Albrecht von Urach

Coat of arms of the von Urach family

Albrecht Fürst von Urach (born October 18, 1903 in Hanau , † December 11, 1969 in Stuttgart ) was a German nobleman, artist and war writer, photojournalist and diplomat.

origin

Albrecht Fürst von Urach was born on October 18, 1903 in Hanau. He died on December 11, 1969 in Stuttgart and was buried in Waldenburg . He was the third son of Wilhelm Herzog von Urach , a German general in World War I, and Amalie Herzogin von Urach nee. Duchess in Bavaria, a niece of Empress Elisabeth of Austria . The family seat was Lichtenstein Castle .

Youth and Studies

Albrecht attended the Karlsgymnasium in Stuttgart and graduated from high school there in 1922. He put on an extensive collection of newspaper articles, leaflets, special editions and extra sheets on war events, including a depiction of the Russian origin of Kaiser Wilhelm II as the devil and misanthropist.

His artistic talent was already evident in his youth. His artistic development can be shown on the basis of the works that were created between 1907 and 1920. These works, watercolors, drawings and caricatures are still available and are in the Baden-Württemberg State Archives (Stuttgart). Further materials from his school days are in the form of a diary about a bathing trip with his mother to Bad Tölz , as well as correspondence with family members and with the writer Tony Schumacher (Antonie von Baur-Breitenfeld) and a collection of postcards. From the end of the 1920s he worked as a painter and journalist and went on study trips to Europe and East Asia. In 1924 he began his studies at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts , among others with Christian Landenberger (1862–1927) and Arnold Waldschmidt (1873–1958), both of whom were known for their naturalistic expressionism. From 1927 to 1930 he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.

Live and act

Urach participated in various art exhibitions, including the 1927 anniversary exhibition of the Württemberg Art Association . From 1930 to 1932 he exhibited his works in the Leicester and Redfern Galleries, as well as in the Galerie Bonaparte in Paris and the Blomquist in Oslo. He couldn't make a living from painting alone, which led him to become a freelance photographer. In the Balkans and in East Asia Albrecht von Urach had been a foreign reporter for Nazi newspapers since 1932 , most recently as a correspondent for the Völkischer Beobachter in Rome . In 1934 he joined the NSDAP . In 1934 he lived in Venice and photographed the first not publicly known meeting between Mussolini and Hitler , which was followed by a public rally in Piazza San Marco . In 1936/37 he lived in Tokyo and reported on the Sino-Japanese War on the side of Japan. During this time he wrote two books: "East Asia - Struggle for the Coming Empire" and "The Secret of Japanese Power". Over 800,000 copies of the latter have been sold. In 1938 he was brought into the press department by the NSDAP, where he was responsible for East Asia until 1939 and in 1940 took over the Italy department. There he was responsible for the coordination with the Italian press offices. In 1944 and 1945 he was press attaché at the Bern embassy.

After the war, Albrecht von Urach was arrested in 1946; the denazification process ended in 1948 without a prison sentence. He then worked as a freelance journalist. 1953 he was employee in the press department of the Daimler-Benz AG, where his brother Wilhelm was director. After suffering a stroke in 1967, he retired and died in 1969.

family

Albrecht von Urach was married twice and had three children. He married his first wife Rosemary Blackadder (1901-1975) on June 1, 1931 in Oslo. Their daughter Marie Gabriele (1932–1989) later married Desmond Guinness (born 1931). The second marriage to Ute Waldschmidt (1922–1984) resulted in the son Peter (1944–1977) and the daughter Manuela (1945–2017). His second wife was the daughter of his professor, Arnold Waldschmidt , at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts.

literature

• Peter Longerich : Propagandists at War; The press department of the Foreign Office under Ribbentrop , publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 1987

Web links

• Literature by and about Albrecht von Urach in the catalog of the German National Library
• Baden-Württemberg State Archive
• "Mr. Sorge was sitting at the table", Der Spiegel, September 5, 1951

Individual evidence

1. ↑ File number St / Gr.36 / 46/665 / K 2382, see "Albrecht Fürst von Urach" in the German Propaganda Archive at research.calvin.edu (English)