland as much as Germany is her Fatherland.”