Heinrich Wolff (diplomat)

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Heinrich Adolf Wilhelm Wolff (born November 18, 1881 in Berlin ; † February 7, 1946 there ) was a German diplomat . At the beginning of the Third Reich he was employed as Consul General in Jerusalem and campaigned for the Ha'avara Agreement . Since he was married to a Jew, he was dismissed from service in 1935.

Life

Heinrich Wolff grew up as the son of a Lutheran family in Berlin. His father Fritz Wolff was a professor at the Technical University of Charlottenburg . Heinrich Wolff put 1902 down its Abitur and then studied at the Berlin University Jura . There he passed his first state examination in 1906 and initially worked as an assessor at the Berlin Court of Appeal . In March 1911 he passed the second state examination and was accepted into the Foreign Service in 1912 . In 1914 he went to London as Vice Consul . During the First World War he was Vice Consul in Genoa and later in Copenhagen . Shortly before the end of the war he returned to Berlin.

He then worked for the German Armistice Commission in Spa and returned to the Foreign Service in 1920. In the 1920s he was promoted first to Legation Secretary and then to Legation Councilor . In 1931 he went to Palermo, but in 1932 he became consul general in Naples . On November 7, 1932, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him German Consul General in Jerusalem . Meanwhile married to the Jew Ilse, who converted to Protestantism, he campaigned for the Zionist idea and tried to maintain a German-Jewish partnership. In Jerusalem, Ilse Wolff ran for the parish council of the German-language Evangelical Congregation , was elected and worked for the community.

He did not recognize the anti-Semitic character of the German Reich after the seizure of power . In a letter in 1933 he called for the boycott of Jews to be stopped, as this would damage the Reich's reputation in the world and sales of goods in Palestine were falling. Nevertheless, Wolff initially acknowledged the regime. So he kept the Aryan certificate and applied for admission to the NSDAP , which was refused due to his diplomatic position.

During the first years of the National Socialist regime, Wolff campaigned for the Ha'avara Agreement and was involved in its preparation. He had good contacts with the Jewish Agency . As consul, he saved the lives of thousands of Jews who were able to immigrate to Jerusalem through his willing cooperation in the execution of the agreement. However, especially through his marriage to a woman of Jewish descent, he was under Nazi observation. Among other things, the publication Die Warte des Tempels of the free church temple society in Palestine and Julius Streicher's smear newspaper Der Stürmer harshly criticized him and called him a “friend of the Jews”. However, Wolff still had the support of his employer until 1935.

As part of the tightening of the law to restore the civil service , he was forced into retirement on July 15, 1935 because of his wife of Jewish origin at the age of 53. His successor was Walter Döhle .

At first he wanted to stay with his wife in Palestine, but on the one hand he did not receive any pension payments as these were only granted in Germany, and on the other hand he could not find a job that matched his qualifications. So the couple was forced to return to Berlin in March 1936. In 1937 Wolff was put into permanent retirement. Both he and his wife survived the Hitler dictatorship. Wolff himself died in 1946.

Ilse Wolff was later able to successfully enforce an application for compensation due to racist persecution. She died in October 1988 in a nursing home in Düsseldorf .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christoph Rhein, "As a child of the German provosts in Jerusalem 1930–1938", in: Dem Erlöser der Welt zur Ehre: Festschrift for the centenary of the inauguration of the Evangelical Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem , Karl-Heinz Ronecker (ed.) On behalf of 'Jerusalem Foundation' and 'Jerusalemsverein', Leipzig: Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, 1998, pp. 222–228, here p. 227. ISBN 3-374-01706-1 .
  2. ↑ David Jünger: Years of Uncertainty: Emigration Plans of German Jews 1933–1938 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016, ISBN 978-3-647-37039-2 , pp. 159 .
personal data
SURNAME Wolff, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wolff, Heinrich Adolf Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat, Consul General of Jerusalem (1932–1935)
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 1946
Place of death Berlin