Amethe von Zeppelin

Countess Amethé Gwendolen Marion Mackenzie von Zeppelin (born Amethé Smeaton; 1896 – 1969) was a British woman who married into the Zeppelin family and was known as a translator of philosophical works from German to English. She also co-translated Werner Heisenberg's Die Physik der Atomkerne into English in 1953.

She was considered by the British security services to have been anti-British before the Second World War and to have made an anti-British or propaganda radio broadcast from Vienna in September 1939. Later in the war, she was closely associated with members of the Von Pott Nazi espionage group in Vienna, but her exact involvement in their activities, if any, is unclear.

Early life and family Amethé Smeaton was born in Rangoon, Burma on 13 January 1896, the daughter of Donald Mackenzie Smeaton (1897–1910) and Marion H. M. Ansell.

Smeaton was educated at home, and attended Girton College at the University of Cambridge for one term in 1917, before withdrawing due to ill health.

Smeaton married an RAF Captain, Ian H. P. McEwen in 1919. He divorced her in May 1928, citing Count Zeppelin as a co-respondent. Count Zeppelin was Leo Parcus, the adopted son of Count Eberhard Zeppelin, who took the name Count Leo Parcus von Zeppelin.

She left Vienna in September 1945 as the war was drawing to a close.

She died on 2 September 1969 in 7/6 Floragasse, Vienna.

Translations Paul Frischauer, Prince Eugène: A Man and a Hundred Years of History. Victor Gollancz, London, 1934. Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language. Kegan Paul & Co., London, 1937. Moritz Schlick Philosophy of Nature. Philosophical Library, New York, 1949. Walter Schubart, Russia and Western Man. Frederick Ungar, New York, 1950. Bruno Freytag, Philosophical Problems of Mathematics. Philosophical Library, New York, 1951. Karl Kobald, Springs of Immortal Sound. Kunsterverlag Wolfrum, Vienna, 1950. Werner Heisenberg, Nuclear Physics Methuen, London, 1953. (With Frank Gaynor)