Franz Krapf

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Franz Krapf (born July 22, 1911 in Munich , † October 23, 2004 in Bonn ) was a German diplomat .

Life

After attending school, Krapf studied political science at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin and the Amherst College in Massachusetts . In 1935 he passed his state examination at the Ludwig Maximilians University. He then studied the Japanese language at the Department of Oriental Languages ​​at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität and from 1935 to 1937 with a scholarship Japanese language and law at the Imperial University of Tokyo . After his return in 1937 he took his diploma at the Seminar for Oriental Languages.

According to his own statements, which Krapf made in August 1950, he became a member of the "SA / SS-Reitersturms Charlottenburg" in 1933 and a member of the NSDAP in 1936 (membership number 3.726.653). In fact, he was accepted into the General SS in May 1933 under membership number 102.283 and promoted to SS-Untersturmführer in the SD main office on February 1, 1938 , not in the SS main office, as Krapf had also stated in August 1950. In May 1944, the chief of the security police informed the SS personnel main office that Krapf, along with four other members of the Foreign Office, was a volunteer employee of the Reich Security Main Office and that he was constantly called on to collaborate.

On February 1, 1938, he joined the diplomatic service of the Foreign Office and initially worked at the embassy in Egypt and then in the Soviet Union . During the Second World War , he served as legation secretary at the embassy in Japan from 1940 to 1945 . After the war he worked as a businessman, first in Germany and Sweden and then from 1948 to 1950 in Japan.

In May 1948, Krapf was classified in the group of the "exonerated" in a denazification procedure before the Munich III Chamber .

After the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, he returned in 1950 and became a consultant for America at the Federal Government's Press and Information Office . In this function he took part in the negotiations on the Schuman Plan in Paris in May 1950 as a member of the German delegation . At the beginning of 1951 he became an employee of the newly established Foreign Office and shortly afterwards of the Consul General in Paris, Wilhelm Hausenstein .

Later he was envoy at the embassy in Washington and until 1966 head of the East Department in the Foreign Office.

In 1966 he was appointed ambassador to Japan .

After five years in Tokyo , he became ambassador and permanent representative to NATO in Brussels in 1971 . He held this position until he retired in 1976. Rolf Friedemann Pauls was his successor as permanent representative .

After his death, a persistent controversy about coming to terms with the past arose in the Foreign Office because Federal Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Franz Krapf refused to honor a deceased ambassador with a NSDAP and SS past in an internal official bulletin and thus “broke through decades of commemorative practice . “Instead of the acting Foreign Minister, Federal Minister a. D. Hans-Dietrich Genscher gave the funeral address in Bonn's Kreuzkirche . The allegations made against him were, however , relativized by written statements by Erich Kordt of October 10, 1947, which later became known , which brought Krapf into the vicinity of the resistance against Hitler. The daily newspaper Die Welt described this document from 1947 as “a document that could then be used as a clean bill of health ”, but the “descriptions it contains” need not be “false”.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Hans-Jürgen Döscher : rope teams. The repressed past of the Foreign Office. Propylaeen, Berlin 2005, pp. 82–86, here p. 84 f.
  2. ^ Corpsgeist and Continuities - A Brief History of the Foreign Office. In: Antifascist information sheet. No. 68, 4/2005, pp. 44-47; Hans-Jürgen Döscher: rope teams. The repressed past of the Foreign Office. Propylaea, Berlin 2005, p. 83
  3. ^ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: rope teams. The repressed past of the Foreign Office. Propylaea, Berlin 2005, p. 11 f.
  4. ↑ The creeper. 110 seniors, a minister and a dispute over honor. What holds the German diplomats together from the very beginning. In: Der Tagesspiegel . May 13, 2005
  5. ↑ Fischer's memorial practice. In: FAZ. February 9, 2005
  6. ↑ Conflicts about a brown past in the Foreign Office. In: WSWS. April 16, 2005
  7. ↑ Manfred Steinkühler : The end of my term of office , in: Friday , April 8, 2011
  8. ↑ Ambassador Franz Krapf shines in a new light. In: The world . April 13, 2005
personal data
SURNAME Krapf, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 2004
Place of death Bonn