Edgar Stern-Rubarth
Edgar Paul Stern-Rubarth (born August 15, 1883 in Frankfurt am Main , † January 26, 1972 in London ) was a German journalist and publicist .
Life
Edgar Paul Stern was the son of a Jewish entrepreneurial family in Frankfurt. His father, Moritz H. Stern (1859–1922) ran a cigarette factory here, while his mother Martha (1864–1912) was a literary worker and maintained close contacts with the Frankfurt art scene. Edgar attended the Goethe-Gymnasium in his hometown and studied Romance languages and economics in Frankfurt, Berlin and Paris. In 1916 he was awarded a doctorate for his work on the influences of Goethe on the French novel. phil. PhD. From 1905 he published short stories, poems and feature articles in Simplicissimus , Leipziger Illustrirten Zeitung and Vossische Zeitung .
During the First World War , Edgar Stern served in the Middle East and on the Western Front. He made a name for himself in late autumn 1914 with the transfer of 14 Muslim prisoners of war from French colonial areas from the Senne camp to Constantinople on behalf of the Foreign Office. The goal set, the timely arrival of the group for the jihad proclamation of the Ottoman sultan in November 1914 for propaganda reasons, was achieved thanks to Stern's skill. He disguised the group for the transport through Romania as a traveling circus and took over the role of the ringmaster himself. 1914/1915 Edgar Stern was adjutant to Captain Fritz Klein (1877-1958), whose expedition together with Arab tribes between March and June 1915 blew up the English oil pipeline on the Karun and obtained Shiite fatwas directed against the Entente in Kerbela and Najaf.
Promoted to the Prussian lieutenant of the Res. In 1917, Stern was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class and the Ottoman Liakat Medal in silver in 1918. In 1917 he married the teacher Josepha Rubarth (born in Fürstenberg, Krs. Büren, 1883), who worked in Rheydt, in Cologne Cathedral after his previous conversion to the Catholic faith. From July 1918 both had the double name Stern-Rubarth.
In 1919 he became editor-in-chief of various newspapers in the Ullstein Verlag in Berlin . In 1925 he took over the editor-in-chief of Wolff's Telegraphic Bureau on behalf of the Foreign Office, and from 1929 also the deputy director. This news agency acted as the official mouthpiece of the Reich government, in close coordination with the Foreign Office and the Reich Press Chief. In 1924 he was co-founder and later president of the European Customs Union and in 1927 he became general secretary of the Franco-German Society . Stern-Rubarth worked alongside Gustav Stresemann and Aristide Briand for German-French understanding.
In 1933 Stern-Rubarth was dismissed from his position as editor-in-chief and was expelled from the Reich Chamber of Literature , which amounted to a ban on the profession. In 1936 he emigrated to London via Geneva , where he was soon able to gain a foothold as a journalist. a. wrote for the Daily Telegraph and The Times . After five months of internment at the start of the war on the Isle of Man , Stern-Rubarth was able to continue his journalistic activities. In 1946 he, who had regained German citizenship, also took British citizenship.
After 1945 he traveled to Germany to give guest lectures and again worked as a correspondent for German press organs such as the Stuttgarter Zeitung and the Rheinische Merkur . From 1956 Stern-Rubarth worked regularly in the press department of the German embassy in London. The Federal Republic honored him in 1958 with the award of the Great Federal Cross of Merit and five years later with the star for the Great Federal Cross of Merit.
Trivia
In his 2018 novel Die Orient-Mission des Leutnant Stern , Jakob Hein tells how Kaiser Wilhelm wanted to fight his opponents in the First World War by triggering jihad . In order to win Sultan Mehmed V for this, he sends the lieutenant and 14 Muslims disguised as circus performers to Constantinople. Although the troops reached Istanbul to declare jihad, they did not have the desired effects on the course of the war.
Stern left the Anhalter Bahnhof with them in 1915 and returned in 1917 after his ultimately unsuccessful mission.
Fonts
- Propaganda as a political tool. Berlin 1921.
- Count Brockdorff-Rantzau , wanderer between two worlds A picture of life. Berlin 1929.
- Stresemann the European. Berlin 1930.
- Exit Prussia. A plan for Europe. London 1940.
- A short history of the Germans. London 1941.
- Three men are looking for Europe: Briand-Chamberlain-Stresemann. Munich 1947.
- A life for the press and politics. Stuttgart 1964 (autobiography)
literature
- Patrick Merziger: Stern Rubarth, Edgar. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 25, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-428-11206-7 , p. 285 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Veit Veltzke: Among the sons of the desert . The German expedition Klein in the First World War. Berlin 2014/2015.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jakob Hein: The Orient Mission of Lieutenant Stern . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-462-31850-0 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Stern-Rubarth, Edgar |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Stern-Rubarth, Edgar Paul (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German journalist and publicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 15, 1883 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Frankfurt am Main |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 26, 1972 |
| Place of death | London |