Johannes Balser

Johannes Balser (born April 18, 1922 in Beijing , † April 18, 1985 in Oslo ) was a German diplomat .

Life

He grew up as the youngest son of the diplomat Karl August Balser in his native Beijing, Berlin, Vladivostok and Harbin. After graduating from Luisengymnasium Berlin , he fought in World War II and in 1943 married Jutta Schimmelfennig, the daughter of a military advisor Chiang Kai-shek who died in China . After the war, as a severely disabled person, he began studying at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster . In 1950 he completed his doctorate at the local law and political science faculty with a dissertation on the subject of the position of work in the industrialization process of China. An economic-historical-sociological study .

After completing his studies, he joined the Foreign Service and, after completing his career examination and six months of further training at Georgetown University in Washington (1952), found assignments at the headquarters of the Foreign Office in Bonn and at various missions abroad : 1952 to 1955 at the Washington embassy, ​​1955 to 1956 at the consulate in Atlanta and 1956 to 1960 at the Tokyo embassy. From 1960 to 1964 he worked in Bonn in the Berlin department and in June 1964 he was appointed as consul first class to the ambassador of the newly founded embassy in Malawi and moved to Blantyre-Limbe . After four years in Malawi, he returned to the Africa Department in Bonn in 1968 and was appointed to the Center for International Studies at Harvard University in Cambridge , Massachusetts , USA as a fellow for a year in 1969 . There he was able to observe and assess the student unrest in the United States first hand, as well as work on issues relating to the European Union in an international context. Soon afterwards he was appointed to the Soviet Union, where in 1971/1972 he was commissioned to set up the German Consulate General in Leningrad . He then served as Chargé d'affaires in Moscow from 1972 to 1975 . In the mid-1970s he was Chief Inspector of the Foreign Office and as such was particularly involved in internal procedures such as the reports and political analyzes of the missions abroad for the Foreign Office.

In 1978 he succeeded Hermann Kersting's ambassador in Hungary and held this office until the beginning of 1981. In this position, in 1979 he organized the visits of Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and the Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss .

Following Hungary, he was appointed ambassador to Norway to succeed Edgar von Schmidt-Pauli , who was retiring . He held the office of ambassador to Norway until his retirement, which coincided with the anniversary of his death and his 63rd birthday on April 18, 1985. After his death in Oslo he was replaced by Harald Hofmann . Johannes Balser left his wife Jutta Balser, geb. Schimmelfennig (1921–2006) and two daughters.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gerald Mund: East Asia in the Mirror of German Diplomacy. The private service correspondence of the diplomat Herbert von Dirksen from 1933 to 1938. Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-515-08732-2 , p. 335 ( digitized version )
2. ↑ Hans Booms, Konrad Reiser: The Cabinet Protocols of the Federal Government. Volume 17: 1964. Boppard am Rhein 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58127-0 , p. 337 ( digitized version )
3. ↑ affairs. Rommel in the kitchen. In: Der Spiegel . No. 30/1978
4. ↑ It burned down like fireworks. In: Der Spiegel. No. 37/1979
5. ↑ Former ambassadors in Norway (homepage of the embassy) ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.