Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter

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Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter.

Alfred Kiderlen , from 1868 Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter (born July 10, 1852 in Stuttgart , † December 30, 1912 there ) was a German diplomat .

family

Kiderlen-Waechter came from a family from Neuburg near Koblach ( Vorarlberg ), whose direct line began with the white tanner Michael Kiderlen , and since 1610 citizens of Ulm .

He was the son of the royal Württemberg court banker Robert Kiderlen and Marie Freiin von Waechter . Father Robert Kiderlen was raised to the personal nobility in 1852 when he was awarded the Order of Civil Merit by the Württemberg crown .

It was only on September 11, 1868 diploma from January 22, 1869 Alfreds was Mother Marie Kiderlen already with their children as a widow in common Alfred , Sarah and Johanna Kiderlen in the Württemberg hereditary peerage charged along with name and crest union with the Baron von Waechter as "of Kiderlen-Waechter ”.

Life

Kiderlen guard

Kiderlen-Waechter attended the Princely School in Grimma (1868-1870) and took part in the Franco-German War as a volunteer in 1870/1871 . 1871–1877 he studied law at the Universities of Tübingen , Leipzig and Strasbourg . During his studies in Tübingen he was active in the Normannia Tübingen association.

In 1877 Kiderlen-Waechter joined the Foreign Service of the German Empire and held posts in Copenhagen, Saint Petersburg and Paris. In 1886 he was transferred to the German mission in Constantinople as legation counselor. Promoted to lecturing council in the Foreign Office in 1888 , he made a career in the department for questions about the Orient .

Due to a disrespectful allusion in the satirical magazine Kladderadatsch , Kiderlen challenged the editor of the magazine Wilhelm Polstorff to a duel and injured his shoulder. The subsequent sentencing to four months of imprisonment , of which Kiderlen only had to serve a little more than two weeks at the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress in 1894 , did not affect his diplomatic career.

In 1894/95 he was the Prussian envoy to the Hanseatic cities . On May 31, 1895, he represented Prussia and the Reich at the laying of the foundation stone for the Elbe-Trave Canal in Lübeck . After the blows with the silver hammer by the presiding mayor, Heinrich Theodor Behn , he fogged him with the words “I too ask for God's blessing for this work as a new bond through ancient friendship, indissolubly united neighbors Lübeck in the new German empire and Prussia. ”, followed by the Minister of State Karl Heinrich von Boetticher .

In the same year he was appointed envoy in Copenhagen.

Because of unabashed statements about Kaiser Wilhelm II. Kiderlen fell into disgrace three years later and had to spend the following ten years as an envoy in Bucharest ( Kingdom of Romania ) away from world events . As representative of the sick ambassador in Constantinople, he led the negotiations for the construction of the Baghdad Railway in 1907 . Kiderlen's exile ended in 1908 with his appointment as Deputy State Secretary of the Foreign Office. With his negotiating skills, he contributed to overcoming the Bosnian crisis and, after the first Morocco crisis, negotiated a Franco-German agreement on Morocco.

After the dismissal of Reich Chancellor Prince Bernhard von Bülow , Kiderlen was appointed head of the Foreign Office in 1910. The foreign policy concept initially pursued by Kiderlen suffered a serious setback in the Second Morocco Crisis in July 1911. The German Reich had to give up its ambitions in Morocco in exchange for minor territorial gains in West Africa . The naval negotiations with England ended unsuccessfully in 1912.

Kiderlen-Waechter died of a heart attack in 1912 after drinking 6 cognacs.

literature

Web links

Commons : Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friedrich Wermuth, Karl Irmscher u. a .: From the electoral state school to the St. Augustin high school in Grimma 1550–2000 , Beucha 2000, p. 51, ISBN 3-930076-99-3
  2. ↑ Jonas Flöter, Marita Pesenecker: Education for the Elite. The Princely and State Schools of Grimma, Meißen and Schulpforte around 1900 . Publication for the exhibition in the district museum Grimma. Leipzig 2003, p. 96, ISBN 3-937209-33-6
  3. ^ The laying of the foundation stone for the Elbe-Trave Canal. In: Lübeckische Blätter ; Volume 37, number 44, edition of June 2, 1895, pp. 297–301.
  4. ↑ David Fromkin : Europe's last summer p. 103
personal data
SURNAME Kiderlen-Waechter, Alfred von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kiderlen, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1912
Place of death Stuttgart