Johann Anton Freiherr[a] Saurma von der Jeltsch (27 March 1836 – 28 April 1900)[1] was a German aristocrat and diplomat.

[8] In 1893,[7] he became the first German Ambassador to the United States, replacing Minister Baron von Holleben, who took his old post in Stuttgart.

[b] Before taking his post in Washington, D.C., he traveled to New York City with Baron Clemens von Ketteler, the Counselor and First Secretary to the German Embassy, where they toured the city, visiting the New York Stock Exchange and the obelisk known as Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park, which he had seen while stationed in Egypt.

[7] In November 1894, he was among the guests who dined with President Cleveland's Solicitor General Lawrence Maxwell Jr., including Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham and Justice Stephen Johnson Field.

[2] Anton was married to Margarete von Hatzfeldt zu Trachenberg (1850–1923), a daughter of Pauline de Castellane and Count Max von Hatzfeldt,[19] who spent ten years from 1849 to 1859 as the German Minister to France and who signed the Treaty of Paris in 1856 which ended the Crimean War.

[21] Her elder sister, Hélène, was the wife of Georg von Kanitz (aide de camp to Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia).