Curt Bräuer

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Curt Bräuer

Curt Bräuer (born February 24, 1889 in Breslau , † September 8, 1969 in Wiesbaden ) was a German officer and diplomat.

Life

Curt Bräuer was the son of the businessman Conrad Bräuer and his wife Wilhelmine geb. Pätzold. From 1907 to 1910 he studied law and political science at the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelms University and the University of Greifswald . He became active in the Corps Lusatia Breslau (1907) and in the Corps Guestfalia Greifswald (1909). In Greifswald he studied with Wolfgang Kraus . After taking the first state examination in early 1911 and becoming a Dr. iur. After receiving his doctorate , he entered the Prussian administration of justice on March 8, 1911. In the same year he signed up as a one-year volunteer . From 1914 he studied oriental languages at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin . From September 5, 1914 to July 1918, he took part in the entire First World War . So he was only able to take the assessor exam on December 13, 1919. He was drafted into the Foreign Service on January 31, 1920 and initially assigned to the Foreign Trade Office as an attaché , and from July 1920 to Department VI (America, Spain, Portugal) of the Foreign Office (AA).

South Africa, Brussels, Paris

On September 24, 1920 he was transferred to the Consulate General in Cape Town , later Pretoria . Consul since July 1925 , he returned to the AA in August 1925. In Department II (Western and Southeastern Europe) he was responsible for Czechoslovakia . Since March 1928 Legation Counselor , he was appointed to the Brussels Legation in July 1930 and a year later promoted to Counselor First Class. Between 1928 and 1930 he was a member of the DDP . From May 1935 to May 1936 he was acting head of the representation. On August 1, 1935, he joined the NSDAP . After being entrusted with a special assignment from the AA at the end of 1937, he was counselor in Paris until the outbreak of World War II . From there he reported in a memorandum of March 11, 1938 to the Foreign Office, his assessment that France would not intervene in a military occupation of Austria.

Oslo and Wehrmacht

He was on 3 November 1939 as an envoy , with the rank of ambassador , after Oslo dispatched and held that post until 16 April 1940. In his capacity as the highest civil representative of the government of the German Reich and its authorized representative to the Norwegian government, Bräuer sent a memorandum to the Norwegian Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht on April 9, 1940 . It contained the request not to offer any resistance to the invading German troops, but the Norwegians did not comply. In a conversation with King Haakon VII the next day, he tried to get him to recognize the coup government of Vidkun Quisling , but was also unsuccessful. Quisling had to resign under pressure from the Reich government. As a result, on April 15, Bräuer formed an administrative committee for the occupied Norwegian territories together with Theodor Habicht and in cooperation with the Oslo Supreme Court . Against Bräuer's hopes of receiving recognition from the Norwegian government, the latter did not accept the administrative council as a political institution, but merely as an administrative body; In Berlin, however, Bräuer tried to give the impression that it was a kind of accepted government. After that, Hitler Bräuer withdrew from Oslo and removed responsibility for Norway from Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Foreign Office. On April 16, 1940, Bräuer was put into temporary retirement as a diplomat . After Bräuer was recalled, Hitler sent the politically more active Josef Terboven as Reich Commissioner to occupied Norway . On May 4, 1940, Bräuer was drafted into the army (Wehrmacht) . On November 1, 1944, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the reserve . In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets , from which he was released in December 1953.

post war period

In 1954 a planned lecture by Bräuer to a Norwegian fraternity about the events at the time of the occupation in 1940 caused great resentment among the Norwegian population. The Norwegian government then found legal means to prevent Bräuer from entering the country. In April 1959 he was once again entrusted with a special order by the Foreign Office.

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 .
  • Munzinger: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 13/1955 from March 21, 1955.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 81/334; 52/303.
  2. ^ William Young: German Diplomatic Relations 1871-1945. iUniverse, Lincoln 2006, p. 240.
  3. ↑ According to other sources: November 14, 1939.
  4. ↑ Former ambassadors in Norway ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Official website of the German Embassy in Norway.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.oslo.diplo.de
  5. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Haas, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past . P. 250f. See also Susanne Maerz: The long shadows of the occupation. “Coming to terms with the past” in Norway as a discourse on identity. Berlin, 2008, p. 49.
  6. ↑ Munzinger: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 13/1955 from March 21, 1955.
  7. ^ Message from the Federal Foreign Office dated May 31, 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Brewer, Curt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 1969
Place of death Wiesbaden