German-Italian flag affair

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The German-Italian flag affair was a legal-diplomatic conflict in 1934 between National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy . The affair ended with a legal defeat and public embarrassment of the German Reich, which worsened the difficult German-Italian relations at the time.

starting point

Imperial war flag 1903-1919

The starting point of the dispute was that the then 25-year-old lawyer and political scientist Fritz GA Kraemer , a political emigrant from Germany, repeatedly kayaked on his summer vacation in the Gulf of Sorrento in 1934 and had decorated his boat with the imperial war flag . The German naval attaché who happened to be present saw them . The Reich war flag as a symbol of Wilhelmine Germany was banned since the Nazis came to power in the German Reich, and so the diplomat asked the Italian police to persuade Kraemer to remove the flag, which they refused.

escalation

The German Embassy in Rome (Ambassador Ulrich von Hassell ) was not satisfied with this refusal , but raised a formal protest at the Italian Foreign Ministry for "insulting" the Reich. The Italian authorities initially gave in and instructed Kraemer to remove the flag. Kraemer refused to do this, however, and sued the Italian courts. He is entitled under international law to fly his own flag on his boat in territorial waters . The case went to the Supreme Court and ended with Kraemer's success. The case had meanwhile made headlines in Italy, and the defeat of the German Reich by a 25-year-old scientist made the Nazi regime in Italy a mockery.

background

The legal defeat against Fritz Kraemer was particularly embarrassing for the Nazi regime for several reasons. Kraemer had received his doctorate from the University of Frankfurt am Main in 1931 with a thesis on a topic of international law and then worked for the League of Nations in Geneva, which was strongly rejected by the Nazi regime . Kraemer's father Georg Kraemer was also a lawyer (first public prosecutor in Koblenz); The then 62-year-old had converted to Protestantism as a student , but in the sense of the Nazi ideology “full Jew” according to the Nuremberg Laws passed the following year . As a veteran of the First World War , he was initially able to remain in the civil service because of the " frontline fighter privilege " enforced by Hindenburg . In addition, German-Italian relations were very tense in 1934 - two years before the Axis was formed . At the end of July this year, against the background of the South Tyrol conflict, Mussolini threatened Hitler with war if he tried to install a Nazi regime in Austria (see July coup ).

consequences

One consequence was that after the formation of the German-Italian axis in Italy in autumn 1936, where he had completed his second doctorate in 1935, Kraemer was no longer safe. He therefore emigrated to the United Kingdom and in 1939 to the United States. His wife, who was left in Germany - a Swede - and their child were spared persecution in the years that followed, presumably because of their international contacts. The flag affair of 1934 made it much easier for Kraemer to work as a strategy advisor in the United States Department of Defense after emigrating to the United States and serving in the US Army .

literature

  • Peter F. Drucker : The Man Who Invented Kissinger (pp. 141-157); Chapter on Fritz Kraemer in his autobiography: Adventures of a Bystander , 344 pages, New York 1979; exp. 1998 edition, ISBN 0-471-24739-1 ; Flag affair of 1934, cf. Pp. 147-149.
  • Hubertus Hoffmann : True Keeper of the Holy Flame - The Legacy of Pentagon Strategist and Mentor Dr Fritz Kraemer , 384 pages, Verlag Inspiration Un Limited, London / Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-9812110-5-4 ; P. 56 and 60.
  • Ulrich von Hassell : Roman Diaries and Letters 1932-1938. Published by Ulrich Schlie, Munich: Herbig Verlag 2004, 384 pages, ISBN 978-3-7766-2395-6 .
  • Fritz Kraemer: The relationship of the French alliance treaties to the League of Nations Pact and the Locarno Pact - a legal-political study (134 pages), Frankfurter Abhandlungen zum Moderne Völkerrecht, Issue 30, Leipzig 1932 (= Kraemer's dissertation on Dr. iur. At the university Frankfurt am Main from 1931).