Henry Morgenthau senior

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Henry Morgenthau senior
Memorial plaque for the father Lazarus Morgenthau, Luther Church (Ludwigshafen am Rhein)

Henry Morgenthau senior (born April 26, 1856 in Mannheim as Heinrich Morgenthau , † November 25, 1946 in New York City ) was an American diplomat and entrepreneur of German-Jewish origin.

Life

Henry Morgenthau was born in Mannheim, where his father Lazarus Morgenthau owned a cigar factory. From 1864 he attended the local lyceum for two years . In 1866 the family emigrated to the United States.

After finishing school, Henry Morgenthau studied at the renowned Columbia Law School and then worked in real estate in New York. Morgenthau was politically active in the Democratic Party and supported Woodrow Wilson during his campaign for president in the 1912 presidential election .

Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire

A telegram from Ambassador Morgenthau to the American government in July 1915: ... from harrowing reports of eye witnesses it appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress ... ("... according to shocking eyewitness reports, genocide appears to be going on ...")
Morgenthau on an Armenian Post stamp

After Wilson's election victory, Morgenthau was sent as American ambassador to Constantinople, now Istanbul , in 1913 , where he remained until 1916. He is considered an important contemporary witness of the genocide of the Armenians, which the Turkish government has denied to this day . He is the author of the two reports "The Tragedy of Armenia" (London, 1918) and "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story" (New York, 1918). These reports describe in detail what happened in the Ottoman Empire in the slipstream of the First World War from 1915 onwards. The American government initially ignored his reports and his insistence on US diplomatic intervention in order to keep America neutral in the war. In 1915, together with Hans von Wangenheim , the German ambassador in Constantinople, he was able to prevent the deportation planned by Cemal Pasha of Jews who had immigrated to Palestine since the first Aliyah without acquiring Ottoman citizenship.

Morgenthau Mission

After the end of the First World War there were numerous reports of anti-Semitic riots in the newly founded Second Polish Republic , for example between 50 and 150 Jews in the Lviv pogrom from November 21 to 23, 1918, in which Polish army members and Polish civilians took part was murdered. In the Pinsk massacre on April 5, 1919, Polish soldiers shot 35 Jewish civilians. These and other events caused concern among the American public and led President Wilson to appoint a commission to travel to Poland to investigate and assess the incidents. Morgenthau was one of four members of the commission, which consisted of three Americans and one British. During this mission Morgenthau got caught between all fronts. In Poland, the majority of the Jewish communities gave him a warm welcome. However, the mission encountered severe hostility from Polish nationalists and their press organs, who openly spread anti-Semitic propaganda. After returning to the United States, the Commission published the so-called Morgenthau Report . This report was in turn sharply criticized by Jewish-American organizations because it had played down the conditions in Poland too much for reasons of political opportunism (Poland was an important “bulwark against Bolshevism” for American politics at the time).

In July 1922, Morgenthau suggested a "rescue plan" to the Allies to rebuild Austrian economic life through possible cooperation between American private individuals, England and France; a key point was the reorganization of the Austrian railway system.

Henry Morgenthau Sr. is the father of US finance politician Henry Morgenthau , Jr. and the grandfather of prosecutor Robert M. Morgenthau and historian Barbara Tuchman .

Fonts

literature

  • Bernd Greiner : Unwanted protest. Henry Morgenthau Sr. as ambassador to Turkey. In: Mittelweg 36 . 4th volume, issue 2, April / May 1995, pp. 24-28.
  • Wolfgang Gust : "The suggestion to render the Armenians harmless came from the German side". In: Mittelweg 36, 4th year, issue 2, April / May 1995, pp. 29-36.
  • Heath W. Lowry: The Backstory to Ambassador Morgenthau's Memoir. Isis-Verlag, Istanbul 1991, ISBN 975-428-023-1 , online in English and French ( Memento of January 6, 2005 in the Internet Archive ).
  • Sebastian Parzer: The cigar manufacturer Lazarus Morgenthau (1815–1897). In: Mannheim history sheets. Vol. 22, 2011, ISSN  0948-2784 , pp. 11-18, especially p. 16.
  • Death in the name of Allah. The extermination of the Christian Armenians. Eyewitness accounts. MM Verlag, Aachen 2005, ISBN 978-3-928272-70-4 .
  • Adrian Wiltz: Heinrich Morgenthau (1856–1946) - Successful lawyer, broker and ambassador to the USA . In: William Cross, Volker von Offenberg (ed.): J üdische student of the United Grand Ducal Lyceum - Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium Mannheim. Portraits from two decades, Mannheim 2014 (series of publications by the Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium Mannheim in cooperation with the Mannheim City Archives - Institute for Urban History; 2), ISBN 978-3-95428-153-4 , pp. 63–78.

Web links

Commons : Henry Morgenthau, Sr.  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Schwartz: Ethnic "cleansing" in the modern age. Global interactions between nationalist and racist politics of violence in the 19th and 20th centuries . Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-70425-9 , p. 120 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  2. ^ Mission of The United States to Poland, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. Report in the English-language Wikisource
  3. ^ Davies, Norman: Great Britain and the Polish Jews, 1918-20 . In: Journal of Contemporary History . tape 8 , no. 2 , 1973, p. 119-142 , doi : 10.1177 / 002200947300800206 , JSTOR : 259996 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Morgenthau, Henry Sr.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Morgenthau, Heinrich (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American diplomat and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH November 25, 1946
Place of death New York City