de Pourtalès was born on 24 October 1853. He was a son of Wilhelm von Pourtalès and Charlotte Luise Auguste Gräfin von Maltzan zu Wartenberg und Penzlin. His father spent a number of years in Venice creating a collection of Renaissance sculpture, which included works by Jacopo Sansovino and Andrea Riccio, and paintings by old Italian masters. His siblings included Louise de Pourtalès, Johanna Albertine Antoinette de Pourtalès and Rosa Margarete Guillemette Mathilde Auguste von Pourtalès. Among his extended family were uncles Count Guillaume von Pourtalès and Count Albert von Pourtalès. His family, who were originally Swiss, were Protestant bankers. The Pourtalès title was created in 1750 by the King of PrussiaFrederick William II. He was also a cousin of Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Chancellor of the German Empire and Minister President of Prussia from 1907 to 1917. Another cousin was Count James Pourtalès, who previously owned the family estate and went bankrupt in the Panic of 1893.
Career
Pourtalès was Prussian Minister to the Kingdom of Bavaria in Munich until 1907, and conducted diplomacy in the style of the grand seigneur, holding posts in Austria-Hungary, the Netherlands and France. When Pourtalès arrived in St. Petersburg, he came with seventeen vanloads of furniture. Pourtalès succeeded Count Monts as the German Ambassador to the Russian Empire in Saint Petersburg from 1907 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. While Ambassador, Wilhelm von Mirbach served as the embassy clerk. Pourtalès was deeply involved in the 1914 July Crisis, which was a series of interrelated diplomatic and military escalations among the major powers of Europe in the summer of 1914 that ultimately led to the Great War and started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Pourtalès handed Russia's Foreign MinisterSergey Sazonov Germany's declaration of war. In his obituary, the New York Times wrote that Pourtalès "supported the official German explanation of the cause of the World War. He asserted the innocence of his country and expressed belief that the Czar had been forced into war against his will by the Russian war party. He believed that the surest guarantee of peace would have been an alliance of Germany, Russia and France, which he said the Kaiser and the Czar tried to accomplish. He was one of those who accepted the theory that England had been feverishly pushing a policy of encirclement of the Central Powers.
In 1824, his grandfather Count Karl von Pourtalès, a Royal Counselor, purchased the estate of Schloss Glumbowitz which included a classicist palace. Friedrich later owned the palace which he filled with "numerous works of art" that were gifted to him by his father. Pourtalès also owned a country estate, Villa Mettlen, in the municipality of Muri bei Bern in Bern, Switzerland.
