Alexander von Dörnberg (diplomat)
Alexander Freiherr von Dörnberg zu Hausen (born March 17, 1901 in Darmstadt ; † August 7, 1983 in Oberaula -Hausen, Hesse) was a German lawyer, diplomat and SS leader. He became known as the head of the protocol department at the Foreign Office from 1938 to 1945.
Live and act
He came from the Dörnberg family from the Hessian nobility. In his youth, Dörnberg attended the Reform Realgymnasium in Kassel. After he graduated from high school there in 1919, Dörnberg took part in the violent internal political conflicts in Germany after the First World War as a member of a paramilitary volunteer corps . He then studied law at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, Munich, Marburg and Frankfurt am Main. In 1920 he became a member of the Corps Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg and in 1921 of the Corps Borussia Bonn . In 1925 he received his doctorate in Marburg as Dr. iur.
In 1926 Dörnberg was the private secretary of the German ambassador Ago von Maltzan at the German embassy in Washington for a few months before he officially entered the foreign service in 1927 . In the Foreign Office he was initially assigned to Alfred Horstmann as an attaché . In 1930 he passed the diplomatic-consular examination. He then worked from 1930 to 1933 as an attaché at the German legation in Bucharest .
In 1933 Dörnberg - who stood out for his height of over 2 m - worked for a few months in the disarmament department of the Foreign Office before he was employed at the embassy in Reval from autumn 1933 to 1936 . After a stopover in the political department of the Foreign Office in 1936/37, he came to the German Embassy in London as legation secretary . There, for the first time, there was intensive cooperation between Dörnberg and the then German ambassador to Great Britain, Joachim von Ribbentrop , with whom he became friends.
On January 1, 1934, Dörnberg joined the NSDAP (membership number 3.398.362) as head of state training for the NSDAP in Estonia . In 1938 he also became a member of the SS (membership number 293.224), in which he achieved the rank of SS Oberführer as an honorary leader in the personal staff of the Reichsführer SS .
In July 1938 Dörnberg was appointed as the successor to Vicco von Bülow-Schwante as head of the protocol department at the Foreign Office. He stayed in this post until the collapse of the Nazi regime in 1945. In autumn 1938, Dörnberg received British Prime Minister Chamberlain on the occasion of the negotiations on the Munich Agreement . In August 1939 he accompanied Ribbentrop to Moscow to sign the German-Soviet non-aggression pact .
As a diplomat, Dörnberg held the title of envoy and ambassador on an extraordinary mission.
After the Wehrmacht surrendered , Dörnberg was arrested by the Allies and questioned as a witness during the Nuremberg Trials , particularly in the Wilhelmstrasse Trial .
More public attention was paid to Dörnberg posthumously in 2005: the protocol department of the Foreign Office had added Dörnberg's portrait photograph to the row of all department heads since 1920, which are hanging in the corridors of the protocol department on the 1st floor of the west wing of the AA. This led to a dispute about the culture of remembrance of the Foreign Office and aroused the displeasure of then Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer .
Individual evidence
- ^ Henrik Eberle, Matthias Uhl: The Hitler Book. The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin. , 2005, p. 313
- ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1996, 140 , 1345
- ^ A b Paul Schwarz: This Man Ribbentrop. His Life and Times , 1943, p. 78
- ↑ a b Der Spiegel April 11, 2005, p. 34
- ^ Seabury, 1954
literature
- Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 1: Johannes Hürter : A – F. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2000, ISBN 3-506-71840-1 .
- Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The Office and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .
- Hans-Jürgen Döscher : SS and Foreign Office in the Third Reich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the “ final solution ” . Ullstein, Frankfurt 1991, ISBN 3-548-33149-1 .
- Paul Seabury: Wilhelmstrasse. The history of German diplomacy 1930–1945 . Frankfurt am Main 1956, p. 115.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Dörnberg, Alexander von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Dörnberg zu Hausen, Alexander Freiherr von (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German lawyer and politician (NSDAP) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 17, 1901 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Darmstadt |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 7, 1983 |
| Place of death | Oberaula -Hausen, Hesse |