Gottlieb von Jagow

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gottlieb von Jagow

Günther Gottlieb Karl Eugen von Jagow (born June 22, 1863 in Berlin , † January 11, 1935 in Potsdam ) was a German diplomat and politician .

He came from the old Brandenburg noble family von Jagow , which was first mentioned in a document in 1268 and has been a castle in Altmark since the 14th century . Both his father Karl von Jagow and his older brother Günther von Jagow were members of the German Conservative Party .

Jagow went through a diplomatic career, was ambassador to Luxembourg from 1907 to 1909 and ambassador to Italy from 1909 to 1913 . On January 11, 1913, he was appointed State Secretary in the Foreign Office by Kaiser Wilhelm II .

Jagow was a cautious advisor to Kaiser Wilhelm II. He was interested in good German-British relations. Even before the outbreak of World War I , he warned of a possible entry into the war by Great Britain on the side of France . Although he was not a warmonger, he played an ambivalent role in the July crisis of 1914 and supported Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg . This advocated German entry into the war on the part of Austria-Hungary against Serbia , although this enabled Russia to declare war on the German Reich.

Even before the outbreak of war, Jagow was skeptical of the Schlieffen Plan and was against a German invasion of neutral Belgium , as this would lead to British entry into the war. But the chief of staff, Helmuth von Moltke , refused to revise the plan. When Moltke was dismissed as Chief of Staff after the withdrawal during the First Battle of the Marne , he proposed peace to the Entente Powers ; however, these refused. Jagow spoke out against Tirpitz's plans to wage an unrestricted submarine war , as this would mean the United States would enter the war on the Entente side . He was then dismissed from his position on November 22, 1916 and replaced by Arthur Zimmermann .

After the war, Jagow published his memoirs in 1919 under the title Causes and Outbreak of World War I and withdrew from politics. After he was no longer employed in the diplomatic service, he was involved in the revision of Germany's war guilt postulated in the Versailles Treaty, especially in close cooperation with the Foreign Office's War Debt Department.

He was a member of the Corps Borussia Bonn . He was married since 1914 to Luitgard zu Solms-Laubach (1873-1954), the daughter of Count Friedrich zu Solms-Laubach (1833-1900) and Marianne zu Stolberg-Wernigerode (1836-1910). The marriage remained childless.

literature

  • Hellmut Seier:  Jagow, Gottlieb. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 299 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Reinhold Zilch (ed.): Gottlieb von Jagow (1863-1935) and his environment. A top imperial diplomat between the First World War and war (in) guilt research. Workshop on 6./7. June 2019 in Munich, Historical College. Organizer: Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences; Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin; Funded by the DFG. With contributions by Hans-Werner Hahn , Reinhold Zilch, Gerd Fesser , Hartwin Spenkuch, Gerd Krumeich , Jakob Müller, Piotr Szlanta, Christian Lüdtke, Martin Kröger . Meeting reports of the Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin, Volume 142, Volume 2020. trafo Wissenschaftsverlag Dr. Wolfgang Weist, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-86464-179-4 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Jagow, Gottlieb von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat and politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1935
Place of death Potsdam