Hans Frölicher

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Hans Frölicher at the Conference of Swiss Envoys (1937)

Hans Frölicher (born December 3, 1887 in Solothurn ; † January 30, 1961 in Bern ) was the Swiss envoy to Berlin during the Second World War (1938–1945).

Life

He grew up as the son of Maximilian Frölicher and Margaretha Emerentia, b. Stehli, at Mittelstrasse 6 in the Seefeld district (City of Zurich) . His father, a textile manufacturer and offspring of a respected Solothurn burgher family, married in 1885 into the wealthy family of silk manufacturers, the Stehli-Hirt, for whom he had worked. After studying law in Zurich, Munich and Leipzig, he received his doctorate and passed the bar exam before joining the Federal Political Department (EPD) in 1918 after working as a lawyer . Between 1920 and 1930 Frölicher worked in the EPD in the foreign affairs department at the headquarters in Bern. Subsequently, in 1930 Frölicher was sent to Berlin as a legation councilor to Berlin. In 1934 Frölicher was sent back to the EPD headquarters in Bern. At the head office he was head of the consular service and at the same time deputy head of the foreign affairs department.

On February 11, 1938, the Swiss Federal Council decided to send Frölicher to Berlin as the successor to Paul Dinichert , where his appointment met with a very positive response. He maintained close contacts with leading Nazi giants and sent corresponding reports to Bern.

On May 8, 1945, Frölicher had to take note of his recall by the Federal Council and of Switzerland's no longer recognizing the German government; he was deported to an administrative department. Later, until 1951, he was entrusted with the management of the German interest group (DIV) in the EPD, the fiduciary protection of German interests in Switzerland. Until his retirement in late April 1953, he performed other modest tasks. He then withdrew completely into private life and decreed that his memoirs, which he began to tackle from the mid-1950s, should not appear during his lifetime.

Work and reception

Frölicher's attitude towards the relationship between National Socialist Germany and neutral Switzerland was already heavily criticized during the war, but then again in the 1990s. The Swiss Federal Councilor Marcel Pilet-Golaz , who caused a lot of confusion in a speech he gave as Federal President on June 25, 1940 - also because of the particularly ambiguous passages in the German version of the speech in French - was generally accepted by the people at the time as a scapegoat who considered extensive compromises with Germany to be desirable. However, Pilet-Golaz did not go as far as Frölicher would have liked. The latter had written to him on June 10, 1940 that Swiss policy of neutrality would in future have to be based on friendship with Germany and Italy and proposed that the first thing be to break off any relationship with the League of Nations, which in the autumn was followed by the request of the two hundred Swiss sympathizers of fascism and National Socialism (see front movement ), demanded. The historian Jacques Picard also writes the following: "... Frölicher the German passages and Rothmund gently directed towards the anti-Jewish compromise formula, the Jewish stamp ".

He denied any consular assistance to Maurice Bavaud , a militant Swiss opponent of Hitler who had been imprisoned in Berlin-Plötzensee for two and a half years and sentenced to death .

When assessing Frölicher's attitude, however, care must be taken to ensure that his policy as envoy in Berlin is not generally dismissed as a private opinion: Since an ambassador always represents the official attitude and politics of his country, Frölicher's actions must to a certain extent be linked to his mandate agreed as ambassador in Berlin, which he received from the Swiss state government. However, when assessing the situation for the Swiss government, he also made clearly personally-tinged assessments. These did not coincide with the attitude of all of his employees. Other Swiss diplomats, in particular Max Grässli , Alfred Escher and Franz-Rudolf von Weiss , were characterized by a much more critical attitude towards the National Socialist regime.

Frölicher's biographer Paul Widmer points out that the (Swiss) top diplomats - like many Swiss - feared “the red danger more than the brown plague”. The honest Frölicher had neither "embellished" anything in his diary or in his memoirs.

Local plans from 1942 and 1965 clearly indicate that the street in Solothurn called Frölicherweg was built around the time of Hans Frölicher's death and is therefore probably dedicated to this nationally very controversial personality and not to any other Frölicher.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Widmer : Minister Hans Frölicher. The most controversial Swiss diplomat. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2012, p. 15.
  2. ^ Paul Widmer: Minister Hans Frölicher. The most controversial Swiss diplomat. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2012, p. 17.
  3. ↑ Frölicher, Hans in the database Dodis the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland
  4. ^ Paul Widmer: Minister Hans Frölicher. The most controversial Swiss diplomat. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2012, pp. 66, 68.
  5. ^ Antoine Fleury, Horst Möller, Hans-Peter Schwarz (eds.): Switzerland and Germany 1945-1961 , series of quarterly books for contemporary history, special issue, Oldenbourg Verlag, 2004, ISBN 9783486593730 , page 125
  6. ^ Paul Widmer: Minister Hans Frölicher. The most controversial Swiss diplomat. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2012, pp. 96, 99, 100.
  7. ^ Jacques Picard : Switzerland and the Jews 1933-1945. Chronos Verlag, Zurich 1997, ISBN 978-3-905311-22-8 .
  8. ↑ Klaus Urner : The Swiss Hitler Assassin: Three studies on resistance and its border areas: Systemic resistance / individual perpetrators and their environment / Maurice Bavaud and Marcel Gebohay. Huber, Frauenfeld / Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-7193-0634-8 , p. 238.
  9. ^ Rainer Blasius: The misunderstood envoy. For Bern in Hitler's Berlin. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . 4th November 2012.
predecessor Office successor
Paul Dinichert Swiss envoy in Berlin
1938–1945 		---
personal data
SURNAME Frölicher, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Solothurn
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1961
Place of death Bern