Fritz Günther von Tschirschky
Fritz Günther von Tschirschky and Boegendorff (born July 4, 1900 in Kobelau , Frankenstein district , province of Silesia , † October 9, 1980 in Munich ) was a German diplomat and politician . He became known as a representative of the conservative resistance against the National Socialist regime and as an employee of the protocol department in the Foreign Office under Konrad Adenauer .
Live and act
Early Years (1900-1933)
Fritz-Günther von Tschirschky and Boegendorff came from the Silesian noble family von Tschirschky , was born on July 4, 1900 together with two sisters in Kobelau near Frankenstein as the son of the manor Günther von Tschirschky and his wife, a born countess of Limburg-Stirum. Three older brothers were born earlier, including the officer Bernhard von Tschirschky , and an older sister. Another brother followed later, Mortimer von Tschirschky. Among the prominent relatives of Tschirschky were his uncle Heinrich von Tschirschky , who was ambassador of the German Reich in Vienna from 1907 to 1916 , Freda Freifrau von Rechenberg , who was a DNVP member of the Prussian state parliament, and the Dutch envoy (ambassador) in Berlin , Johan Paul van Limburg Stirum .
Tschirschky started out as an officer after leaving school. After the death of his father and his older brothers, however, he broke it off to take over the management of the Tschirschky family estates in Silesia.
From 1918 Tschirschky took part in the First World War. At the front, as two of his older brothers had already died, contrary to his own wishes, he was not used. After the war, from December 1918 until he left the Reichswehr in April 1920, he was a member of the Maercker Freikorps , with whom he participated in battles against socialist revolutionaries in Berlin and Braunschweig and in February / March 1919 was part of the protective force that the guarded the National Assembly meeting in Weimar .
In 1921 he married the daughter of the landlord, Maria Elisabeth von Löbbecke . The marriage resulted in two sons and two daughters. Tschirschky's wife also brought the Költschen manor near Reichenbach into the marriage, which became the family seat. Twenty-five farm worker families lived on the approximately 270 hectare estate and worked on the family estate. In addition to his work as a landlord, Tschirschky took on a number of honorary posts in the area: For example, he was elected as a representative of the employers in the labor court of the Reichenbach district, where he appeared as an arbitrator in labor disputes.
During the Weimar Republic , Tschirschky maintained close contacts with Crown Prince Wilhelm and Crown Princess Cecilie . He also headed the Silesian gentlemen's society and, from 1930 to 1932, the Silesian department of the intelligence service of the Stahlhelm-Kampfbund , without being a member of it himself. Although he was critical of the Weimar Republic and wished for a return to the monarchy , he rejected National Socialism already at that time ("The composition of the name is already an attempt to deceive. Apparently, one wants to make all possible political attitudes and completely incompatible Scatter sand in the eyes of groups. This is farmer trapping. "). According to his own statement, he elected the DNVP until 1928 and - after Alfred Hugenberg had taken over the leadership of the DNVP in 1928 - the economic party as a protest voter , with which he "hardly had anything connected."
Resistance in the Vice Chancellery and in Vienna (1933–1935)
From 1933 Tschirschky worked as adjutant and cultural advisor to Hitler's Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen in the Vice Chancellery in Berlin. There he formed the center of an oppositional group of young Papen employees (later referred to as the Edgar-Jung-Kreis ), who opposed National Socialism and used the office as a starting point for resistance against the Nazi state. In his memoirs Tschirschky later stated that he and his colleagues had already recognized in 1933 "where Hitler Germany would lead" and "based on this knowledge we acted as we believed we had to act."
Tschirschky received the position in the vice chancellery through the mediation of Nikolaus von Ballestrems , a Nazi-skeptical industrialist who was close friends with Papen. Ferdinand von Cramer described the calculation that led Ballestrem and the conservatives behind him to place Tschirschky in the Papen area: "When Papen came under Hitler's influence as Vice Chancellor, the moderate conservative circles from which Papen came politically [... ] to find a man as an immediate confidante and colleague of Papen, who was able to influence his fluctuating and Hitler-devoted character and who could influence him in the clear assessment of the political developments to be feared. "
The group around Tschirschky included the writer Edgar Jung , who was a theoretician, and the board member Herbert von Bose , who was considered to be the group's organizer. The group developed ambitious plans that ultimately resulted in "absorbing" the National Socialist transformation of the German Reich and directing it into conservative channels: That is how the Tschirschky group's plans during the state crisis in spring 1934, the National Socialist first revolution, provided to follow up on the conservative second revolution (see Conservative Revolution ).
In the course of this second, "corrective" transformation of the German state system, President Paul von Hindenburg was to be convinced to declare a state of emergency, then the SA was disarmed by the Reichswehr and a directory was to be installed as a new executive : According to Tschirschky's plans, Generals Werner were to be installed in this directory von Fritsch and Gerd von Rundstedt as well as the politicians Hermann Göring , Hitler, Heinrich Brüning , Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Papen belong to. After the brief rule of this body on a dictatorial basis, the return to a monarchy should be carried out on a parliamentary basis. These plans came to nothing with the events of the " Night of the Long Knives ", during which Jung and von Bose were murdered. Tschirschky himself was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse , where he witnessed the murder of Gregor Strasser and met Jung for the last time. He was then sent to the Lichtenburg concentration camp near Dessau for a few days , from which he was released again on the intervention of Papens and his uncle Johan Paul van Limburg Stirum , the Dutch ambassador in Berlin. After his release from the concentration camp, Tschirschky accompanied von Papen, who had been appointed German ambassador to Austria in July , to Vienna in August.
There a break between Papen and Tschirschky occurred in early 1935 after the latter - convinced that his murder was planned, as his friend Wilhelm Freiherr von Ketteler actually happened in 1938 - refused to be summoned for interrogation by the Gestapo in Berlin .
Exile (1935–1952)
After leaving the service at the Vienna Embassy of the Reich, Tschirschky was temporarily placed under the protection of the Austrian government. He then emigrated to London via Paris , where he worked as a businessman from 1937. In 1939, Tschirschky lived for a few weeks as a neighbor of the later War Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the exclusive Morphet Mansion apartment building opposite Westminster Cathedral . The night of the British entry into the war on September 3, 1939, he experienced together with Churchill in the air raid shelter of the building.
During the war, Tschirschky was interned at his own request from 1940 to 1944 - although he was not subject to the internment regulations as a recognized opponent of National Socialism, as he feared that his family, who had stayed in Germany, would have problems with the National Socialists if they found out that he "ran around freely" in England. He spent his internment first in the assembly camp Campton Park and in a makeshift camp in Central England, then in a camp near Peel, a small port on the Isle of Man .
After the war, Tschirschky brought his family to London and worked as a businessman. In the London office of publisher John Holroyd-Reece, he was involved in the rebuilding of the Tauchnitz publishing house and financial advice. The office's clients included the British publisher and politician Harold Macmillan and the chairman of the World Zionist Congress Chaim Weizmann . He did not return to Germany for good until 1952, after he had already been heard there as a witness in the criminal proceedings against von Papen in 1947 during the Nuremberg trials .
Activity in the Federal Republic of Germany (1952–1980)
From 1952 Tschirschky belonged as Legation Counselor 1st class to the Protocol Department of the Foreign Office. In 1955 he was the first West German diplomat to travel to Moscow on an official mission. There he was responsible, among other things, for the preparations for Konrad Adenauer's visit to the Soviet capital, who traveled to Moscow that year to negotiate the release of the last German prisoners of war remaining under Soviet power. Tschirschky organized the tap-proof train, in which the German delegation set up their news and radio center, as well as the accommodation of the Chancellor's 120-man staff in the Soviet capital. He was also responsible for the "ceremonial", the observance of the protocol form, during the visit.
In the later 1950s he worked at the German embassy in London and as a German consul in Lille in northern France .
In 1961 Tschirschky acquired a plot of land in Reith near Kitzbühel in Tyrol, on which he built a house, completed in 1964, in which he and his wife spent the last years of their lives. In 1972 Tschirschky wrote a volume of memoirs that was published under the title "Memories of a High Traitor " .
As a Protestant, Tschirschky had belonged to the Order of St. John since the 1920s .
Awards
On July 20, 1933, he was also awarded the Catholic New Year's Eve . The honor took place during a visit to the Vatican on the occasion of the negotiations on the conclusion of the Concordat and was carried out by the then Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII ).
Fonts
- Memories of a traitor , Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-421-01602-X .
Individual evidence
- ^ Fritz Günther von Tschirschky: Memories of a high traitor. P. 49. At the same point he adds: "The very name of this new party betrayed a deception to me."
- ^ Fritz Günther von Tschirschky: Memories of a high traitor. 1973, p. 241.
- ^ Fritz Günther von Tschirschky: Memories of a high traitor. 1973, p. 326.
- ^ Fritz Günther von Tschirschky . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1955 ( online ).
literature
- Fritz-Günther von Tschirschky (and Boegendorff) , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 45/1955 of October 31, 1955, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of the article freely available)
- Rainer Roth : "Fritz Günther von Tschirschky", in: Ders .: "The official seat of the opposition" ?: Politics and state restructuring plans in the office of the Deputy Chancellor in the years 1933-1934 , Böhlau, Cologne 2016. ISBN 3412505552
Web links
- Literature by and about Fritz Günther von Tschirschky in the catalog of the German National Library
- Literature list in the online catalog of the Berlin State Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Tschirschky, Fritz Günther von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Tschirschky and Boegendorff, Fritz Günther von (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German diplomat and politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 4th July 1900 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kobelau , District of Frankenstein , Province of Silesia |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 9, 1980 |
| Place of death | Munich |