Bernd Gottfriedsen

Bernd Gottfriedsen (born March 2, 1911 in Brodersby ; † November 6, 1992 in Hermannsburg ) was a German SS-Sturmbannführer , legation councilor in the Foreign Office and adjutant to the Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop . After the war, the attempted reinstatement in the foreign service failed, but he was appointed senior teacher in Lower Saxony's high school school service.

Life

Until 1945

The son of the evangelical pastor Peter Gottfriedsen and his wife Bertha-Louise attended the humanistic cathedral school in Schleswig , graduated from high school there in 1930 and then studied history at the universities of Vienna , Marburg , Berlin and Kiel until 1936 .

As early as 1931, during his studies in Vienna, Gottfriedsen joined the NSDAP ( membership number 440.377) and the SA . In the last years of his studies at the University of Kiel, he was training director for the National Socialist German Student Union . He completed his studies with the first state examination for high school teaching, but did not enter the school service, but the England department of the Ribbentrop office and quickly made a career. From October 1937 until the end of the war he was Ribbentrop's personal adjutant , who was initially ambassador in London and from February 1938 Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs.

With the recommendation of Ribbentrop, who, according to the historian Hans-Jürgen Döscher , "preferably [surrounded] himself with SS men", Gottfriedsen joined the SS on September 1, 1937 (SS no. 284.655), and in April 1938 he advanced to SS-Obersturmführer , in January 1939 as SS-Hauptsturmführer and in January 1942 as SS-Sturmbannführer . At the Foreign Office he was appointed Legation Secretary in April 1939, Legation Councilor in August 1940 and Legation Councilor, First Class in May 1942 . As Ribbentrop's adjutant, Gottfriedsen accompanied him in August 1939 to negotiations with Molotov and Stalin in Moscow; he can be seen in a photo on the occasion of the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact in the Kremlin on the night of August 23-24, 1939 .

Gottfriedsen's special tasks in Ribbentrop's personal staff included the management of the Finance / Special Buildings department, which was responsible for Fuschl Castle , which Ribbentrop had acquired after the annexation of Austria in 1938, as well as the procurement and custody of works of art and the management of special funds . Gottfriedsen was entrusted with the gold and foreign exchange fund in the Foreign Office, which comprises 15 tons of gold and is said to have served to finance the “sponsors of the National Socialist regime abroad”.

In December 1939 Gottfriedsen married Brigitte Agnes Charlotte, née Kühn. The marriage produced a daughter and a son.

post war period

In May 1945, Gottfriedsen was arrested by members of the US Army , fell into the system of automatic arrest for functionaries from party and state and was interned for three years. During this time, the US deputy chief prosecutor for the Nuremberg trials , Robert MW Kempner , questioned him repeatedly about the use and whereabouts of the gold and foreign exchange fund managed by Gottfriedsen. Gottfriedsen insisted that he had given the gold from Fuschl to an American unit of the 3rd or 7th Army. The rest had been taken to alternative quarters in the village of Heiligenstedten near Itzehoe , from where the Reich Security Service made it to Plön ; there the gold was ultimately confiscated by the British Army.

After his release from internment in 1948, Gottfriedsen had to undergo denazification proceedings before the Bielefeld Chamber of Arbitration in 1948 because of his membership of the SS . According to Döscher, both Ernst Lemmer , who later became Minister under Konrad Adenauer , and the last head of personnel at the Foreign Office, Hans Schröder , issued him with “ Persilscheine ” to discharge him. Lemmer praised Gottfriedsen as a “man of noble disposition” who was only “entrusted with organizational and administrative tasks” in the Foreign Office; Schröder, himself a member of the NSDAP, described Gottfriedsen as an inexperienced errand boy from Ribbentrop who had "no insight" into important political issues. Gottfriedsen was only imposed a fine of 3,000 DM, or five months' imprisonment, by the Spruchkammer “because of his membership of the SS”, which was compensated by taking into account his internment period.

The re-use in the Foreign Service requested by Gottfriedsen in 1952 failed. The head of department in the human resources department who was entrusted with examining the application came to the conclusion that reinstatement was not recommended because the applicant had become a diplomat under Ribbentrop without having passed the required consular examination and his position as a "pure party man" got.

In 1954, Gottfriedsen successfully applied for a teaching position at the private Evangelical Lutheran Christian school in Hermannsburg near Celle , which did not require a police clearance certificate or a denazification notice. After he was admitted to the Lüneburg seminar in 1955 as an extraordinary member, he passed the second state examination in 1956. When the Christian School became the responsibility of the district of Celle in 1956, Gottfriedsen was taken on as a study assessor in the state school service. At the Hermannsburg grammar school he continued to teach history, geography and religion since 1959 as a civil servant teacher. shortly before his retirement in 1976 he was promoted to senior teacher.

literature

Biographical manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 2: GK . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X , p. 71f.
Hans-Jürgen Döscher : The Foreign Office in the Third Reich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the final solution. Siedler, Berlin 1987.
Hans-Jürgen Döscher: A man of noble disposition. As a diplomat in the Foreign Office. From the life of the SS leader Bernd Gottfriedsen . In: Die Zeit , June 27, 2013, p. 21.
Robert MW Kempner : The Third Reich in cross-examination . From the unpublished interrogation protocols of the Prosecutor Robert MW Kempner, Munich-Esslingen. With an introduction by Horst Möller , Herbig Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7766-2441-8 .

Web links

Questioning of Mr. Bernd Gottfriedsen on September 25, 1947 . In: Archive of the Institute for Contemporary History , Munich, call number ZS-635-1 ( PDF online )

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Biographical handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 2. GK . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, p. 71f.
↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: The Foreign Office in the Third Reich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the final solution. Siedler, Berlin 1987, p. 151.
↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: A man of noble disposition. As a diplomat in the Foreign Office. From the life of the SS leader Bernd Gottfriedsen . In: Die Zeit , June 27, 2013 (there also the NSDAP membership number)
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Hans-Jürgen Döscher: A man of noble disposition. As a diplomat in the Foreign Office. From the life of the SS leader Bernd Gottfriedsen . In: Die Zeit , June 27, 2013, p. 21.
^ Robert MW Kempner: The Third Reich in cross-examination . From the unpublished interrogation protocols of the Prosecutor Robert MW Kempner, Munich-Esslingen. With an introduction by Hans Müller, Herbig Verlag, Munich 2005, p. 307f. (Quote p. 307)
^ Robert MW Kempner: The Third Reich in cross-examination . From the unpublished interrogation protocols of the Prosecutor Robert MW Kempner, Munich-Esslingen. With an introduction by Hans Müller, Herbig Verlag, Munich 2005, p. 309ff .; See also the interrogation of Mr Bernd Gottfriedsen on September 25, 1947 . In: Archive of the Institute for Contemporary History , Munich, call number ZS-635-1 ( PDF online )

personal data
SURNAME	Gottfriedsen, Bernd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German lawyer as well as diplomat and adjutant Joachim von Ribbentrops
DATE OF BIRTH	March 2, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH	Brodersby
DATE OF DEATH	November 6, 1992
Place of death	Hermannsburg

[Biographisches_Handbuch71f-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Biographical handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 2. GK . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, p. 71f.

[2] Hans-Jürgen Döscher: The Foreign Office in the Third Reich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the final solution. Siedler, Berlin 1987, p. 151.

[3] Hans-Jürgen Döscher: A man of noble disposition. As a diplomat in the Foreign Office. From the life of the SS leader Bernd Gottfriedsen . In: Die Zeit , June 27, 2013 (there also the NSDAP membership number)

[DöscherZEIT-4] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Hans-Jürgen Döscher: A man of noble disposition. As a diplomat in the Foreign Office. From the life of the SS leader Bernd Gottfriedsen . In: Die Zeit , June 27, 2013, p. 21.

[5] Robert MW Kempner: The Third Reich in cross-examination . From the unpublished interrogation protocols of the Prosecutor Robert MW Kempner, Munich-Esslingen. With an introduction by Hans Müller, Herbig Verlag, Munich 2005, p. 307f. (Quote p. 307)

[6] Robert MW Kempner: The Third Reich in cross-examination . From the unpublished interrogation protocols of the Prosecutor Robert MW Kempner, Munich-Esslingen. With an introduction by Hans Müller, Herbig Verlag, Munich 2005, p. 309ff .; See also the interrogation of Mr Bernd Gottfriedsen on September 25, 1947 . In: Archive of the Institute for Contemporary History , Munich, call number ZS-635-1 ( PDF online )