Ernst von Weizsäcker

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Ernst von Weizsäcker (1938)

Ernst Heinrich Weizsäcker , from 1916 Freiherr von Weizsäcker , (born May 25, 1882 in Stuttgart , † August 4, 1951 in Lindau ) was a German naval officer , diplomat , State Secretary of the Foreign Office and brigade leader of the General SS . He was sentenced as a war criminal in Nuremberg for participating in the deportations of French Jews to Auschwitz . Ernst von Weizsäcker was the father of the physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and of the Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker, who was in office from 1984 to 1994 .

Life and professional development

origin

Ernst Weizsäcker came from the middle-class Palatinate - Württemberg family Weizsäcker . He was the son of the later Württemberg Prime Minister Karl Hugo Weizsäcker (1853-1926) and his wife Paula, née von Meibom (1857-1947). His father was raised to hereditary baron status in 1916 by King Wilhelm II of Württemberg . The doctor Viktor von Weizsäcker was his brother.

Imperial Navy

After graduating from high school , Ernst Weizsäcker joined the Imperial Navy on April 7, 1900 as a midshipman . In the course of his forty-two months of training, he spent this time in particular in Japan, Eastern Russia, Burma, Indonesia, China, Thailand and India. In China he visited in 1903, together with Werner von Rheinbaben (1878-1975), to whom he was assigned as a lieutenant at sea that year , and the Emperor's son Prince Adalbert on behalf of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Forbidden City in Beijing. Here he had the opportunity to briefly meet the Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi . This was followed by his promotion to first lieutenant in the sea in 1905 as well as being transferred to the torpedo test command. In 1908 he was transferred to the liner SMS Hannover - the flagship of the 1st Squadron of the German Navy - as an officer on watch . In the following year he joined SMS Germany as the first flag officer of the high seas fleet . After he had received his patent as captain lieutenant on September 6, 1909 , he was a member of the Naval Cabinet in Berlin from 1912 , where he was employed in the department of "Orders and Courts of Honor".

At the time of the beginning of the war in 1914 , Ernst von Weizsäcker came as an admiral staff officer to II. Admiral III. Liner squadron. In March 1915 he was assigned to the captain of the large liner SMS Markgraf "for special use". Further activities followed until 1918, such as his participation as second flag officer on board the fleet flagship SMS Friedrich der Große in the Skagerrak Battle in 1916 . On September 17, 1917 he was promoted to corvette captain and was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross in the same year . From August 1918 he was again a member of the Admiralty's Naval War Command under Admiral Reinhard Scheer . In January 1919, he helped the the murder of Karl Liebknecht involved Horst von Pflugk-Harttung (1889-1967) to escape.

Without any previous experience in the field of attaché work, Ernst von Weizsäcker replaced Erich von Müller (1877–1943) from the naval attaché in the German embassy in The Hague on June 5, 1919 . The usual training period did not take place shortly after the end of the war and the establishment of the Weimar Republic due to the external conditions. At that time, the delegation's chargé d'affaires was Friedrich Rosen . When all German attaché positions were closed at the end of March 1920 and he returned to Germany, he was accepted on April 1, 1920 on a trial basis in the Foreign Office in Berlin.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Although Ernst von Weizsäcker did not have the required evidence of a corresponding degree or the diplomatic-consular examination required for service in the Foreign Office at that time, he was already employed for a number of diplomatic tasks in the first years of the Weimar Republic . The reasons for this can mainly be explained by the difficult personnel situation after the collapse of the empire and the dominant occupation of such offices in the period before with people from the nobility. Weizsäcker was appointed consul in Basel in early 1921. At the end of 1924 he moved to Copenhagen as a delegate, and from February 1927 he worked in Geneva in the disarmament department. This was followed by six months in Berlin at the Reichstag Committee on Foreign Affairs, then another four months in Geneva. At the beginning of 1928 he took over the management of the Department for Disarmament and from July 1931 he was envoy in Oslo. He also held this responsibility during the establishment of the National Socialist government system in Germany in 1933. But at the time he was more of an outside observer. In view of the action of radical forces in the new regime, he noted his concern that “the whole development could get out of hand”. He therefore saw his task in providing help and support so that the second stage would be “constructive”. From May 1933 he had been ordered to Berlin several times and headed the personnel department of the Foreign Office on behalf of the Federal Foreign Office for almost two months. Here, too, his attitude became clear, which consisted of "taking part in order to be able to help shape."

Weizsäcker's letter on Thomas Mann's expatriation

After this brief period of representation in Berlin, Ernst von Weizsäcker was appointed envoy in Bern in September 1933 . Shortly after his return to Germany in mid-1936 Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath entrusted him with the provisional management of the political department. But at the beginning of March 1937 he had to return to Bern again. Apparently at Hitler's request, Weizsäcker was appointed Ministerial Director on March 24, 1937, and from April 1937 head of the Political Department. Even at that time, he was seen as a figure of integration who enjoyed trust far beyond the Federal Foreign Office. Changes then occurred when Joachim von Ribbentrop took over the office of Reich Foreign Minister in early 1938. At the beginning of March he asked Weizsäcker whether he was ready to become his state secretary . He gave his approval mainly out of deliberation, since he believed Ribbentrop could be influenced. The transfer of office was preceded by Weizsäcker's application on March 19, 1938 to want to join the NSDAP, which was then also carried out on April 1, 1938 under membership number 4,814,617. Also at the instigation of Ribbentrop, Weizsäcker was accepted into the General SS by Himmler as an honorary SS-Oberführer with effect from April 20, 1938 , signed the SS acceptance and commitment certificate on April 23, 1938, whereupon he received the regular SS no. 293,291 received. The conclusion of this National Socialist appointment was his official swearing-in as SS leader on Adolf Hitler on November 9, 1938. With his membership in the SS, Weizsäcker was assigned to Himmler's personal staff . The private organizations “ Lebensborn ”, “ Freundeskreis Reichsführer SS ”, “ Ahnenerbe ” and the Wewelsburg were subordinate to this SS main office .

Munich Agreement : in the background Joachim von Ribbentrop and Ernst von Weizsäcker (right)

According to his own statements later, Ernst von Weizsäcker had taken over the office of State Secretary because in the years up to 1939 he hoped to be able to prevent a war through foreign policy obstruction. Because, according to his views at the time, the existence of the German Empire was endangered with such a development. When he was in Vienna on the occasion of the proclamation of the “Anschluss” of Austria on March 15, 1938, he rated this already clear step towards war as the “most remarkable day since the proclamation of the Empire” in 1871. When the steps towards the annexation of the After joining Czechoslovakia, he tried diplomatic means to prevent the obvious events, but did not even begin to succeed. He became more and more aware of his helplessness when Hitler pushed for the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on March 16, 1939. Here he had tried several times with his resignation offers to make his position clear, then calmed himself down by stating that the war hadn't come after all. In the end, this “still wanting to stand up” resulted in silent resignation. Another rebellion on his part took place in the phase of war preparations against Poland. During this time, too, he made attempts through diplomatic channels that England or Italy might position themselves more clearly against Germany, and shortly before the attack on Poland he offered to resign. Adolf Hitler rejected his request for resignation. In addition, his second oldest son fell on the second day of the war against Poland. What remained, although it was clear to him where Germany was going from now on, that Weizsäcker oriented himself in the coming years to the idea of ​​a “power-political ascent of Germany”.

As early as the early 1930s and especially from 1939 onwards, Ernst von Weizsäcker had always spoken out against war with Russia and Stalin . But there are also statements in which the idea of ​​" living space in the east " resonated with him . Weizsäcker was informed about the aims of Jewish policy in the Third Reich by the time the Wannsee Conference , in which his Undersecretary Martin Luther participated , at the latest . In March and June 1942 he was informed in writing by Franz Rademacher , the head of the "Judenreferat" in the Foreign Office, about "future measures against mixed race I and II degrees" and the "question of the sterilization of the 70,000 half-breeds".

Despite allegedly serious differences with his superior, Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop , Ernst von Weizsäcker remained in the position of 1st State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry of the Third Reich until 1943. It was not until June 1943 that the excess seemed to have been reached that he actually resigned from office. His successor as State Secretary was on March 31, 1943, the previous Ministerial Director Gustav Adolf Steengracht von Moyland . On June 24, 1943, in view of the impending defeat, he himself was appointed German ambassador to the Holy See in Rome at his own request . To Pope Pius XII. and Father Robert Leiber said he was on friendly terms. With the liberation of Rome in June 1944, the German embassy was relocated to the Vatican , where Weizsäcker stayed until August 1946 after Germany's surrender.

Convicted of crimes against humanity

Ernst Heinrich von Weizsäcker as one of the main defendants in the Wilhelmstrasse trial against high-ranking NS ministerial officials
Weizsäcker in the dock in Nuremberg, front row on the far left.

Ernst von Weizsäcker first went to Nuremberg voluntarily under papal protection and with the promise of France as a free witness. There he was arrested by the Americans in July 1947. In Nuremberg - in the so-called Wilhelmstrasse Trial - he was charged as a war criminal. His defense lawyers were Hellmut Becker and Warren Magee . On February 6, 1948, among others, the diplomat and administrative lawyer Otto Bräutigam was questioned as a witness. On April 14, 1949, Weizsäcker was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for his active participation in the deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz and thus for a crime against humanity . It was only after a further review of the procedure and the pronounced sentences in December 1949 that his prison term was reduced from seven to five years. As part of a general amnesty , he was released from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison on October 16, 1950 . At the time of the judgment, however, the court did not have all of the documents known today. His son Richard von Weizsäcker appeared in the process alongside Sigismund von Braun as his assistant defender and, as was customary at the time, pleaded for his father's complete ignorance and innocence. He later always described the judgment as "historically and morally unjust".

Ernst von Weizsäcker in Nuremberg with his son Richard

Weizsäcker had signed deportation orders for French Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp . In court, he defended himself with the argument that the Jews in question had already been interned and were in danger. One could very easily have concluded that deportation to the east would pose less risk than where they are now; At that time the name Auschwitz didn't mean anything special to anyone. However, the judges doubted this representation.

Most of the Foreign Office employees at the time used his strategy to assert that he only found out about the death camps after the war and that he did not see through the veiled terminology of the “ final solution to the Jewish question ” and “ labor in the east”. However, there are indications of his knowledge of the criminal behavior of the Nazi state against Jews, for example the lecture note of December 10, 1941 by Undersecretary Luther , participant of the Wannsee Conference . He had prepared these for the action groups for the Reich Foreign Minister. Weizsäcker has taken note of it and provided it with his paraphe . The "Judaism" section of the report contains the following:

“In the Reichskommissariat Ostland [...] an action to arrest all Jews [...] was initiated, [...] about 2,000 [...]. The male Jews over 16 years old were executed with the exception of the doctors and the Jewish elders […]. In the Ukraine, in retaliation for the arson in Kiev, all Jews were arrested there. J. executed a total of more than 33,000 Jews. In Zhitomir , more than 3,000 Jews were shot to prevent them from inciting sabotage. Nearly 5,000 Jews were shot in the area east of the Dnieper. "

The activity and situation report No. 6 of the task forces was attached. The following passage can be found there:

“The solution to the Jewish question was vigorously tackled , particularly in the area east of the Dnieper, by the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD . The rooms newly occupied by the commandos were made free of Jews . In the process, 4,891 Jews were liquidated. "

Grave of Ernst von Weizsäcker and his wife Marianne in Stuttgart

In 1950 he published his memoirs , which he wrote in prison , in which he tried to justify his role during the Nazi era and to portray himself as a man of resistance . He was released in October 1950 after three and a quarter years in prison. The early release was ordered after an in-depth study of his case by the Legal Department of the American High Commissioner McCloy .

In 1951, Weizsäcker died of a stroke in a hospital in Lindau on Lake Constance . He found his final resting place in the Solitude cemetery in Stuttgart .

Awards

In 1942 Heinrich Himmler awarded Weizsäcker the sword of honor of the Reichsführer SS and the SS skull ring. On January 30, 1942, he was promoted to the rank of SS Brigade Leader. He was administratively assigned to Himmler's personal staff . Despite his general rank in the SS, Weizsäcker had no authority over SS units.

family

Weizsäcker and Marianne von Graevenitz (1889–1983) married in 1911. She was the daughter of General Friedrich von Graevenitz , adjutant general of King Wilhelm II of Württemberg . The marriage produced five children, four of whom reached adulthood:

  • Carl Friedrich (1912–2007), physicist and philosopher
  • Ernst Viktor (* / † 1915), died as an infant
  • Adelheid (1916–2004) ∞ Botho-Ernst Graf zu Eulenburg-Wicken (1903–1944)
  • Heinrich (1917–1939), died during the attack on Poland on September 2, 1939 in the immediate vicinity of his brother Richard, who buried him
  • Richard (1920–2015), politician and later German Federal President

Publications

  • Ernst von Weizsäcker: Memories . Ed .: Richard von Weizsäcker. List, Munich / Leipzig / Freiburg 1950.
  • Ernst von Weizsäcker: From his prison letters 1947–1950 . Scheufele, Stuttgart (no year [1955]).
  • Leonidas E. Hill (ed.): The Weizsäcker papers 1933–1950 . Propylaen Verlag, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main / Vienna 1974, ISBN 3-549-07306-2 (diaries, letters and other documents).

literature

  • Hellmut Becker : Wording of the plea for Ernst von Weizsäcker at the Wilhelmstrasse Trial (1948). in: ders .: quantity and quality, basic questions of education policy. Freiburg im Breisgau 1968, pp. 13–58.
  • Rainer A. Blasius : For Greater Germany - against the great war. State Secretary Ernst Frhr. von Weizsäcker in the crises around Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1938/39. Böhlau, Cologne / Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-412-00781-1 .
  • Margret Boveri : The diplomat in court. Minerva Verlag, Berlin / Hanover 1948.
  • Christopher R. Browning : The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office. A Study of Referat D III of Department Germany 1940–1943. Holmes & Meier, New York / London 1978, ISBN 0-8419-0403-0 .
  • Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes, 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 : The Foreign Office in the Third Reich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the “final solution”. Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88680-256-6 ; Ullstein, Frankfurt / Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-548-33149-1 .
  • Thorsten Hinz: The Weizsäcker Complex: A Political Archeology. Edition JF, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-929886-40-5 .
  • Jobst etiquette : the ambassador and the pope. Weizsäcker and Pius XII. The German Vatican Embassy 1943–1945. Publishing house Dr. Kovac, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8300-3467-4 .
  • Rolf Lindner: Freiherr Ernst Heinrich von Weizsäcker, State Secretary Ribbentrops from 1938 to 1943. Robe-Verlag, Lippstadt 1997, ISBN 3-9800405-3-4 .
  • Léon Poliakov , Joseph Wulf : The Third Reich and its servants. Documents. arani-Verlag, Berlin 1956; Ullstein, Frankfurt / Berlin / Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-548-33037-1 .
  • Dirk Pöppmann: “ Stayed in office to prevent worse things”. Ernst von Weizsäcker's opposition from the point of view of the US prosecution. In: Jan Erik Schulte, Michael Wala (Ed.): Resistance and the Foreign Office. Diplomats against Hitler. Siedler Verlag, Munich 2013, pp. 251–270.
  • Stephan Schwarz: Ernst Freiherr von Weizsäcker's relations with Switzerland (1933–1945). A contribution to the history of diplomacy. Lang, Bern [u. a.] 2007, ISBN 978-3-03911-207-4 . (Dissertation at the University of Zurich )
  • Marion Thielenhaus : Between Adjustment and Resistance: German Diplomats 1938–1941. The political activities of the group of officials around Ernst von Weizsäcker in the Foreign Office. 2., through Edition. Schöningh, Paderborn 1985, ISBN 3-506-77467-0 .
  • Martin Wein : The Weizsäcker. Story of a German family. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-426-02417-9 , pp. 204-340.
  • Anselm Doering-Manteuffel: Escape or Service? Ernst von Weizsäcker 1943–1945 , in: Michael Matheus , Stefan Heid (Eds.): Places of Refuge and Personal Networks. The Campo Santo Teutonico and the Vatican 1933–1945 (= Roman quarterly for Christian antiquity and church history, supplement volume 63), Herder, Freiburg, Basel and Vienna 2015, pp. 222–237.
  • Karl-Joseph Hummel : Resistance while waiting 1943–1946? Ernst von Weizsäcker as ambassador to the Holy See. In: Michael Matheus, Stefan Heid (Ed.): Places of Refuge and Personal Networks. The Campo Santo Teutonico and the Vatican 1933–1945 (= Roman quarterly for Christian antiquity and church history, supplement volume 63), Herder, Freiburg, Basel and Vienna 2015, pp. 238–268.

Web links

Commons : Ernst von Weizsäcker  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Sauer : Württemberg's last king. The life of Wilhelm II. Stuttgart 1994, p. 271.
  2. ↑ a b Marinekabinett (ed.): Ranking list of the Imperial German Navy. Ernst Siegfried Mittler and Son, Berlin 1918, p. 27.
  3. ^ Rolf Lindner: Freiherr Ernst Heinrich von Weizsäcker, State Secretary Ribbentrops from 1938 to 1943. Lippstadt 1997, p. 80 f. (There reference to the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv , RM 2, 1149, Fiche 1).
  4. ↑ Cordula Gehse: Ernst Freiherr von Weizsäcker. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  5. ↑ Klaus Wiegrefe : The quiet revolutionary . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 2010, p. 70 ( online ).
  6. ↑ Menfred Kehring, The re-establishment of the German military attaché service after the First World War (1919–1933), Harald Boeldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein, 1966, p. 34ff.
  7. ^ Marineattaché, Books LLC, Wiki Series, Memphis USA, 2011, pp. 71f.
  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. 30.
  9. ↑ here Ernst von Weizsäcker quoted the credo of the then ambassador Ulrich von Hassel in his "Memories" published in 1950 ; in: Ernst von Weizsäcker, Memories, List Verlag Munich 1950, p. 144.
  10. ↑ W. Money Act 2, 156
  11. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: The Foreign Office in the Third Reich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the final solution. Berlin 1987, p. 181ff, here p. 184.
  12. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: The Foreign Office in the Third Reich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the final solution. Berlin 1987, p. 185f, p. 187.
  13. ↑ Letter Weizsäckers of 15 March 1938; in: Ernst von Weizsäcker, Die Weizsäcker Papers, Ed. Leonidas Hill, Volume 2, Berlin 1974, p. 123.
  14. ↑ Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes, 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 , p. 135.
  15. ^ Note from Erich von Weizsäcker dated September 5, 1939; in: Ernst von Weizsäcker, The Weizsäcker Papers, Ed. Leonidas Hill, Volume 2, Berlin 1974, pp. 163f.
  16. ↑ “Our colonies are in Russia”, “Russia will be our India”, “The plow must go over Leningrad”, “One can let Stalin live”, “We almost love Stalin and Churchill”, “we are planning a three-gauge Meters ”,“ The population must not form an intelligence again. She has to indulge ”. Lindner p. 274ff.
  17. ↑ Franz Rademacher: "Future measures against mixed race I and II degrees". (PDF) (No longer available online.) Federal Foreign Office , June 11, 1942, archived from the original on June 13, 2010 ; Retrieved April 27, 2010 .
  18. ↑ Franz Rademacher: "Record". (PDF) (No longer available online.) Federal Foreign Office , March 7, 1942, archived from the original on May 25, 2010 ; Retrieved April 27, 2010 .
  19. ^ Jobst Knigge: The Ambassador and the Pope. Weizsäcker and Pius XII. The German Vatican Embassy 1943–1945. Hamburg 2008.
  20. ↑ HD Heilmann: From the war diary of the diplomat Otto Bräutigam. In: Götz Aly u. a. (Ed.): Biedermann and desk clerk . Materials on the German perpetrator biography. Institute for Social Research in Hamburg: Contributions to National Socialist Health and Social Policy 4, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88022-953-8 , p. 123 f.
  21. ↑ Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 1998, p. 485.
  22. ↑ Diplomat of the devil. one day ; Retrieved March 20, 2010
  23. ↑ Heinrich Senfft: "One whom one believes" on the website of the Foundation for Social History .
  24. ↑ Ernst von Weizsäcker . In: Die Zeit , No. 42/1950
  25. ↑ October 3, 1942 to Himmler: “I hereby report the receipt of the skull ring lent me by the Reichsführer SS.” In: Rolf Lindner: Freiherr Ernst Heinrich von Weizsäcker, State Secretary Ribbentrops from 1938 to 1943. Robe-Verlag, Lippstadt 1997, ISBN 3 -9800405-3-4 , here: Appendix 24.
  26. ↑ SS seniority list of January 30, 1942 , serial number 261
  27. ↑ Martin Doerry , Klaus Wiegrefe : It was horrible . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 2009, p. 70-73 ( online ). Quote: "Former Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker, 89, about his time as a soldier in World War II , the resistance against Adolf Hitler and the question of whether his father Ernst, as State Secretary in the Foreign Office, could have prevented the deportation of Jews"
predecessor Office successor
Roland Koester Envoy of the German Reich in Norway
1931–1933 		Heinrich Rohland
Adolf Gustav Müller Envoy of the German Reich in Switzerland
1933–1937 		Otto Carl Quiver
Hans Georg von Mackensen State Secretary of the Foreign Office of the German Reich
1938–1943 		Gustav Adolf Steengracht of Moyland
Diego from Bergen Ambassador of the German Reich to the Holy See
1943–1945 		–––
personal data
SURNAME Weizsäcker, Ernst von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weizsäcker, Ernst Heinrich Freiherr von (real name); Weizsäcker, Ernst Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer, diplomat and politician
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1951
Place of death Lindau (Lake Constance)