Jürgen Steinkrüger

Jürgen Steinkrüger (born November 26, 1944 in Bad Godesberg ; † February 15, 2019 ) was a German diplomat .

Life

After graduating from high school , Steinkrüger began studying law at the universities of Munich , Kiel and Freiburg in 1964 . Upon completion in 1970 of first- and 1974, the Second Legal State Exam, he studied until 1975 at the Bologna campus of Johns Hopkins University Advanced International Studies .

In 1976, Steinkrüger joined the Foreign Service and, after completing his training as an attaché and passing the career test for the higher service, initially worked at the embassies in Dhaka , Bangladesh from 1978 to 1981 and then until 1985 in Santiago de Chile . After a subsequent assignment at the headquarters of the Foreign Office in Bonn , he worked for the Embassy in Turkey between 1988 and 1990 and was then deputy head of the Foreign Office until 1995 .

In 1995 Steinkrüger became permanent representative of the ambassador to Peru . Steinkrüger was held hostage in the Peruvian capital Lima in December 1996 . The Japanese residence was stormed and occupied by terrorists on the occasion of the celebration of the national day of Japan. By taking more than 200 guests of the Japanese ambassador (mostly politicians and diplomats) hostage, the terrorist organization Túpac Amaru wanted to force the release of fellow campaigners. After a two-day siege, the German ambassador Heribert Wöckel was released for negotiation purposes. Steinkrüger and development officer Hannspeter Nintzel were released three days later. After a total of five months, the incident was ended by a task force. A hostage died of heart failure during the rescue operation. The remaining hostages remained unharmed, while all of the hostage-takers died.

After finishing his work there, he served as Consul General in Zurich from 1999 to 2000 and then worked for the embassy in Switzerland before he was transferred to the politically critical Venezuela between 2003 and 2006 as permanent representative of the ambassador .

In 2006 Steinkrüger succeeded Rainald Roesch as ambassador to El Salvador and held this position until he retired in 2009. Jürgen Steinkrüger was the bearer of the Grand Cross with Silver Star of the National Order of Jose Matias Delgado and Commander of the Order of the Sun of Peru.

Jürgen Steinkrüger was married and the father of four children. He died in mid-February 2019 and was buried on February 26, 2019 after the exequies in St. Martin in Muffendorf at the Südfriedhof in Cologne-Zollstock.

Web links

• Curriculum vitae on the homepage of the embassy in El Salvador ( Memento from February 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary notice , on wirtrauern.de, accessed on February 24, 2019
2. ^ War of nerves over hostages in Lima. In: The world . December 20, 1996

predecessor	Office	successor
Rainald Roesch	German Ambassador to El Salvador 2006–2009	Christian Stocks