Dietler Sattler (2 February 1906 - 9 November 1968) was a German architect who became involved in politics, especially with respect to culture, the arts and foreign policy.

Sattler also came to share his uncle's hostility to the Nazi party which took power in January 1933 and spent the next few months transforming the country into a one-party dictatorship.

Dieter Sattler's marriage to Maria Clara Schiedges took place on 19 May 1933 in Salzburg, at that stage still just across the border from Nazi Germany, in Austria.

Dieter Sattler caused a seemingly unprecedented surge in employment opportunities for the small holders in the village by having the former cowshed on his property converted into a family home.

[2] During the twelve Nazi years Sattler made no secret of his dislike for the régime, retaining his belief in Catholic Conservatism and sustaining loose links with more active Christian opponents of Nazism.

At the same time, sources hint that he received few architectural commissions at his Berlin office, and spent the later 1930s keeping out of the way at his Grendach property near Taching am See.

He was also "noticed" by Hans Ehard, the man who became Bavarian Minister-president at the end of 1946, who commended the judicious objectivity of his judgement, able to be well-informed and quietly critical without becoming engaged in politics.

Nevertheless, from now on Sattler did become involved with the emerging mainstream establishment, both politically and in terms of his architecture business which, inevitably, stood to benefit from the massive amount of reconstruction made necessary by the destruction of the war.

He founded the Munich Professional Association for Architects and Construction Engineers ("Berufsverband für Architekten und Bauingenieure Münchens"), becoming its first president.

[2] Sattler's relatively low political profile was one of the qualities that commended him to Franz Josef Strauss, a leading member of the party's Müller wing.

He was unencumbered by any skeletons from the Nazi years and, like the military administrators who, especially before May 1949, took a close and detailed interest in developments, Sattler had mastered English.

This may in part have been connected with the fact that Sattler had served as what amounted to an "under-minister" despite never actually having been elected a member of the Bavarian regional parliament ("Landtag"), or it may simply have reflected the shifting power balance within the party.

[14] During his first few years much of his time was spent negotiating the return of the assets from the German Culture and Scientific Institute which had been confiscated by the Allied Armies during the war.

[15] Meanwhile, in 1955 Bonn–Paris conventions, following several years of Anglo-French wrangling, were ratified and came into force in 1955, providing that West Germany should from that point acquire "the full authority of a sovereign State over its internal and external affairs".

Sattler's own record seems not to have embarrassed anyone, however, his obdurate adherence to his Roman Catholic principals having effectively inoculated him against any involvement with the Nazi régime.

[15] In 1959 he was recalled to Bonn, seat of the West German government, and appointed "Ministerialdirektor" and head of the Cultural Department at the Foreign Ministry.

[16] As the political tensions between East and West Germany spilled over into the cultural sphere, his seven years in the office coincided with a period of significant "soft power" investment.

[17] Sattler's objective was to anchor activities of the culturally focused German overseas institutions more firmly within the country's overall foreign policy strategy, which in some ways reflected his own life and career, using diplomatic instincts and personal panache to bring together the worlds of the arts and of politics.

[15] In October 1966 Dieter Sattler took up his appointment, which had been announced seven months earlier, as West German ambassador to the Holy See,[18] a position for which his previous career made him, in the opinion of one commentator, the "ideal candidate".