Ernst Kutscher

Ernst Kutscher (born March 15, 1909 in Greifswald ; † May 12, 1974 in Bonn ) was a German lawyer and diplomat. During the time of National Socialism , he worked as a representative for the information system in the personal staff of the Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and took part in 1944 as legation secretary at the conference of the Jewish advisors in Krummhübel . In the Federal Republic of Germany, he became 1949 personal assistant to the German Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard and worked from 1953 to 1974 including as a counselor and lecturer Counselor in the Foreign Office .

Life

The son of the farmer Erich Kutscher and his wife Käthe graduated from the Viktoria-Gymnasium in Potsdam in 1927 . From 1927 to 1931 he studied law and economics in Lausanne, Munich, Berlin and Göttingen. 1932 doctorate he with a thesis on disarmament and the League of Nations at the University of Göttingen to Dr. jur. and was appointed to the Prussian judicial service on April 1, 1932 .

time of the nationalsocialism

Kutscher joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 . On April 24, 1936, he was called up as an attaché in the Foreign Service of the Foreign Office. He worked in the political and cultural-political department of the Foreign Office, from March 1937 also temporarily in the German representation in Riga . Kutscher passed the diplomatic and consular examination on October 1, 1938. In December 1940 he was appointed legation secretary and from March 1941 worked in the protocol department, where he was temporarily head of the S / 2 travel department for foreign personalities in Germany . From 1944 he worked in the so-called Dr. Megerle as the representative for information in the personal staff of the Foreign Minister .

On April 3 and 4, 1944, Kutscher gave a lecture at the conference of the Jewish consultants in Krummhübel , which was prepared by the "Information Center XIV (Anti-Jewish Foreign Action)" set up under the direction of Horst Wagner in the Foreign Office. According to the protocol of Eberhard von Thaddens , Kutscher spoke on the subject of "The propaganda theses in the context of the anti-Jewish foreign campaign". In his presentation he carried out the following propaganda "guiding principles":

“The Jews are the originators of the war. You drove the peoples into the war because they are interested in it. - The Jews are the misfortune of all peoples. - A Jewish victory would be the end of all culture (example Soviet Union ). - If Germany fights against the Jews, it does so not only for itself, but for the whole of European culture. "

When at the beginning of 1945 part of the Foreign Office was relocated to the secondary office in Bad Gastein due to the increasing lack of space in Berlin , Kutscher and other diplomats came to the secondary office of the protocol department there.

post war period

In July 1945 Kutscher was interned in the United States and was with the Economic Division of the American military government from August 1945 to January 1946 . About the stations as a consultant at the Central Office for Economic Affairs in the British Zone in Minden from October 1946 and as deputy head of the department of the Administration for Economic Affairs (VfW) of the United Economic Area in Minden, responsible for international economic issues and reparations, from April 1947, later in Frankfurt on Main, on September 20, 1949, he was promoted to personal advisor to Federal Minister of Economics Ludwig Erhard .

In between, however, was Kutscher's leave of absence as deputy head of the VfW in the spring of 1949 due to incriminating documents from the Nuremberg trials , in particular document PS 3319. This document referred to a letter from the Foreign Office of April 28, 1944 to the German missions and embassies abroad, the conveyed the work results of the conference of Jewish advisors in Krummhübel on April 3rd and 4th, 1944 on "Anti-Jewish Action Abroad". Kutscher reacted to the allegations in the room by " applying for a second arbitration proceedings against himself" in April 1949 . With that he was successful. The same Marburger Spruchkammer that had already classified him as “exonerated” in 1947, according to the Independent Historians' Commission - Foreign Office , saw him again “across the board from the accusation of participating in anti-Jewish propaganda in the course of his work for the Megerle office to have". Although he had put on record at the conference of the Jewish consultants in Krummhübel that “the Jew” had “dug his own grave” with this war, the Spruchkammer rated Kutscher’s presentation at this conference as a clear distancing from the National Socialist Jewish policy. In her 40-page verdict, she emphasized that Kutscher's resistance was shown by the fact that after his return from the conference he had been “transferred to the" diplomatic bunker ", the alternative point of the protocol department of the Foreign Office in Bad Gastein .

After this discharge by the Spruchkammer Kutscher was hired by the Federal Ministry of Economics as Ludwig Erhard's personal advisor. He was considered denazified . Accusations of anti-Semitism against him were rejected as unfounded. According to the historian Bernhard Löffler , it was crucial for the ministry management that Kutscher was valued “as a very skilful lawyer with sound economic knowledge”, who had proven himself in his previous activities at the economic administration subordinate to the Allies and who “was an efficient management of the ministerial office ”. Kutscher worked as Ludwig Erhard's personal advisor until early 1953.

Second career in the Federal Foreign Office

Kutscher was called in as Erhard's advisor in 1952 to the “ German-Israeli-Jewish reparation negotiations ”, which he saw as a good opportunity “to strive for his complete rehabilitation and re-entry into the Foreign Office”. After positive feedback from the economic expert of the Israeli delegation Noah Barou , the former representative of the Jewish Agency Elijahu K. Livneh and the publisher of the general weekly newspaper for Jews in Germany , Karl Marx , the Foreign Office came to the conclusion that it was now “from Jewish Side no more attacks ”to be expected. Thereupon Kutscher was hired on January 15, 1953 in the higher service of the Foreign Office, in April 1953 appointed lecturer of the Legation Council and in August of the same year was appointed Legation Councilor 1st class.

After temporarily working at the Bonn headquarters of the Foreign Office, Kutscher took over the deputy head of the legation in September 1953 , and from June 1955 the embassy in Tehran . From November 1956 to December 1963, Kutscher worked as Counselor in Paris, before he headed Division 4 / Soviet Union in the Foreign Office until March 1966 and then until the beginning of 1968 as a representative of the Foreign Office and Counselor 1st class to the European Economic Community (EEC) worked in Brussels . In February 1968 Kutscher took over the management of the legal and consular department in Buenos Aires and was consul general in Madras from June 1968 to January 1972 . He then headed various departments at the Bonn headquarters until his retirement on March 31, 1974 with the title of lecturer in the Legation Council, including Department 512 / Civil Law and Civil Procedure Law .

Fonts

• Disarmament and the League of Nations. Treatises from the seminar for international law and diplomacy at the University of Göttingen , volume 5. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1932 (also legal and political dissertation, University of Göttingen, 1932).

literature

• Foreign Office / Historical Service (Ed.): Biographical manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 . Vol. 2: G-K . Edited by Gerhard Keiper and Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X , p. 712 f.
• 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 3-89667-430-7 , ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .
• Bernhard Löffler : Social market economy and administrative practice. The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard . Steiner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 (also: habilitation thesis, University of Passau, 2000).
• Manfred Steinkühler: Anti-Jewish Action. The working conference of the Jewish officers of the German missions on April 3rd and 4th, 1944 . In: Karsten Linne / Thomas Wohlleben (eds.): Patient history . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-86150-015-9 , pp. 256-279.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Foreign Office / Historical Service (Ed.): Biographical Manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 . Vol. 2: G-K . Edited by Gerhard Keiper and Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X , p. 712.
2. ↑ Eckart Conze u. a .: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, pp. 195–199.
3. ↑ Manfred Steinkühler: Anti-Jewish Action. The working conference of the Jewish officers of the German missions on April 3rd and 4th, 1944 . In: Karsten Linne / Thomas Wohlleben (eds.): Patient history . Frankfurt am Main 1993, p. 270 f .; the conference protocol is also online: 3./4. April 1944. Conference of the “Jewish Referees” in Krummhübel . In: ns-archiv.de , accessed on March 27, 2012, quoted there from Léon Poliakov, Joseph Wulf: Das Third Reich und seine Diener . Fourier, Wiesbaden 1989 [1956], ISBN 3-598-04600-6 , pp. 158-168; see also Bernhard Löffler: Social Market Economy and Administrative Practice. The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard . Steiner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 (also: habilitation thesis, University of Passau, 2000), p. 204; see. furthermore Eckart Conze u. a .: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 575 f.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Foreign Office / Historical Service (Ed.): Biographical Manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 . Vol. 2: G-K . Edited by Gerhard Keiper and Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X , p. 713.
5. ↑ Norbert Frei : Politics of the Past. The beginnings of the Federal Republic and the Nazi past , Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-423-30720-X , p. 321, note 46.
6. ↑ The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946 . Vol. 10, Nuremberg 1947, p. 146 f. and p. 456 f.
7. ↑ Eckart Conze u. a .: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 575 f.
8. ↑ ^{a b c} Eckart Conze u. a .: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 576.
9. ^ ^{A b} Bernhard Löffler: Social market economy and administrative practice. The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard . Steiner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 (also: habilitation thesis, University of Passau, 2000), p. 205.
10. ↑ Eckart Conze u. a .: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , p. 576 f.
11. ↑ Eckart Conze u. a .: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , p. 577.
12. ↑ Eckart Conze u. a .: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , p. 19.