Gotthold Starke

Gotthold W. Th. Starke (born January 27, 1896 in Runowo , Wirsitz district , Posen province ; † November 27, 1968 in Bonn ) was a German journalist and diplomat .

Life

War and study

As the son of pastor Gotthold Starke and his wife Marie Hesekiel (youngest daughter of general superintendent Johannes Hesekiel ) he attended high school in Poznan from 1909 to 1914 . As a combatant in the First World War , he was seriously wounded after a short period of service. So after his recovery he was able to leave the army and continue his training. From 1915 to 1918 he began studying law and political science in Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg. As a minor, he took seminars in oriental languages.

In 1918 he was able to take his first state examination as an assessor . He took up a job at the district court in Czarnikau . Since he took part in the fighting on the borders in 1919, he had to flee. So he came to Berlin . Here he met Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and became a member of the June Club , where national conservatives and publicists met. He also continued his studies in Berlin. Since he had not given up his Polish citizenship, he had to quit the Prussian civil service in 1922.

Editor-in-chief in Bromberg

In the same year he went to Bromberg to the newspaper German Rundschau in Poland as chief editor to work. From a cultural point of view, he took part in the founding of the Kant Association for the promotion of academic professional training in 1924 . He was arrested on September 2, 1939 and, with great hardship, abducted over the next nine days until he was liberated by German troops. He traveled back to Germany and took up a position in the Foreign Office . From 1941 to 1945 he headed the Eastern Europe section in the press and news department. During this time he was in Moscow at the German embassy as Counselor operates. On June 1, 1942, he joined the NSDAP .

Diplomatic service

After the war he fell into Soviet captivity and was u. a. imprisoned in Vladimir . In 1955 he returned to Germany with the last prisoners of war. He re-entered the diplomatic service and became a research assistant and legation adviser in the press department of the Foreign Office . Later he headed the Department for Eastern Issues as a lecturer in the Legation Council . In the 1950s he was also involved in the Historical and Regional Commission for Poznan and Germanism in Poland .

The aim of this facility was u. a. to prove that the German minority in Poland did not support the emerging Nazi movement and was therefore not directed against the Polish state. In 1962 he left the civil service. He returned to his journalistic work and supported international refugee organizations through his work.

Fonts

• Nine days of abuse, agony and death . In: Fritz Menn: On the streets of death - the suffering of the ethnic Germans in Poland . Leipzig 1940
• Archbishop Reinis in the Prison of Vladimir . In: Modern Age Archive , Volume 2, Number 2, 1958, mmisi.org (PDF; 299 kB; accessed 2012-01)
• The Dread March to Lowitsch . In: Hans Schadewaldt: The Polish atrocities against ethnic Germans in Poland , 1940

literature

• Astrid M. Eckert: Fight for the files . 2004.
• Herrmann AL Degener : Who is it? Berlin 1935.
• DBE Volume 9, Munich 1998.
• 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