Diplomatic Career
After a dispute with the university department leadership in 1890, he gave up his academic position, and as his father before him he entered a career at the Foreign Office. He was employed as a representative in Beirut and Tehran, until 1898 when he was placed in charge of establishing a consulate in Baghdad.
The diplomatic work in the Middle East was compatible with Rosen's orientalist interests. He was conversant in Arabic and Persian, and obtained an intimate knowledge of Persian culture. In 1890, he published a modern Persian grammar, with Nāsir al-Din Shāh, the Shah of Iran, as co-author; parts of the diary of the latter were employed as texts. In 1899, he accompanied the archeologist Gertrude Bell on her visit to Jerusalem.
After his travel to Palestine, Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed Rosen as consul in Jerusalem. Only two years later in 1900, he was appointed to the Political Department of Foreign Affairs. Rosen was considered as an expert on the Arab world. Moreover, like his friend Wilhelm Solf, he held liberal views, and simultaneously supported the monarchy and was an anglophile, and thus was considered as the right person for achieving an understanding with Britain.
From 1904 to 1905, Friedrich Rosen represented the interests of the German Empire in Ethiopia, in what after him was called the Rosengesandtschaft ("the Rosen Embassy"). Ethiopia hardly had as good relations with any other major power as with Germany. Returning to Europe, Rosen was appointed envoy in Tangiers. From 1910 to 1912, Rosen was envoy in Bucharest, and from 1912 to 1916 in Lissabon. In 1916, Germany declared war to Portugal, with thoughts of a German Central Africa in mind. Rosen returned with free passage back to his homeland.
Wilhelm II then appointed him as envoy in The Hague, where he remained until his ascent to a high political position. In this capacity, he visited the former Kaiser Wilhelm in his exile at Huis Doorn, a visit which the German public noted with mixed feelings.
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