Kurt Luedde-Neurath

Portrait of Kurt Luedde-Neurath (September 1958)

Kurt Luedde-Neurath (born February 19, 1911 in Château-Salins , † July 12, 1984 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German diplomat .

Life

He studied law in Freiburg im Breisgau , Innsbruck and Breslau . After passing the two state exams, he joined the Foreign Service in 1938. Luedde-Neurath initially worked as an attaché in the Foreign Office in Berlin . On May 1, 1937, he joined the NSDAP . From 1933 to 1939 he was a member of the SA .

Between 1939 and 1941 he was an attaché at the German embassy in Tokyo . After that he was legation secretary there until the end of the Second World War . Since 1944 he was married to Ingeborg (née Schneewind). With this he had three children.

Luedde-Neurath returned to Germany in 1947 and initially went into the private sector. Nothing is known about its denazification . At times he worked in a textile trading company in Lörrach , which was run by his wife's family.

In 1950 he returned to the civil service. Luedde-Neurath was initially in the organization office for the establishment of consular and economic missions abroad, while still working in the Federal Chancellery . In 1951 he received the title of Legation Councilor, First Class. Until 1953 he worked in the Foreign Office in Bonn.

Afterwards he was first class consul at the Consulate General in Barcelona . Between 1958 and 1963 Luedde-Neurath was envoy to Haiti . In 1963 he was lecturer in the Foreign Office, first class councilor and head of the Eastern Bloc department in the Office's Political Department.

Since 1966 he was the German representative in Indonesia . From 1968 Luedde-Neurath was ambassador to New Zealand before moving to Uruguay in 1970 . In spring 1973 he was appointed ambassador to Santiago de Chile , where he was already accredited on September 11, 1973. Against the background of the 1973 coup in Chile , he took the view that "the more we shut up, the greater the humanitarian opportunities". In 1975 he retired .

Luedde-Neurath received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class in 1969 .

In April 2016, Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier admitted that the Federal Foreign Office and the embassy staff at the time had “grave negligence for years because of the Colonia Dignidad sect settlement in Chile. "From the sixties to the eighties, German diplomats looked the other way at best - at least they did clearly too little to protect their compatriots in this colony" ".

literature

• Kurt Luedde-Neurath , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 43/1984 from October 15, 1984, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 3: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: L – R. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-71842-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Die Zeit , December 2013, Pinochet's Putsch, Deutschlands Furcht
2. ^ Sect settlement in Chile - Steinmeier zu Colonia Dignidad: "German diplomats did too little" , Der Tagesspiegel , April 26, 2016, accessed on April 27, 2016

predecessor	Office	successor
Georg Count of Schwerin	German ambassador in Port-au-Prince 1958–1963	Volker Heinsberg
Luitpold Werz	German ambassador in Jakarta 1966–1967	Heinrich Seemann
Heinrich Koehler	German ambassador in Wellington 1968–1970	Eckard Briest
Eckard Briest	German ambassador in Montevideo 1970–1973	Jürgen Krieghoff
Lothar Lahn	German ambassador in Santiago de Chile 1973–1975	Erich Strätling