Horst Behrendt (diplomat)

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Horst Behrendt at the observer table - 18th meeting of the UNDP Board of Directors in July 1974 in Manila

Horst Behrendt (born May 19, 1920 in Bromberg, West Prussia , today Bydgoszcz ; † October 1, 2018 ) was a German scientist and lawyer . During the thirties and forties of the 20th century, he took part in resistance movements against National Socialism in several European countries . He was a German diplomat and worked in the GDR Foreign Ministry as well as in the GDR Diplomatic Service .

Life

Since Horst Behrendt came from a social democratic family, he became a member of the Rote Falken . After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, his father, an employee of the city administration of the Berlin-Lichtenberg district , refused to take an oath of allegiance to the new rulers, which cost him his job. Horst Behrendt also came into conflict because in 1935 he did not comply with the invitation to join the Hitler Youth . As a result, he had to leave high school without a degree. Since after 1933 organizations and social democratic youth associations could no longer be openly politically active, they met in neighboring countries. Many illegally organized German youths such as Horst Behrendt met regularly in the Giant Mountains in Spindleruv Mlyn . Red falcons came together as well as communist youths. In the summer of 1936 Horst Behrendt was able to get to an international youth meeting at the Swedish Mälarensee and back again.

In his subsequent apprenticeship as a fine optician in the company Fuess in Berlin-Steglitz he got contact with the illegal KPD - operating cell , which Fritz Strong , who later became district mayor of Steglitz in 1945, headed in this company and the resistance group Robert Uhrig . Horst Behrendt completed his Abitur after completing his apprenticeship at an evening school . When the first French forced laborers were assigned to the Fuess company with the occupation of France in 1940 , Horst Behrendt contacted the forced laborers on behalf of the company cell, despite the prohibition of the company management, through his language skills acquired at night school and was able to gain their trust. Together there was also wiretapping of so-called " enemy transmitters ". It is not known whether there were acts of sabotage, as happened in other Berlin companies.

In 1943 Horst Behrendt was drafted into the German Wehrmacht and, after training near Potsdam as an intelligence soldier , joined the re-established 371st Infantry Division in Brittany . With the information from the French workers, he attempted to reach the resistance of the French Resistance , the Maquis in Tours , but was arrested by the German military police in Le Mans . However, he was fortunate that his real intentions were not revealed and he was only sentenced to several days' arrest. After France, Italy and Croatia, Horst Behrendt reached Eastern Europe with the 371st. He participated in a small illegal association of members of the armed forces called the English Club . They talked about politics and a possible end to the war, and listened to the BBC station through their communications technology . When his unit was relocated to the Ukraine , Horst Behrendt made another attempt to leave the Wehrmacht. In March 1944 he succeeded in joining the Red Army by hiding for 15 hours with Ukrainian farmers in a village of Kyrilowka near Vinnitsa . As a prisoner of war he was taken to a camp near Krasnogorsk, northwest of Moscow . There he began working on the National Committee "Free Germany" , where he headed a department at the local Antifa school . In 1946 he returned to Germany.

He then completed a law degree in Berlin . In the 1950s he became an employee in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR . His first area of ​​responsibility was Asia. He was involved in the establishment of commercial agencies and commercial branches of the GDR in Iraq , India and in the then Burmese capital Rangoon . From 1960 he worked with Martin Bierbach at the commercial agency in Cairo , Egypt , then in 1963 at the commercial branch in Calcutta, India . After finishing his work in India, he switched to the Institute for International Relations at the German Academy for Political Science and Law (DASR) in Potsdam- Babelsberg . There he received his doctorate in 1967. In the following years the development program UNDP of the United Nations was his specialty.

Behrendt died at the age of 98.

Observer Card - UNDP Board of Directors meeting in Geneva in July 1976

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Luise Kraushaar Berlin communists in the fight against fascism 1936 - 1942 . Dietz Verlag, Berlin. 1981 Chapter III, page 162 f.
  2. ↑ Up on the Red Mountain ... Neues Deutschland from May 8, 2012
  3. ↑ Gottfried Hamacher Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Movement Free Germany" Short biographies, Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin. 2005.
  4. ↑ Obituary notice in the new Germany (Berlin edition) from October 13, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Behrendt, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter against National Socialism and diplomat of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Bromberg
DATE OF DEATH 1st October 2018