Harald Bielfeld (diplomat)

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Harald Bielfeld (born March 23, 1895 in Arnstadt , † June 30, 1980 in Pretoria , South Africa ) was a German diplomat .

Life

Harald Bielfeld was born the son of the First Mayor of Arnstadt and Privy Councilor of State Harald Bielfeld (1863–1933) and Elsbeth Janke. In Arnstadt he attended the humanistic grammar school . He then began studying law and political science at the universities in Freiburg im Breisgau , Munich and Berlin . In 1914/15 he took language courses and courses on colonial administration and colonial economics at the seminar for oriental languages in Berlin. From the beginning of 1916 to the end of 1918 he did military service in the First World War .

From 1919 he continued his studies at the University of Jena , passed the legal traineeship on November 22, 1919 and received his doctorate in 1920. From January 2, 1920, Bielfeld was active in the Thuringian judicial service and was appointed to the Foreign Service on September 8, 1920. In 1921 he passed the consular examination and from the beginning of April 1922 was assigned to the Consulate General in Calcutta under the Consul General Heinrich Rüdt von Collenberg-Bödigheim . From the end of January 1923, Bielfeld was named Vice Consul. On May 10, 1924, he moved to the Consulate General in Pretoria . In South Africa he was appointed acting head of the consulate in Lourenço Marques from late March 1926 to early 1927 . From the beginning of 1927 he was appointed acting head of the office of the Compensation Commissioner for South Africa in Windhoek , which became the Windhoek branch of the Consulate General in Pretoria in mid-April 1927 and then became the consulate from mid-July 1927. From June 22, 1927, he carried the official title of consul. He resumed his service at the Consulate General in Pretoria on November 26, 1927. Here on May 28, 1928, he was appointed acting head of the Consulate General. With the arrival of the new business agent in Pretoria, Alex Bernhard Tigges (1880–1939), at the end of July 1928, he changed to the management of the economic department. From June 3, 1932, he was named Consul II. Class and from February to June 1934 took over the management of the consular branch of the Consulate General Pretoria in Johannesburg as a new establishment.

Bielfeld's next assignment was from Johannesburg to the German embassy in London . Here he took up his service on July 14, 1934 as Legation Councilor 2nd class. After the death of the German ambassador in London, Leopold von Hoesch , in mid-April 1936, Bielfeld briefly assumed the role of Chargé d'affaires until August 23, 1936. Afterwards Joachim von Ribbentrop came to London to take on the duties of an ambassador. In October of the same year Bielfeld joined the NSDAP . As Counselor First Class, he finished his service in London on November 27, 1938.

From December 1, 1938, he was again in the Foreign Office in Berlin, where he was in charge of Section X / Africa. Biel field supported the colonial economic memorandum of Kurt Weigelt which formulated a reorganization and territorial claims. Just three months later, on March 2, 1939, he was appointed Legation Councilor , and from October 27, 1941, he was appointed envoy . At the beginning of November 1940, Bielfeld had formulated colonial demands on France. The plan was called The Territorial Colonial Claim on France as part of the overall claim . This included an expansion of the German area of ​​influence to strategically important ports, such as B. Conakry and Freetown , as well as islands off the coast of West Africa and East African coastlines are described. Anticipating the defeat of France, the focus was on a cohesive colonial empire of Central Africa , as Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick had noted shortly before in his memorandum on spatial expansion and base issues. Madagascar should belong to Germany “not for reasons of colonial politics, but for the purpose of settling the Jews”, wrote Bielfeld. In mid-1941 he sent the KPA a draft of an ordinance on the labor deployment of natives and foreign equals in the colonies . At the beginning of 1942 he received himself together with Theodor Gunzert on several occasions, including in the office of the Führer Philipp Bouhler , who was on the advisory board of the German Colonial Scientific Society, and explained the planned organization of the colonial administration, which included a governor as the representative of the supreme power in the respective colony the supervision of the Colonial Minister provided. He said that the borders of East Africa are not fixed and described areas that could be additionally occupied. The memorandum formulated by Günter Wagner for the KPA on the position and tasks of government ethnologists in the colonies documented a more investigative approach by the ethnologists and emphasized the need for a balance between African culture and the new achievements, but also contained the requirement that it should not come to confidentiality with the Africans or even advocacy. Bielfeld commented on this memorandum that he did not see the connection between the ethnologists and the colonial administration. In February 1942 Bielfeld received from Franz Rademacher the message about the Madagascar Plan “that the Jews should not be deported to Madagascar, but to the east. Madagascar no longer needs to be earmarked for the final solution . "

From May 1943 he became the personal assistant to the State Secretary and chairman of the Africa Committee. On January 18, 1944, he moved to the German embassy in Bern . Bielfeld was entrusted with the processing of protecting power matters and the observation of the British Empire. He also dealt with the military internees in Italy .

After Germany's defeat in World War II , he was employed from June to August 1945 as a consultant for protecting power matters in the Federal Political Department, Department for Foreign Interests.

From October 1945 he became unemployed and was interned several times in Switzerland until June 1946 . From July 1946 he became legal advisor to the Hanover company Dipl. Ing. Carl Simonis (also Stahl-Simonis ). Bielfeld held this position until the end of March 1949 and, since the beginning of April 1949, has been a member of the board of Trysa Trust Ltd. (Pretoria), to South Africa. From June 1949 he was managing director of the Society for European Immigration in Pretoria and in mid-1950 became managing director of the German-African Aid Committee (DAHA), also based in Pretoria.

On December 4, 1950, Bielfeld joined the Foreign Service of the Federal Republic of Germany. On January 15, 1951, he took over the management of the economic department at the German Consulate General in Pretoria. During this time, Bielfeld took over the acting management of the legation several times. April 8, 1954, he was appointed Counselor appointed. The previous embassy in South Africa was upgraded to the German embassy on April 15, 1954. In 1958 he was a process observer at the Treason Trial on behalf of the German Embassy . Here he met the prosecutor Oswald Pirow , whom he knew from his tenure in Pretoria during the Third Reich. After almost 10 years of renewed diplomatic work, he asked for a retirement in 1960. This took place on March 31, 1960. At the beginning of September 1960 he was awarded the Cross of Merit 1st Class .

In his 1963 book chapter South Africa, he justifies the apartheid policy. A "spatial segregation" of the "colored" should restore the "home of the white South African nation".

Helmut Bielfeld was married to Eleonore Marie Zorn (* 1895 in Pretoria) on September 23, 1926. The couple had two sons.

Fonts

  • South Africa . In: Weltgeschichte der Gegenwart: The States, Francke, 1962, pp. 495-510.

literature

  • Maria Keipert: Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871-1945: A-F . Schoeningh, Paderborn, 2000, p. 155f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maria Keipert: Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945: A – F. Schoeningh, Paderborn, 2000, p. 155.
  2. ↑ Karsten Linne: Germany beyond the equator ?: The Nazi colonial planning for Africa . Ch. Links Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86153-500-3 , p. 75 ( google.de [accessed on May 30, 2020]).
  3. ↑ Karsten Linne: Germany beyond the equator ?: The Nazi colonial planning for Africa . Ch. Links Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86153-500-3 , p. 82 ( google.de [accessed on May 30, 2020]).
  4. ^ Rolf Vogel: A stamp was missing: documents on the emigration of German Jews . Droemer Knaur, 1977, ISBN 978-3-426-05602-8 , pp. 334 ( google.de [accessed on May 30, 2020]).
  5. ↑ a b c Hans Jansen: The Madagascar Plan .: The intended deportation of European Jews to Madagascar. Herbig, 1997, ISBN 978-3-7844-2605-1 , pp. 354 ( google.de [accessed June 1, 2020]).
  6. ↑ Chima J. Korieh: Nigeria and World War II: Colonialism, Empire, and Global Conflict . Cambridge University Press, 2020, ISBN 978-1-108-42580-3 , pp. 80 ( google.de [accessed June 1, 2020]).
  7. ↑ Hans Jansen: The Madagascar Plan .: The intended deportation of European Jews to Madagascar. Herbig, 1997, ISBN 978-3-7844-2605-1 , pp. 352 ( google.de [accessed June 1, 2020]).
  8. ↑ a b Karsten Linne: Germany beyond the equator ?: The Nazi colonial planning for Africa . Ch. Links Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86153-500-3 , p. 147 ( google.de [accessed on May 30, 2020]).
  9. ↑ Karsten Linne: Germany beyond the equator ?: The Nazi colonial planning for Africa . Ch. Links Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86153-500-3 , p. 141 ( google.de [accessed on May 30, 2020]).
  10. ^ Rolf Vogel: A stamp was missing: documents on the emigration of German Jews . Droemer Knaur, 1977, ISBN 978-3-426-05602-8 , pp. 335 ( google.de [accessed on May 30, 2020]).
  11. ↑ Karsten Linne: Germany beyond the equator ?: The Nazi colonial planning for Africa . Ch. Links Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86153-500-3 , p. 85 ( google.de [accessed on May 30, 2020]).
  12. ↑ Gerhard Schreiber: The Italian military internees in the German sphere of influence 1943-1945: Despised - betrayed - forgotten . Walter de Gruyter, 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-59560-4 , p. 627 ( google.de [accessed on May 30, 2020]).
  13. ↑ Gerhard Schreiber: The Italian military internees in the German sphere of influence 1943-1945: Despised - betrayed - forgotten . Walter de Gruyter, 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-59560-4 , p. div . ( google.de [accessed on May 30, 2020]).
  14. ^ A b Maria Keipert: Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945: A – F. Schoeningh, Paderborn, 2000, p. 156.
  15. ↑ Karsten Linne: Germany beyond the equator ?: The Nazi colonial planning for Africa . Ch. Links Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86153-500-3 , p. 164 ( google.de [accessed May 30, 2020]).
  16. ^ Albrecht Hagemann: Bonn and apartheid in South Africa. A memorandum from the German Ambassador Rudolf Holzhausen from 1954 . In: VfZ 43 (1995), pp. 679-706, here p. 692.
  17. ↑ Word and Truth: Monthly for Religion and Culture . Herder., 1963, pp. 466 ( google.de [accessed on May 30, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Bielfeld, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Arnstadt , Thuringia
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1980
Place of death Pretoria , South Africa