Eduard Hempel

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Eduard Hempel (* 6. June 1887 in Pirna , † 12. November 1972 in Wildtal , Breisgau ) was a German diplomat in the Weimar Republic and German ambassador to Ireland in the time of National Socialism .

Life

Eduard Hempel was the son of a secret councilor. He attended high school in Bautzen and the Fridericianum in Davos and graduated from high school in Wertheim . He finished his law studies in 1910 with the first state examination in law and in 1913 with a doctorate at the University of Leipzig . After one year of voluntary military service , he went to the Saxon judicial and administrative service in 1912 , but was drafted into military service as a reserve lieutenant in the course of the First World War , in which he had been employed in the military administration in occupied Romania since 1917 . He did not take the second state examination in law until after the end of the war in 1920. In 1921 he moved to the Saxon foreign service and in 1926 to the foreign service of the German Reich , where he was deployed in Oslo from 1928 to 1932 . In 1928 he joined the German People's Party (DVP) of then Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann . From 1932 to 1937 Hempel was employed as head of department in Berlin . On June 22, 1937, he was accredited in the Republic of Ireland to succeed the late envoy Wilhelm von Kuhlmann . Although the Irish no Nazis wanted as ambassador, he came after the members-record lock the NSDAP on 1 July 1938, the NSDAP in. In Ireland there was a very active group of the NSDAP foreign organization that was also involved in espionage activities.

In the years that followed, Hempel succeeded in ensuring that the Republic of Ireland maintained its neutrality between National Socialist Germany and the Allies , which, from the perspective of German foreign policy , helped delay the United States' entry into the war .

A special diplomatic act occurred when the Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and Foreign Secretary Joseph Walshe made an official condolence visit on May 2, 1945 on the death of Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler in Hempel's ambassadorial residence on Sloperton Road in Dún Laoghaire . Irish President Douglas Hyde also came the following day. During the visit, Hempel had made a dejected and inconsolable (crying repetitively "it's all so humiliating") impression. Hempel still represented the Dönitz government after the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht on May 8, 1945 . When the US envoy David Gray took over the embassy and its archives on May 10th on behalf of the victorious powers, all the interesting files had already been destroyed; the rest of the inventory was sold in Belfast .

De Valera granted Hempel and other members of the embassy asylum after the end of the war , although the Allies demanded his extradition and Hempel, like other members of the Foreign Office , would have been interned for a long time in the Nuremberg witness prison. Hempel and his wife kept their heads above water by running a bakery. He returned to Germany in 1949 and was denazified in Stade as "Category five - exonerated" . Hempel was accepted into the Foreign Service of the Federal Republic of Germany on January 31, 1950 as "Envoy for Reuse" and retired on December 18, 1951, with which his pension entitlements as ambassador a. D. were secured. Hempel's second man in the embassy was the legation secretary Henning Thomsen , who, although a staunch National Socialist and SS officer, still had a diplomatic career in the Federal Republic.

Hempel had been married to the officer's daughter Eva Ahlemann since 1928. They had five children.

Fonts

  • The public collection of § 1914 BGB. Borna-Leipzig: Noske, 1913, Leipzig, Jur. Diss. V. Oct 15, 1913.

literature

  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 2: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: G – K. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X .
  • John P. Duggan: Mr. Hempel at the German Legation in Dublin 1937-1945 , Irish Academic Press, Dublin 2002, ISBN 0-7165-2757-X . Diss. Dublin 1980
  • John P. Duggan: Neutral Ireland and the Third Reich , Gill and Macmillan, Dublin 1985, ISBN 0-7171-1384-1
  • Horst Dickel: German Foreign Policy and the Irish Question from 1932 to 1944 , Steiner, Wiesbaden 1983, ISBN 3-515-03896-5 . Frankfurt (Main), Univ., Diss., 1980

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horst Dickel: German Foreign Policy and the Irish Question from 1932 to 1944 , p. 88.
  2. ^ John P. Duggan: Neutral Ireland and the Third Reich , pp. 241f.
  3. ^ Hyde (and de Valera) offered condolences on Hitler's death , in: Irish Independent , December 31, 2005.
  4. ^ John P. Duggan: Neutral Ireland and the Third Reich , pp. 243ff
  5. ^ John P. Duggan: Neutral Ireland and the Third Reich , p. 251.
  6. ^ David O'Donoghue: State within a state: the Nazis in neutral Ireland .
personal data
SURNAME Hempel, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Pirna
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1972
Place of death Wildtal , Breisgau