Gustaf Braun from Stumm

Gustaf Braun von Stumm actually Gustaf Theodor Rudolf Braun von Stumm (born June 23, 1890 in Berlin ; † November 3, 1963 in Innsbruck ) was a German diplomat and deputy head of department in the press office of the Foreign Office during World War II .

Career until 1933

The grandson of the Prussian industrialist Carl Ferdinand von Stumm-Halberg spent his youth in the grandfather 's Halberg Castle near Saarbrücken . His father was the Prussian Rittmeister Wilhelm Arnold Georg Braun (1855–1890), his mother Elisabeth Maria, geb. Freiin von Stumm-Halberg (1863–1911). He received his humanistic education at the local Ludwigsgymnasium and studied law in Bonn, Oxford and Strasbourg. In 1910 he became a member of the Corps Borussia Bonn . In 1913 he married Irma Felicitas, born in Hamburg. Freiin von Lüttwitz (1893–1974). The marriage had three sons. After completing his studies and military service, he joined the Foreign Service in 1918. In 1925 he married Maria Giuseppina, b. Marchesa Antinori (* 1897, † 1943 by suicide ), who had a son and a daughter. In 1928 Braun von Stumm was Minister Counselor in Brussels. From the 1930s he worked in the press department of the Foreign Office.

National Socialism

This propaganda poster by the American Office of War Information refers to Braun von Stumm's statements about German emigrants.

On April 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP and belonged to the German Front in the Saar area in 1934 and 1935 . In 1937 he was lecturer in the Legation Council and in 1944 Ministerial Director .

Braun von Stumm became known for the announcement, which he presented at a press conference on April 24, 1942, of an intensified bombing war against historically and culturally important British cities. After the air raid by the Royal Air Force on the historic city center of Lübeck on the night of March 28-29, 1942, Adolf Hitler issued an order to intensify the air war against England. Braun von Stumm named “buildings with three stars” (but none of them existed) as goals in the German travel guide published by Karl Baedeker Verlag . In English-language texts, the following wave of German air raids is therefore referred to as Baedeker raids . Goebbels reprimanded Braun von Stumm sharply.

A few months later, during a press conference of the Propaganda Ministry on October 28, 1942 , Braun von Stumm is said to have described German emigrants as "completely uprooted creatures who do not deserve the designation German".

post war period

In addition to his professional activity, Braun von Stumm, who had inherited a considerable fortune with shares in the Stumm Group, devoted himself to representing the economic interests of his family, as well as interests in collecting coins and cultural history, and made a number of articles and books on numismatics . After the end of the war he was sent to a French internment camp in Innsbruck. He resigned from the diplomatic service and from then on devoted himself to numismatics, heraldry and sphragistics until his death . His research results were recognized by his appointment to the Numismatic Commission of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany . Herrmann attributes to him a motherly joke that is sometimes paired with fine irony, Longerich has somewhat idiosyncratic, sometimes curious features.

Legal dispute with Curzio Malaparte

In 1944 the first edition of the autobiographical novel Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte was published in Naples . The work has been translated into 17 languages ​​and was first published in 1951 by the Karlsruhe Stahlberg Verlag in a German edition. It contains extraordinarily gruesome accounts of war events in Eastern Europe. In addition, Malaparte also mentions an encounter with Giuseppina, wife of Gustaf Braun von Stumms, who is also mentioned by full name. Malaparte describes in detail how Giuseppina despaired of the burden of the war and the behavior of her husband and finally took her own life, to which Braun responded with the exclamation " Heil Hitler !" In fact, Braun von Stumms' second wife had committed suicide in 1943.

Braun von Stumm is said to have been confronted with the novel for the first time shortly after the end of the war, when the commandant of the internment camp in Innsbruck held the book in front of him while he was trying to get his release there. Although in the German first edition of 1951 the names of the names objected to did not appear, and details of the descriptions were not adopted, Braun von Stumm sued the publication of the book, demanded that it be confiscated and filed a criminal complaint against the author. The proceedings before the Karlsruhe District Court were discontinued at the end of 1953 because Malaparte “had to expect a prison sentence”, but this could not be imposed on a foreigner in absentia. Braun von Stumm reached a settlement with Stahlberg Verlag.

Fonts

• The coins of the Hornbach Abbey. 1926.
• Trier style from the Frankish imperial era. 1931.
• Contributions to the Strasbourg coin history. 1939.
• About the minting right of the Andechs in Innsbruck and its historical background. 1944.
• About the older Zofingen coinage. 1948/49
• The end of the Andechs coin fair in Innsbruck. 1951.
• L'Origine de la fleur de lis des rois de France au point de vue numismatique. 1951.
• The oldest Luxembourg lion penny as a heraldic document. 1952.
• The wheel, symbol of the gospel and church on Upper Rhine coins from the 12th and 13th centuries. 1952.
• Colmar pennies from the interregnum period. 1953.
• The Merzig coin find. 1953.
• The coin find from Gleisweiler. 1954.
• Lorraine-Trier alliance in the 13th century. 1958.
• Metz mints on the central Saar. 1959.

literature

• Reinhard Schindler : Obituary for Gustaf Braun von Stumm . In: Journal for the history of the Saar region , vol. 13, Saarbrücken 1963, 4 pages, with picture (in the unpaginated part before p. 9)
• Hans-Walter Herrmann : On the death of Gustaf Braun von Stumm . In: Saarbrücker Hefte. Pfau-Verlag, Saarbrücken 1963, 18, ISSN  0036-2115 , pp. 77-78.
• Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 1: Johannes Hürter : A – F. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2000, ISBN 3-506-71840-1 .
• Peter Longerich : Propagandists at War. The press department of the Foreign Office under Ribbentrop. (Studies on Contemporary History, 33). Oldenbourg, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-486-54111-0 . (At the same time: Univ., Diss., Munich 1983: The press department of the Foreign Office under Ribbentrop. ). Excerpt from Google book search

Individual evidence

1. ^ The descendants of FP Stumms (last accessed on January 30, 2015)
2. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels. Part II: Dictations 1941–1945. 15 volumes, volume 4. KG Saur, Munich 1993–1996, ISBN 3-598-21920-2 , p. 227: May 3, 1942.
3. ^ Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London: Scenes of a Relationship. Britain's German heritage. Online presentation, PDF, 1 MB, p. 21 of 26 (Der Luftkrieg, Note 1)
4. ↑ ^{a b} without author: Malaparte's visions. In: Der Spiegel , No. 5, January 28, 1953, p. 32 Online , accessed December 28, 2013.
5. ↑ without author: Der Spiegel reported. In: Der Spiegel , Issue 1, January 1, 1954, p. 33 Online ( Memento from January 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 28, 2013.

Web links

• Gustaf Braun from Stumm at Weimar Republic online
• Gustaf Braun von Stumm in the Saarland biographies
• Literature on Gustaf Braun von Stumm in the Saarland Bibliography
• Literature by and about Gustaf Braun von Stumm in the catalog of the German National Library