Alexander Werth (lawyer)

Alexander Werth (also Alexander Werth-Regendanz) (born October 13, 1908 in Hamburg , † December 24, 1973 in Sils Maria ) was a German lawyer, civil servant and manufacturer.

Alexander Werth (far left) with some colleagues in the Foreign Office (around 1942)

Life

Youth and Education (1908 to 1934)

Werth was a son of the later Vice Admiral and Reich Commissioner at the Hamburg Prize Court , Alexander Werth , and his wife Carmen, née Herrmann. He was later adopted by the banker Wilhelm Regendanz , whose name he subsequently carried as an addition to his name until his emigration in the 1930s and his return to Germany in 1938 (Werth-Regendanz).

Werth attended a grammar school in Kiel from 1915 to 1923 and then until 1927 the Arndt grammar school in Berlin-Dahlem . He then studied law from 1927 to 1930 in Heidelberg , Munich , Grenoble ; Berlin and Göttingen . He passed his first state examination in law in January 1931 at the Higher Regional Court in Celle with the grade of fully satisfactory. In June 1931 he passed the doctoral examination at the University of Göttingen with the grade "very good".

From 1931 to 1934, Werth completed a practical training period as a candidate and trainee at Berlin courts. During this time he published treatises on the Young Plan and the European arms question.

Emigration to Great Britain (1934 to 1938)

In connection with the crackdown on his stepfather - who was able to flee to Great Britain with his private plane - in the course of the Röhm Putsch , Werth was arrested and held in a concentration camp for three months until he was finally allowed to travel to Great Britain in September 1934 .

In Great Britain, Werth settled in London as a lawyer and student of English law. In January 1938 he passed the final exam of the English lawyer with the result. In addition, he worked as a consultant for German companies with economic interests in Great Britain such as Rheinisch-Westfälische Elektrizitätswerke AG or Vorarlberger Illwerke AG .

Return from emigration and World War II

In September 1938, Werth was allowed to return to Germany on condition that he join the Wehrmacht and do military service for several months. After he finished his legal preparatory service at the Berlin District Court , where he now passed the second state examination with the result “fully satisfactory”, he performed an exercise with the 8th replacement regiment in the spring of 1939.

In October 1939, Werth was drafted into the Wehrmacht, where he took part as a marksman in the Norwegian and French campaigns. Because of his language skills, he was mainly used as an interpreter for English and French.

In 1940 Werth was complained about by the Foreign Office because of his unusual knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon world and as a result, dismissed from the army as "indispensable". After joining the Foreign Office, Werth was initially assigned to the information department, where he worked with his college friend Adam von Trott zu Solz .

Werth was later used in a special section of the Foreign Office headed by Trott, which was entrusted with the processing of the plans of the German government, sending Subhash Chandra Bose , one of the leaders of the violent wing of the Indian independence movement, back to India in order to avoid political unrest in the to ignite British overseas ownership in order to weaken the British war opponent. Werth, who, together with Trott, was primarily responsible for looking after Bose during his stay in Berlin, became Trott's deputy head of the special department as a research assistant.

post war period

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Special camp inmate

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After the Second World War, Werth became head of Ringsdorff -Werke GmbH in Mehlem am Rhein in 1951 , the largest industrial company in Bad Godesberg , which he headed until the 1970s. Politically, Werth belonged to the CDU after the Second World War , for which he was council member of Bad Godesberg. In 1971 he also presented a biography of Bose, which was translated into English, among other things. Werth owned a property in the Bad Godesberg district of Schweinheim ( Venner Straße 31 ), which he sold to the Soviet Union at the end of 1971 as the residence of their ambassador.

marriage

Werth was married to Helge, geb. Ringsdorff.

Fonts

• The Clausula Rebus Sic Stantibus in international law, especially in its application to the Young Plan , 1931.
• Germany's military equality. An international law investigation , 1932.
• The tiger of India. Subhas Chandra Bose , 1971.

literature

• Horst Heidermann : The Godesberg entrepreneur Dr. Alexander Werth (1908–1973) . In: Godesberger Heimatblätter: Annual volume of the Association for Home Care and Home History Bad Godesberg eV , ISSN  0436-1024 , Volume 53/2015, Association for Home Care and Home History Bad Godesberg , Bad Godesberg 2016, pp. 117–159. [not yet evaluated for this article]
• Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871 - 1945. 5. T - Z, supplements. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , p. 246 f.
• Who is Who , 1967, p. 2154.