Emil Schumburg

Emil Schumburg (born May 14, 1898 in Berlin , † February 17, 1961 in Hanover ) was a doctorate fully qualified lawyer, German diplomat and Jewish advisor in the Foreign Office .

Life

Emil Schumburg was the son of the medical professor and general practitioner Wilhelm Schumburg and his wife Emma nee. Behring, a sister of the Nobel Prize for Medicine Emil von Behring . At the age of 18 he had obtained his secondary school diploma and then registered for military service during the First World War , from which he resigned in 1919. After studying law, doing his doctorate in 1923 at the University of Göttingen with a thesis on Kaiser and Reich President and various stays abroad, he was called up as an attaché in the Foreign Office on January 1, 1926, to which he was a professional diplomat until 1945. In May 1933 Schumburg became assistant to Vicco von Bülow-Schwantes as legation secretary , who headed the special department for Germany . He attracted Heinrich Himmler's attention when he accompanied him on a trip to Rome in October 1936 . Thereupon he immediately became an Untersturmführer in the SS (SS no. 280.150). From July 1938, Schumburg was a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 5.855.545) Between 1938 and 1940, Schumburg acted as a liaison officer between the Reichsführer SS , Heinrich Himmler and the Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and was the first Jewish advisor in the Foreign Office. With the rank of Legation Councilor, Schumburg now headed the Special Section Germany , whose area of ​​responsibility outlined the cooperation with the SS and the Secret State Police in questions of Jewish policy. Three days after the November pogroms in 1938 , on November 12, 1938, together with Undersecretary Ernst Woermann, as a representative of the Foreign Office , he took part in the conference chaired by Hermann Göring , in which anti-Jewish measures were discussed. At the end of the conference, Goering dismissed the participants with the note: “If the German Reich comes into foreign policy conflict in any foreseeable future, it goes without saying that we in Germany, too, will primarily think of paying a big reckoning to the Jews execute. "

In a letter to all diplomatic and professional consular missions abroad on January 25, 1939, Schumburg gave a lecture on the "Jewish question as a factor in foreign policy in 1938". The "emigrated Jew [was] to be and could be used as the best propaganda for German Jewish policy" Foster anti-Semitism abroad: "The poorer and thus more burdensome the immigrant Jew is for the immigration country, the stronger the host country will react and the more desirable is the effect in German propaganda interests". Schumburg continued: “Even for Germany, the Jewish question will not have been resolved when the last Jew has left German soil.” The Independent Commission of Historians assesses this statement as “the request of the AA [...] for an overall solution in the form of a Jewish reservation or to strive for through physical destruction. ”The Reich Security Main Office , however, described this procedure as not yet expedient because it would reduce the willingness to accept people abroad. Schumburg's career ended as a representative of the Foreign Office and SS-Obersturmbannführer with the Governor General in Krakow .

In the run-up to the Wilhelmstrasse trial , Schumburg was interrogated by Robert MW Kempner in July 1947 . When the latter presented him with his memorandum on the Jewish question as a factor in foreign policy in 1938 , in which he a. a. had proposed to deport the German Jews completely penniless in order to stir up anti-Semitism in the host countries through a mass of possible alms recipients, he claimed that in his area of ​​competence, "no Jewish policy had been carried out", his employees were "to a certain extent the advocates of foreign Jewry" and he himself “liked the Jews”.

After the decision of the main denazification committee of the city of Hanover on January 10, 1949, Schumburg was considered exonerated. He was only a passive member of the party and the SS. From 1954 Schumburg managed a second career in the Lower Saxony Ministry of Economics and Transport. With the rank of government director he advanced to the position of head of the Lower Saxony foreign trade office, from 1956/57 he was also a consultant for foreign trade and interzonal trade and from 1958/59 a consultant for international economic issues.

document

• Emil Schumburg: The Jewish question as a factor in foreign policy in 1938 . Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Berlin, January 25, 1939. In: The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. Nuremberg October 14, 1945 - October 1, 1946. 42 vols. Nuremberg 1947 ff., Here vol. 32, p. 237 ff. (= Doc. 3358-PS). Online at www.ns-archiv.de

Fonts

• Kaiser and Reich President (doctoral thesis in law and political science, University of Göttingen 1923)

literature

• Christopher R. Browning : The "Final Solution" and the Foreign Office. Section D III of the Germany Department 1940-1943. From the American by Claudia Kotte. Foreword by Jürgen Matthäus . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 978-3-534-22870-6 .
• Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann : The Office and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .
• Hans-Jürgen Döscher : SS and Foreign Office in the “Third Reich”. Diplomacy in the shadow of the “final solution”. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-548-33149-1 .
• Hans-Jürgen Döscher: Schumburg, Emil (diplomat) . In: Handbook of Antisemitism . Hostility to Jews in the past and present . Volume 2: People in two volumes. 2nd sub-band (L-Z). Edited by Wolfgang Benz on behalf of the Center for Research on Antisemitism , de Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-24072-0 , pp. 752f.
• Biographical manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 4: p . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-71843-3 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Emil Schumburg in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 4: p . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2012, p. 207 f.
2. ↑ Ruth Hoevel, Karl Otto: "The family of the serum researcher Emil v. Behring", in: Archive ostdeutscher Familienforscher 3, Herne 1967, pp. 226–228; here p. 227.
3. ↑ Christopher R. Browning: The "Final Solution" and the Foreign Office. Referat D III of the Germany Department 1940-1943 , p. 27.
4. ↑ Christopher R. Browning: The "Final Solution" and the Foreign Office. Referat D III of the Germany Department 1940-1943 , p. 282, note 7.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Emil Schumburg on www.dws-xip.pl
6. ↑ Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann : The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010
7. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 172.
8. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 173
9. ^ [Emil Schumburg]: The Jewish question as a factor in foreign policy in 1938 . Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Berlin, January 25, 1939. In: The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. Vol. 32, p. 237 ff. (= Doc. 3358-PS) / first page printed as a facsimile in: Norbert Podewin (Ed.): “Braunbuch”. War and Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic and West Berlin. State, economy, administration, army, justice, science . Edition Ost, Berlin 2002. ISBN 3-360-01033-7 (reprint of the 3rd edition from 1968), plate 35.
10. ↑ Document 3358-PS, p. 245.
11. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 174.
12. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 174.
13. ↑ Norbert Podewin (Ed.): "Braunbuch" ... , plate 35.
14. ↑ In the minutes of the main trial he is represented as Counselor Dr. Schumberg cited, January 10, 1946, p. 104 Zeno
15. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 384.
16. ^ Hans Jürgen Döscher: Emil Schumburg . In: Handbook of Antisemitism. Hostility to Jews in the past and present . Edited by Wolfgang Benz . Volume 2. People . De Gruyter Saur, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-24072-0 , p. 752 f.