Fritz von Twardowski

Fritz von Twardowski (1951).

Fritz Ernst Albert von Twardowski (born July 9, 1890 in Metz , Lorraine district , German Empire ; † September 21, 1970 in Vienna , Austria ) was a German diplomat . After graduating from high school in 1909, he joined the Imperial Navy and ended his career as a naval officer in 1919 as a lieutenant captain . After studying law and political science, he received his doctorate in 1922 and began his diplomatic career in the same year: from 1928 to 1935 he was counselor in Moscowand from 1943 to 1945 consul general in Istanbul . After the Second World War , von Twardowski was Federal Press Spokesman from 1950 to 1952 and Ambassador to Mexico from 1952 to 1955 .

Life

The imperial submarine commander received his doctorate (1909–1922)

Fritz von Twardowski was the son of the later Prussian Lieutenant General Heinrich von Twardowski (1842–1913) and of Auguste, née von Holleben (1850–1931). His younger brother was the actor Hans Heinrich von Twardowski . He passed his Abitur at Easter 1909 in the first year of the Realgymnasium in Grunewald near Berlin (now Walther-Rathenau-Schule ) and in April of the same year he took up a career as a naval officer. Von Twardowski was a watch officer in 1914 on the torpedo boats V 159 and V 100. On May 2, 1915, he was promoted to first lieutenant at sea . In July 1916 he was given his first command of the torpedo boat V 162. After further training, he became the commander of the UB 10 submarine for one month until February 27, 1918, and after the First World War he retired from the army on August 28, 1919 with the rank of lieutenant commander. He then began studying law and political science and received his doctorate in 1922. jur. and Dr. rer. pol., his doctoral thesis with the title The American Shipping Problem with special consideration of the development of shipping and shipbuilding through the World War and the activities of the "USA Shipping Board" was published as a book, reviewed and cited.

Counselor in Moscow - Consul General in Istanbul (1922–1945)

Fritz von Twardowski joined the diplomatic service as an employee in November 1922. He was first assigned to the embassy in Moscow as a political advisor and from January 1924 to the press department of the Foreign Office in Berlin as head of the domestic department and spokesman for the German press. In this capacity he took part in international conferences and meetings of the League of Nations . In December 1925 he was appointed Legation Secretary , a year later in July as Legation Councilor and in June 1928 as Legation Councilor, 1st class. From 1928 to 1935 he was counselor in Moscow and, in the absence of the ambassador, repeatedly headed the German representation as Chargé d'Affaires .

Around 2 p.m. on March 5, 1932, an embassy car left the German embassy in Moscow. A little later, five shots were fired at him in a revolver attack. In the car sat the counselor von Twarkowski, who was injured by a grazing shot in the neck and a bullet in the hand. The perpetrator, Judas Mironowitsch Stern, actually wanted to meet the ambassador Herbert von Dirksen . On that day, however, he had already left the embassy in a different direction to meet with a colleague from the diplomatic corps. Stern was sentenced to death and shot a month later after a two-day trial, along with the instigator, Sergei Sergejewitsch Wassiljew. The motivation of the perpetrators was to disrupt close German-Soviet relations with this attack. However, this goal was missed: The People's Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Nikolai Nikolayevich Krestinsky, visited von Twardovsky in the Kremlin hospital and expressed his condolences to him. Given the determined prosecution, diplomatic relations were not damaged.

In mid-January 1933, von Twardowski was appointed a delegation member at the Geneva Disarmament Conference by President Hindenburg and took part in the negotiations for several months.

From 1935 to 1939 von Twardowski was the deputy head of the cultural department VI in the Foreign Office, which was responsible for scientific national work, the situation, the press and the literature of the German ethnic groups abroad as well as the minorities in the Reich. In December 1938 he was to be promoted to ministerial director, for this the approval of the staff of the deputy leader was necessary. From there it was announced that approval could only be given if the officer to be promoted was a member of the NSDAP . Thereupon von Twardowski applied several times to be admitted to the party, to which he finally belonged since March 1, 1940. His appointment as ministerial conductor took place in May 1939 and in June of the same year he was appointed head of the Department of Culture VI in the Foreign Office, which he headed until April 1943. In this role, he ensured that six young Jews were able to take their Abitur at the German school in Budapest in 1941 , which was actually no longer possible at that time. When the Deutsche Umsiedlungs-Treuhand GmbH (DUT) was founded, Fritz von Twardowski was a member of the supervisory board together with State Secretary Wilhelm Keppler on November 3, 1939 for the settlement of ethnic Germans from various countries by means of expulsion, deportation and expropriation of mostly Polish citizens . After his managerial position in the Department of Culture VI of the Foreign Office, von Twardowski took over the Consulate General in Istanbul from 1943 to 1945 . He raised after the unsuccessful assassination attempt from 20 July 1944 to Adolf Hitler 's attention, from the RSHA boss Ernst Kaltenbrunner as Acting Vice-Consul Gestapo chief designated head of the SD office in Istanbul, SS Lieutenant Colonel Bruno Wolff. Wolff viewed the political reliability of the Consul General with great skepticism, as he had dealings with people from among the suspects, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer . At the instigation of the Gestapo , the Foreign Office ordered von Twardowski to report to Berlin. When they arrived there, the Gestapo interrogated them instead. The accusations of treason brought against him could, however, be dispelled by the head of human resources at the Foreign Office Schroeder and the SD foreign chief Walter Schellenberg .

Adenauer's government spokesman wants to go to Mexico (1946–1955)

In 1946 Fritz von Twardowski worked for the Hamburg branch of the Aid Organization of the Evangelical Churches in Germany (EHIK), which was founded in Stuttgart in 1945 by the theologian and Nazi opponent Eugen Gerstenmaier . Von Twardowski began his work there as the deputy of Wolfgang Freiherr von Welck , whose post he later took over, and ended this activity in 1950. In September 1948 von Twardowski founded, together with his colleagues from the EHIK von Welck and Herbert Richter, a charitable association, the circle of friends of former senior officials in the foreign service . This association collected donations from former employees of the Foreign Office through shop stewards in all western occupation zones and distributed them among colleagues in need.

On December 16, 1950 by Twardowski joined the Federal Press Office , where he was, succeeding Henry Brand , spokesman for the federal government . In 1951 the book Six Years Later: From Chaos to the State was published under his responsibility , in which the all-German question was not mentioned at all. Several Berlin members of the Bundestag protested. For example, Willy Brandt wrote to von Twardowski:

"... that the tacit omission of the all-German and Berlin factors is not a coincidence, but ... that significant circles of the current federal government ... are not aware of the primary importance of these factors or are not aware of them clearly enough."

- Willy Brandt

He replied that they didn't want to treat the problem too briefly and had therefore left it out entirely. The missing chapter was reprinted and inserted.

The fact that von Twarkowski could not really identify with his position was also confirmed to him by MP Reismann ( Center Party ) in a speech in the Bundestag. He would be happy to return to the Foreign Office, preferably as an envoy in Mexico . In February 1952 he was reappointed to the Foreign Office, gave up his post as government spokesman to his successor Felix von Eckardt and went to Mexico that same year. Von Twardowski was the first German ambassador of the post-war period from 1952 to 1955 after diplomatic relations were broken off on December 23, 1941 and reestablished in 1952.

The retiree causes concern for Willy Brandt (1955–1970)

After his retirement from the diplomatic service in 1955, Fritz von Twardowski took over the presidency of the Societas Uralo-Altaica (SUA). The SUA is a specialist society in the field of Ural and Altaic philology .

In January 1956 he was awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit with a Star.

From 1956 until shortly before his death in 1970 von Twardowski was president of the Ibero Club , an association of friends of the Iberian and Ibero-American world.

At times he took over the deputy chairmanship of the administrative board of the Goethe-Institut , where he was also a member of the executive committee.

In 1958 von Twardowski opened a rococo exhibition as part of the celebrations for 800 years of Munich , on behalf of Hilger van Scherpenberg , State Secretary for Foreign Affairs . In his opening speech, he said rococo several times instead of rococo, which the Munich state parliament member Franz Lippert commented as follows:

“Bonn would have preferred nobody but this unfortunate speaker to open the exhibition in Munich. That is almost an insult to Bavaria "

- Franz Lippert

In 1967 the German public had to wait a month longer for the 1966 annual report from the Foreign Office's cultural department . The reason for this was the historical review by Twardowski, in which he "disregarded contemporary diplomacy and tactics in his formulations":

"For a relatively long time (after the seizure of power ) scientists and artists, including half-Jews, were able to continue their international cooperation without being bullied."

- Fritz von Twardowski

After three control bodies in the Foreign Office took no offense at this contribution and the annual report had already been printed, there were concerns in the office of Foreign Minister Willy Brandt. The text was telegraphed to Brandt on May 29, 1967 while attending the EEC summit conference in Rome . He was very angry about the incident, postponed the press conference that had already been scheduled for a month, had the several hundred copies already printed crushed and a corrected version created.

In 1970, Inter Nationes published von Twardowski's 44-page book Beginnings of German Cultural Policy Towards Abroad , which is scientifically cited. This book contains the controversial passages of the 1966 crushed chapter of the 1966 annual report of the Foreign Office's cultural department .

Private

Von Twardowski had been married to Gertrud Ahrens since 1914 and the couple had three children. His wife published a children's book in 1920.

Works

• Fritz von Twardowski: The American shipping problem with special consideration of the development of shipping and shipbuilding through the World War and the activities of the "USA Shipping Board" . Association of Scientific Publishers, Berlin / Leipzig 1922, DNB  571318444 .
• Jakow Trachtenberg, Fritz von Twarkowski: The assassination attempt on the German ambassador in Moscow . Jakow Trachtenberg, Berlin-Charlottenburg 1932, DNB  576705705 .
• Fritz von Twardowski: Beginnings of German cultural policy abroad . Inter Nationes, Bonn Bad Godesberg 1970, DNB  577531921 .

literature

• Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger (arrangement): T - Z, supplements. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , pp. 84-86.

Web links

• Literature by and about Fritz von Twardowski in the catalog of the German National Library
• Fritz von Twardowski in the online version of the Reich Chancellery Files Edition . Weimar Republic
• Interview of Fritz von Twardowski on August 11, 1947 by Robert Kempner . Stenographer Ilse Korl [as well as recording from August 11, 1947 and affidavit of August 22, 1947]. In: Archive of the Institute for Contemporary History , Munich, signature ZS-0786-1 ( online , PDF; 2.2 MB; minutes of the interrogations of Twardowskis in the context of the Nuremberg trials ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ transodra-online.net
2. ↑ Walther-Rathenau-Schule (ed.): 75 years of Walther-Rathenau-Oberschule - Gymnasium - (formerly Grunewald-Gymnasium) . Berlin 1978, p. 64 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c} entry "Twardowski, Fritz von" Munzinger archive (accessed on April 19, 2015)
4. ↑ Albert Stoelzel: Honorary Ranking List of the Imperial German Navy 1914-1918 . Navy Officer Association, Berlin 1930.
5. ↑ Eino Murtorinne, edited by Gertraud Grünzinger: The Finnish-German church relations 1940–1944 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1990, ISBN 3-525-55563-6 , pp. 247 .
6. ↑ ^{a b} Biographien Twardowski, Fritz von Das Bundesarchiv (accessed on April 19, 2015)
7. ^ Fritz von Twardowski: The American shipping problem with special consideration of the development of shipping and shipbuilding through the world war and the activity of the "USA Shipping Board" . Association of Scientific Publishers, Berlin / Leipzig 1922, DNB  571318444 .
8. ^ William Notz: The American shipping problem with special consideration of the development of shipping and shipbuilding through the world war and the activity of the "USA Shipping Board" . In: Bernhard Harms (Hrsg.): Journal of the Institute for World Economy and Shipping at the University of Kiel . tape 20 , no. 4 . Gustav Fischer Verlag, October 1924, ISSN  0043-2636 , p. 681 f . ( Digitized version [accessed on April 26, 2015]).
9. ^ Google Scholar: "Fritz von Twardowski" 1922–1931
10. ^ ^{A b} Institute for Contemporary History (ed.): Fritz von Twardowski's record / curriculum vitae in the context of his hearing of witnesses before the International Military Court . Nuremberg August 13, 1947, p. 4 ( Digitized version [PDF; accessed on November 1, 2018] The digital version contains the document from page 7).
11. ↑ Dépêches de l'étranger in Le Temps April 19, 1932 page 1, second column
12. ^ Moscou répond à la protestation de Berlin in L'Ouest-Eclair September 28, 1933, page 1, first column
13. ↑ Short message . In: Erich Alsringhaus (ed.): Socialist press service . Socialist Press Service, Berlin March 5, 1932, p. 7 ( Digital copy [PDF; accessed on April 26, 2015] Quote from the message: "Counselor von Twardowski was injured by a grazing shot in the neck and by a bullet in the hand. ... Under the circumstances, his condition is satisfactory.").
14. ↑ I had two grandmothers. In: the daily newspaper. March 29, 2014 (accessed April 19, 2015)
15. ↑ Behind closed doors . In: The Compass . 31st year, no. 61 . Curitiba ( Brazil ) June 2, 1932, p. 1 ( Download [accessed on January 19, 2019] “Der Kompass” was a German-language newspaper that appeared three times a week in Curitiba (Brazil) from 1902 to 1938 and was completely digitized.): “The attack on the German Embassy Councilor in Moscow, von Twardowski has experienced the judicial conclusion. Judas Miranowitsch Stern and Sergej Sergejewitsch Wassiljew have already been shot and the carbines of the GPU executors have already been cleaned. […] On March 5, Judas Stern fired 5 shots from the Nagan revolver at the German listening vehicle with the identification number 279 […] which were the subject of a two-day court hearing. ” Download ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2019 in the Internet Archive ) Info : The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
16. ↑ Pierre Berland, Le procès de Moscou in: Le Temps April 24, 1932 p. 2 top left
17. ↑ Jörn Happel : The East Expert: Gustav Hilger - Diplomat in the Age of Extremes . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-78609-8 , p. 183 ff .
18. ↑ Le délégué du Reich in Le Petit Parisien of January 19, 1933, last page, left column
19. ↑ Michael Mayer: The Foreign Office in the Third Reich - An internal differentiation . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . tape 59 . Oldenbourg, October 2011, ISSN  0042-5702 , p. 509–532 , doi : 10.1524 / vfzg.2011.0027 ( digital copy [PDF; accessed on November 1, 2018] The information regarding Twardowski can be found on page 517, footnote 34).
20. ↑ Johannes Hürter, Michael Mayer (ed.): The Foreign Office in the Nazi dictatorship . De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin / Munich / Boston, Mass. 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-78139-7 , pp. 12 f .
21. ↑ Written report of the committee of inquiry (47th committee) in accordance with the request of the SPD parliamentary group regarding the examination of whether abuses in the foreign service have arisen as a result of personnel policy German Bundestag 1st electoral period 1949, printed paper no - One of the members of the old AA also applied, whom we do not find in Koblenzer Strasse today, but only as head of the Federal Press and Information Office: Nuremberg witness Dr. Fritz v. Twardowski, previously envoy in the culture department at Ribbentrop.
22. ↑ Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen The 'western research' of the ethnic-national sciences on the north-western European area (1919-1960) . tape 2 . Waxmann Verlag, Münster 2003, ISBN 978-3-8309-1144-9 , pp. 578 .
23. ↑ Helge Schröder: Are Jewish pupils still allowed to acquire the Abitur at the German school in Budapest in 1941/42? In: Federal Association of History Teachers Germany eV and its regional associations (Hrsg.): History for today: Journal for historical-political education . No. 4 . Wochenschau-Verlag, 2011, ISSN  1866-2099 , p. 38-48 .
24. ↑ ^{a b} 1933–1945 entry - November 3, 1939 verfolte-schueler.org (accessed April 22, 2015)
25. ↑ ^{a b} Johannes Hürter, Michael Mayer: The Foreign Office in the Nazi dictatorship . De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin / Munich / Boston, Mass. 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-78139-7 , pp. 212 .
26. ↑ Walther-Rathenau-Schule (ed.): 75 years of Walther-Rathenau-Oberschule - Gymnasium - (formerly Grunewald-Gymnasium) . Berlin 1978, p. 33 .
27. ↑ Rathenauer can be found everywhere. In: Der Tagesspiegel. May 20, 2003.
28. ^ ^{A b} Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past: German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . 1st edition. Blessing, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .
29. ↑ Anke Silomon: Evangelical Church in Germany. Council: The minutes of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany. tape 4 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1950, ISBN 978-3-525-55763-1 , p. 509 .
30. ^ Press and Information Office of the Federal Government (ed.): Six years later: From chaos to the state . With an introduction by Konrad Adenauer. Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden May 1951.
31. ↑ ^{a b} Ernst Lemmer: Between Maas and Oder. In: Der Spiegel. November 14, 1951.
32. ^ Spiegel Online: Fritz von Twardowski . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1951 ( online ). Quote: “To this end, he tries to prove his unsuitability as acting federal press chief. Member of Parliament Reismann confirmed this to him in the Bundestag: That he occasionally seems to have reminiscences of these wonderful times (the Ribbentrop era) results from an utterance ... after which he is said to have said - in English and also to a foreigner ... ' Yes, those were the days. Then I was able to order the editor-in-chief of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung to come to me and say: My dear, tomorrow you bring me an article about this and that. And then this article came. And today I stand in front of a bunch of press people who ask me curious questions, some of them are unshaven and I have to answer these questions. "
33. ^ Federal government background: The government spokesman for the FRG. In: Focus Online. July 10, 2010 (accessed April 21, 2015)
34. ↑ Tobias C. Bringmann: Handbuch der Diplomatie 1815-1963: Foreign Heads of Mission in Germany and German Heads of Mission abroad from Metternich to Adenauer . Saur, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-598-11431-1 , pp. 125 .
35. ^ History of the Societas Uralo-Altaica (SUA) eV Societas Uralo-Altaica Chapter 6. Board of the SUA (accessed on April 22, 2015)
36. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 8, No. 31st January, unknown edition .
37. ↑ 63 years of Iberoclub Iberoclub, heading history, chapter 3, p. 10 (accessed on April 22, 2015).
38. ^ Steffen R. Kathe: cultural policy at any price. The history of the Goethe Institute from 1951 to 1990. Munich 2005, p. 524.
39. ^ Fritz von Twardowski Der Spiegel issue 26/1958 from June 25, 1958.
40. ^ ^{A b} Peter Stähle: Former Ambassador Twardowski's historical review . In: The time . Hamburg June 30, 1967 ( digitized version [accessed on April 28, 2015] Quote from the ZEIT article: “A 'historical review' of Germany's 'foreign cultural policy' from the founding of the Reich to 1945 was directed by ambassador retired Dr. Dr. Fritz von Twardowski on “…“ Obviously the retired diplomat was overwhelmed by the abundance of memories when he was writing it down, so that he disregarded contemporary diplomacy and tactics in his formulations. ”…“ For example, the cultural man boasted: 'Still relatively long (after the seizure of power) scientists and artists, including half-Jews, were able to continue their international collaboration without being bullied. '”…“ Twardowski reminds a readership, whom he is now not allowed to reach, of the' inexplicable phenomenon of the time that almost the whole world, in their longing for peace, completely misunderstood Hitler and his regime for many years, 'and continues enthusiastically:' So the 1936 Berlin Olympics could be a brilliant one s celebration of the unity of all peoples in the idea of ​​sport. '”“ The reporter from Twardowski does not fail to exculpate the then head of the cultural department, namely himself: ... ”“ During this time, the cultural and political department always has took on grotesquely dreadful traits, could claim to have done important preparatory work for a future German cultural policy despite all the difficulties. ").
41. ↑ Henning Türk: The European Policy of the Grand Coalition 1966–1969 . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . tape 93 . Oldenbourg, 2006, ISBN 3-486-58088-4 , ISSN  0506-9408 , p. 610 .
42. ↑ Google Scholar: "Beginnings of German Cultural Policy Towards Abroad" from 1970
43. ↑ Johannes Dafinger: Science in the Foreign Policy Calculus of the “Third Reich” German-Soviet scientific relations before and after the conclusion of the Hitler-Stalin Pact . Neofelis-Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-943414-64-6 , pp. 19th ff . ( Excerpt from page 24 [PDF; accessed on May 2, 2015]). Reading sample to page 24 ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
44. ^ Twardowski, Fritz von. In: Who's who in Germany. Vol. 2: M-Z. Intercontinental Book and Publishing Company, 1964, p. 1763.
45. ↑ Group picture with executive president Ibero-Club eV in Bonn Fritz von Twardowski. Europeana, accessed May 4, 2015 . 
46. ↑ Gerald Mund, Herbert von Dirksen: East Asia in the mirror of German diplomacy: the private-service correspondence of the diplomat Herbert v. Dirksen from 1933 to 1938 . Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08732-X .
47. ↑ Gertrud von Twardowski: The story of dear Santa Claus: Brave children told . Kornatzki, Weimar 1920, DNB  574682406 .