Günter Diehl

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Günter Diehl (* 8. February 1916 in Cologne , † 25. August 1999 in Oberwinter ) was a German diplomat in the era of National Socialism and the Federal Republic.

Life

Diehl was the son of a railway chief inspector, his father came from the Siegerland. After attending the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Cologne, Diehl studied economics in Cologne and Bordeaux with a degree in economics on July 10, 1939. On April 1, 1938, he joined the NSDAP . On September 17, 1939, he was accepted as a research assistant in the Foreign Service cultural department . There he met the future Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger in the R / Broadcasting Department . Through his marriage to Helga von Rautenstrauch in December 1939, he was accepted into the Cologne upper class and the Cologne clique . Von Rautenstrauch was the daughter of a Cologne banker, whose Rautenstrauch family donated the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum für Völkerkunde in Cologne .

In May 1941 he became a radio officer in the office of the AA in occupied Belgium . In November 1941 he moved to the branch of the German embassy in occupied France in Vichy , where he finally had the official title of cultural advisor. He was not only responsible for the entire propaganda, but also for the political reporting. According to a short biography at the Munzinger Archive , Diehl had already moved away from the National Socialist ideology by this time. In fact, Diehl volunteered for the Waffen SS at this time . His superior in the radio policy department of the AA headquarters in Berlin, SS-Standartenführer Gerd Rühle , prevented that he was drafted, because Diehl was "an excellent National Socialist and an impeccable character", and Franz Alfred Six , SS-Brigadführer and head of the Cultural Policy Department at the Foreign Office, arranged for his promotion to attaché.

In mid-1944 he went to Sigmaringen with the fled French Vichy government and at the end of 1944 became a liaison officer of the AA with the Flemish and Walloon Liberation Committees and the Waffen SS divisions of Flanders and Wallonia .

Nothing is known about internment after the end of the war. A procedure for denazification was dropped due to a Lower Saxony amnesty law. In September 1948 Diehl became the foreign policy editor for the Hamburger Abendblatt . In Hamburg he lived with the widow of Adolf Ahlers and mother of Conrad Ahlers . In 1950 he returned to Bonn as a consultant in the Federal Government's press and information office. With his application he was helped by certificates of discharge from Ernst Achenbach and Gustav Adolf Sonnenhol , both of whom were heavily burdened themselves.

On February 1, 1952, he was taken back to the Foreign Office and headed the press department of Foreign Office State Secretary Walter Hallstein . After four years in the embassy in Santiago de Chile under the ambassador and former NSDAP member Carl von Campe , he was ministerial conductor at the Federal Government's Press and Information Office between 1960 and 1966, which he headed from November 15, 1967 January 1968 had the rank of State Secretary . Here he had considerable influence on the government policy of the grand coalition under Federal Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger. With the change of government in 1969 he went into temporary retirement, his successor was his deputy Conrad Ahlers . As deputy chairman of the reform commission convened in 1968 for the Federal Foreign Office, he met again with Ernst Achenbach.

From 1970 to 1977 he was ambassador to New Delhi , from 1977 to 1981 ambassador to Tokyo .

From 1979 Diehl was chairman of the German Society for Asian Studies and from 1981 to 1987 President of the German Society for Foreign Policy. V.

He was the recipient of the Great Federal Cross of Merit (1975) with a star (1981) and shoulder ribbon (1986). In 1965 he also received the Grand Decoration of Honor in Gold for services to the Republic of Austria .

Works

  • Think and act. Planning in Foreign Policy . Eurobuch-Verlag Lutzeyer, Freudenstadt 1970
  • Distant companions. Memories of an embassy in Japan . 1987
  • With the brave. Diplomatic trips to Outer Mongolia . 1988
  • The Indian years. Experience of a German ambassador . 1991
  • Between politics and the press. Bonn memories 1949-1969 . 1994
  • Order and freedom . Federal Association German Newspaper publisher e. V., Bad Godesberg 1968
  • Thinking and acting . Eurobuch-Verlag Lutzeyer, Freudenstadt 1970
  • Japan - a challenge? Employer association d. Metal industry Cologne, Cologne 1983
  • Europe and Asia - opponents or partners? Industry Club Düsseldorf 1983
  • The future of the European Community . Fischer, Stuttgart 1986
  • Between duty and inclination . Hare u. Koehler, Mainz 1988

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.munzinger.de/search/portrait/G%C3%BCnter+Diehl/0/11760.html
  2. ^ Munzinger Günter Diehl
  3. ↑ Short biography with Munzinger
  4. ↑ Quotation from: Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann : The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 349.
  5. ↑ 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 . Munich 2010, p. 349.
  6. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 654.
  7. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)
personal data
SURNAME Diehl, Günter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Diehl, Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH February 8, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH August 25, 1999
Place of death Upper winter