Gebhard Seelos

Gebhard Seelos (born March 13, 1901 in Munich , † December 18, 1984 in Seehausen am Staffelsee ) was a German diplomat and politician of the Bavarian Party .

Life

After studying law (doctorate) and economics in Munich and Hamburg , he entered the diplomatic service in 1925 and was transferred to Madrid in 1927 . In 1931 his next assignment took him to Australia , where he received Elly Beinhorn on her record flight around the world as consul in Sydney in 1932 . After working in Warsaw from 1935 to 1937 , he only stayed briefly in Berlin and in 1939, shortly after his posting as the first and last German Consul General in Lemberg (today: Lviv ) , he experienced the outbreak of the Second World War . Sent to the German Embassy in Copenhagen in occupied Denmark in 1940 , he was recalled from there because of political differences with NSDAP representatives and transferred back to Berlin. After changing functions, he was transferred from Berlin in the summer of 1943 because of his language skills from the Foreign Office to the Wehrmacht as an interpreter in the prisoner of war camp Stalag VII A Moosburg and downgraded to a sergeant's rank, the special leader (O). After the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944 , after questioning in Berlin in December 1944, he was dismissed from the Foreign Office and the civil service. As a member of the interpreting company in Moosburg, he intensified his contacts in the Bavarian resistance, and was particularly active in the Bavarian freedom campaign , which was supported by the chief of the interpreting company, Captain Rupprecht Gerngross .

In December 1945 Seelos was taken over into the Bavarian state administration and from 1947 State Councilor and Plenipotentiary of Bavaria in the Stuttgart State Council of the American Occupation Area and in the Frankfurt Executive Council . In 1947 he was also the driving force behind the Munich Prime Minister's Conference, for which he won over the Prime Ministers of the Soviet occupation zone through personal persuasion. After joining the Bavarian Party in June 1949 and being elected to the first German Bundestag, on July 1, 1949, his position as authorized representative was canceled and his civil servant status was suspended. From 1949 to September 25, 1951, he was a member of the German Bundestag and chairman of the BP parliamentary group there. After leaving politics in 1951, he was again a Bavarian state official (Ministerialdirektor) until he returned to the diplomatic service in 1953. He initially worked as Consul General in Istanbul from 1953 to 1955 and then from 1955 to 1958 as Ambassador to Lisbon , Portugal. He then headed the German embassy in Athens from 1958 to 1963 and was the German ambassador to Brazil until he retired from 1963 to 1966 .

Since 1920 he was a member of the Catholic student association KDStV Aenania Munich .

Seelos was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit on April 17, 1961 .

literature

• Rudolf Vierhaus , Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 2: N-Z. Attachment. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , p. 810.
• Biographical manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 4: p . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-71843-3