Heinrich Cordes (diplomat)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Photo-request.svg
 Image wanted 
BW

Heinrich Cordes (born March 5, 1866 in Lübbecke , Westphalia ; † July 5, 1927 in Breslau , Silesia ) was a German lawyer , interpreter , consul and banker . He was the only European eyewitness to the murder of the German ambassador Clemens von Ketteler during the Boxer Rebellion .

family

He was the son of the court secretary at the Bielefeld Regional Court, Carl Cordes, and his wife Marie, née Schuster.

His wife was Yuksin Chou, whom he met at the age of sixteen while working in Canton , with whom he had nine children between 1898 and 1914: Adelheid (1898–1994), known as “Heidi”, Antonia (1902–1992), known as “ Toni ”, Charlotte (1905–1993), called“ Lotte ”, Karl (1906–1985), called“ Karli ”, Klara (1907–1985), called“ Clärchen ”, Ernst (1908–1983), Bernhard (1910– 1996), Dora (1912-1945) and Friedrich (1914-1995). Klara later married Hans Werner Skafte Rasmussen (1906–1945), a son of DKW , Audi , Horch and Wanderer major shareholder Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen . Henry Cordes enabled her to visit the educational reform Landschulheim Free school community Wickersdorf and the school by the sea of Martin Luserke on the North Sea island of Juist , which is also the younger brother of her future husband, Arne and Ove visited.

Heinrich Cordes is said to have never shown his significantly younger Chinese wife in public. However, he was extremely proud of his nine children. The American journalist Alfred M. Brace noted in his notes: “Mr. Cordes a long time ago married a Chinese woman and has several children, black-eyed queer colored youngsters of whom he is very fond. The fact of his marriage to a Chinese woman has made his status a peculiar one in Beijing. He never shows his wife in public. She never goes out with him and has been seen by very few in Beijing. He does not speak of her ever, but is very proud of his children. "

School and education

Heinrich Cordes first attended the evangelical community school in Lübbecke and the community school in Halle (Westphalia) before he switched to the secondary school in Bielefeld and graduated there in the spring of 1886 with the matriculation examination. He then completed his military service as a one-year volunteer in 1886/87 , most recently as vice sergeant in the reserve , before he was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve. In 1887 he began studying philology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin , but after the first semester he switched to the law department . At the same time he studied Chinese at the Seminar for Oriental Languages , where he obtained his diploma in 1890 . In the spring of 1892 he passed the first state law examination and was then employed as a court trainee.

Professional development

Foreign service

Street of the Foreign Legations in Beijing around 1900

His application to the Foreign Office in the meantime was successful in August 1892. He was offered a position in the foreign service as interpreter Elève at the German embassy in Beijing , for which he was appointed a Chinese language teacher. He was employed as Elève from December 1892 to mid-April 1895, after which he initially acted as the second interpreter (official title: Secrétaire interprète) of the legation before officially taking over his post on May 12, 1896. As early as September 1896, he moved to the consulate in Canton to take on vacant interpreting jobs there until May 1897. After a short stay in Beijing, he was sent to Hankou in July 1897 to set up a new German consulate , where he took on the position of interpreter under Vice Consul Franz Grunenwald (1861–1931), a task that he carried out until May 1899. He was then entitled to a six-month home leave in Germany.

In Berlin he received the Order of the Red Eagle IV class from Wilhelm II on August 13, 1899 for his work during the first establishment of the consulate in Hankou. On March 12, 1900, he had to start a two-month military exercise as a reserve officer. However, due to a personnel shortage in Beijing, he had to cancel this after a month. He reached Tientsin via Genoa on June 1, 1900, where he learned of the Boxer Rebellion and experienced its effects directly. On June 2, he reached Beijing by train from Tientsin, shortly before the rail link was destroyed. On June 19th the siege of the foreign embassies began.

Ketteler-Bogen, built in 1903 at the site of the attack

On June 20, 1900, Clemens von Ketteler , the German ambassador in Beijing, was shot in his sedan chair on the way to the Chinese Foreign Ministry ( Zongli Yamen ) , accompanied by Cordes . Cordes, sitting in a second litter, was seriously injured in the thigh and abdomen by a shot. Nevertheless, he managed to escape through the maze of alleys under heavy fire from Manchurian soldiers and drag himself to a US military post. From there he was carried unconscious on a hung door with an armed escort to the British embassy, ​​where a makeshift hospital had been set up during the siege. During his convalescence he put his experiences on paper in detail and sent them to a friend in Germany. This forwarded it to the Kölnische Zeitung , which it published in extracts on three consecutive days.

Consul, banker and President of the China Consortium

German-Asian Bank , Tientsin
German-Asian Bank , Beijing

He received a convalescence leave in southern China and a subsequent home leave in Germany. On February 1, 1901, he arrived in Genoa by ship and initially spent some time in northern Italy. When he returned to Berlin, the management of the German-Asian Bank asked him to take over the management of their branch in Tientsin. On June 1, 1901, he applied for his release from the foreign service; on June 5, 1901, he was personally received by Kaiser Wilhelm II in the New Palace in Potsdam and awarded the swords to his Order of the Red Eagle, 4th class. On June 12, 1901, his application for dismissal from foreign service was approved. From then on he was allowed to call himself consul , although he had never performed this function.

In 1902 he was awarded the Russian Order of Saint Anne III for the defense of the foreign embassies in Beijing . Excellent with swords. In the same year he received the China medal in bronze donated by the German emperor .

From autumn 1901 Cordes was director of the German-Asian Bank in Tientsin and president of the German consortium for government projects with China, with a particular focus on the construction of further railway lines. From 1905 he was also director of the German-Asian Bank in Beijing.

In 1908 Cordes was awarded the contract for the construction of the Tientsin-Pukou Railway with the Royal Crown Order of Prussia III. Class excellent. In 1913 he received the Order of the Red Eagle III. Class with a bow and swords on the rings. In January 1914 he was awarded the Chinese Order of Chia Ho III. Class awarded.

The American journalist Alfred M. Brace described Cordes in December 1914 as follows: “One of the most interesting men whom I met in Beijing was Mr. Cordes, manager of the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank, and said to be the man behind the throne in the German Legation. He was much like my own father in appearance, and his long life in the Far East as German interpreter and banker had taken away all the bluntness from him and left German culture without the risks of German piggishness. [...] I sat in his office one morning and listened to his tell of the interesting incidents in connection with the formation of the present Quintuple Group which controls the so-called reorganization loan. Cordes told a story of intrigue, of conflicting national interests, of bickering and methods of the powers that go far to make one skeptical of professions of altruism of any sort expressed nationally. "

literature

  • Andreas Steen: German-Chinese Relations 1911–1927. From colonialism to equality. A collection of sources . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2006. ISBN 978-3050048512 .
  • Barbara Schmitt-Englert: Germans in China 1920–1950. Everyday life and changes . Ostasien-Verlag, Großgossen 2012. ISBN 978-3-940527-50-9 .
  • Charles Stephenson: The Siege of Tsingtau: The German Japanese War 1914 . Casemate Publishers and Book Distributors, Havertown PA 2017. ISBN 978-1526702951 .

Feature film and TV documentary

The 1963 US film 55 Days in Beijing with Charlton Heston , Ava Gardner and David Niven deals with the assassination attempt on Freiherr von Ketteler and Cordes.

A TV documentary on the Boxer Rebellion produced for ARTE, BBC, The History Channel and ZDF also addresses the attack on the German ambassador and his embassy secretary or interpreter.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Antonia (Toni) Cordes  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On: charite.de@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / geschichte.charite.de  
  2. ^ A b Barbara Schmitt-Englert: Germans in China 1920–1950. Everyday life and changes (PDF file; 862 KB). Ostasien-Verlag, Großgossen 2012. ISBN 978-3-940527-50-9 , p. 14.
  3. ↑ a b Paul Wilhelm Wilm . On: oai.de
  4. ↑ Ernst Cordes: Beijing - The empty throne . Rowohlt, Berlin 1937.
  5. ^ A b Alfred M. Brace's diary, handwritten notes dated December 1914, owned by Eric Brace, Nashville, Tennessee
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Matzat : Cordes, Heinrich . On: tsingtau.org
  7. ↑ Description of the events during the murder of Baron von Ketteler by the eyewitness Heinrich Cordes. In: GSTA PK Berlin, I HA No. 341, sheet 441: Copy of a dispatch to the AA in Berlin from Beijing, July 4, 1900.
  8. ↑ TV documentary about the Boxer Rebellion, co-production by ARTE, BBC, The History Channel and ZDF, see YouTube
  9. ^ "Le 20 au matin, Quelques instants plus tard, deux chaises à porteurs quittaient la légation de France pour le Tsung-li-Yamen (Ministère des Affaires étrangères). Dans la première, se trouvait le baron de Ketteler, ministre d'Allemagne, qui avait sur ses collègues l'avantage de parler couramment le chinois. In la seconde, était le secrétaire chinois [sic] de la légation allemande, M. Cordes. Voici le récit que, malade, à l'hôpital, M. Cordes a fait du tragique événement:… “In: L. Genet: L'époque contemporaine. 1851-1939 , Classes terminales, V.-L. Tapié (ed.), Nouveau cours d'histoire Victor-L. Tapié, Paris 1958, p. 475.
  10. ^ Jean-Jacques Wendorff: The use of the German and French expeditionary corps in China during the Boxer Rebellion 1900-1901. A comparative study of German and French actors and perceptions . Phil. Diss. Fernuniversität Hagen 2014. S. 428, 456.
  11. ^ A b Barbara Schmitt-Englert: Germans in China 1920–1950. Everyday life and changes (PDF file; 862 KB). Ostasien-Verlag, Großgossen 2012. ISBN 978-3-940527-50-9 , p. 17.
  12. ↑ Kölnische Zeitung, November 6, 1900.
  13. ↑ Kölnische Zeitung, November 7, 1900.
  14. ↑ Kölnische Zeitung, November 8, 1900.
  15. ^ Andreas Steen: German-Chinese Relations 1911–1927. From colonialism to equality. A collection of sources . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2006. ISBN 978-3050048512 , p. 101.
  16. ^ Alfred M. Brace: With the Germans in Tsingtau: an Eye Witness Account of the Capture of Germany's Colony in China . In: The World's Work: A History of Our Time , Vol. XXIX, November 1914 – April 1915. Doubleday, Page and Company, New York City 1915. Quoted from: Charles Stephenson: The Siege of Tsingtau: The German Japanese War 1914 . Casemate Publishers and Book Distributors, Havertown PA 2017. ISBN 978-1526702951 , p. 210.
  17. ↑ With the Germans in Tsingtau . In: Tokushima-Anzeiger 7 (1915), May 16, 1915, p. 12 f. On: djg-lueneburg.de
personal data
SURNAME Cordes, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, interpreter, consul and banker
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübbecke , Westphalia
DATE OF DEATH July 5, 1927
Place of death Wroclaw , Silesia