Johannes König (diplomat)

Johannes ("Hans") König (born April 2, 1903 in Arnstadt , † January 22, 1966 in Prague ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED ) and diplomat . He was ambassador of the GDR in the People's Republic of China and in the Soviet Union as well as in other socialist countries. He was also Deputy Foreign Minister of the GDR.

Life

König, son of a single mother, attended elementary school and learned the trade of tanner . He then worked in Altenburg . In 1919 he joined the Free Socialist Youth and the KPD. 1920/1921 he was head of the Arnstadt sub-district of the Communist Youth of Germany (KJD).

From autumn 1921 to autumn 1922 he was the full-time secretary of the KJD for the Thuringia district . At the end of 1922, König had to resign because the full-time position of youth secretary could no longer be paid. Then he worked again as a tanner. At the beginning of 1923, König became Polleiter of the KPD sub-district of Arnstadt and head of the “Proletarian Hundreds” there . After the German October 1923 he became head of the illegal KPD in West Thuringia. From spring 1924 he worked again as a tanner in Ilmenau and became a member of the KPD's Thuringia district leadership.

From the end of 1924, König worked as a journalist for the KPD. He was initially an editorial volunteer at the Neue Zeitung in Jena and then headed the editorial department of this newspaper in Gotha . From December 1925 to autumn 1926, König was the second political editor of the KPD newspaper Socialist Republic in Cologne , then editor of the KPD weekly newspaper in Danzig . From the end of 1926 he worked as an editor for the Arbeiterzeitung in Mannheim and then at the beginning of 1928 he went to the KPD-Zeitung in Remscheid as editor-in-chief and at the end of 1928 to the KPD-Zeitung Bergische Arbeiterstimme in Solingen . In the summer of 1929, König became editor-in-chief of the KPD newspaper Der Kämpfer in Chemnitz and remained so until the merger of the three Saxon districts to form the unified KPD district of Saxony .

In April 1930, King was charged with "preparation for high treason " by the Supreme Court to eighteen months imprisonment sentenced, he in Gollnow was serving. After his release in September 1931, König was head of the press in the Reich leadership of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition . In August 1932 he was again editor-in-chief of the KPD newspaper Der Kampf in Chemnitz.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , from February 1933, König headed the illegal KPD in the Chemnitz area . He was arrested in May 1933. König remained in so-called protective custody until October 1934 and was imprisoned in the Colditz and Sachsenburg concentration camps. After his release, König went to Cologne , where his wife, Henny König, née Schwarz (1902–1951), with whom he had been married since September 1926, lived. His wife came from a Jewish family of craftsmen and had also been a member of the KPD since 1922. König was arrested again in February 1936 and sentenced to one year and eight months by the People's Court in Dresden in autumn 1936 . After his release, König returned to Cologne.

The Gestapo arrested his wife here in the spring of 1938. She was supposed to be expelled from the German Reich as a “Jewish woman who was a threat to the state” . Since her husband was seriously ill, Henny König asked for a six-month postponement. Johannes König refused to part with his wife. He was therefore also asked to leave Germany. During the Reichspogromnacht on November 9, 1938, the king's apartment was devastated. The König couple continued to be harassed, so that Johannes and Henny König emigrated to Shanghai on April 1, 1939 .

From September 1941 Johannes König worked in the Far East department of the Soviet news agency TASS at the broadcaster Voice of the Homeland (XRVN). This station answered - protected by the Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact - with the announcement "Here is the voice of the Soviet Union in Shanghai" and broadcast not only in Russian and English, but also several times a day in German. The German communists - in addition to König, among others, Kurt Raphael , Günter Nobel and, as the translator of the Russian and German texts, his wife Genia - independently created news, comments and cultural programs. König wrote the weekly commentary on the political and military events, which was later sent at shorter intervals. His comments have often been translated into other languages. König was also the political leader of the KPD group in Shanghai and was one of the signatories of the appeal of the "Community of Democratic Germans in Shanghai" of November 1, 1945.

In August 1947, the König couple returned to Germany in the Soviet zone of occupation . König joined the SED and was editor-in-chief of the Sächsische Zeitung in Dresden from autumn 1947 to March 1950 .

Since April 1950, Koenig was an employee in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR (MfAA). In June 1950 he became head of the GDR Diplomatic Mission and was the GDR's first ambassador in Beijing from 1953 to 1955 . When handing over the letter of accreditation in December 1953, Mao Tse-tung König assured the full support of the Chinese people in the “struggle for a unified, independent, democratic and peace-loving Germany”. From 1951 to 1954, König was second-accredited in the Korean Democratic People's Republic and from December 1954 also in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam .

From July 1955 to August 1959, König was the GDR's ambassador in Moscow and from there until 1958 was second-accredited in the Mongolian People's Republic . After his return from Moscow, he became the GDR's deputy minister for foreign affairs. He was responsible for the European departments and the department for consular affairs in the MfAA. In April 1965, König became the GDR's ambassador in Prague, where he died in January 1966.

König was also a member of the Presidium of the German-Nordic, the German-French and the German-Italian Society as well as of the central board of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship .

Fonts (selection)

• Dawn over China . Berlin 1949.
• Liberated China. Pictorial documents of the fight and victory and of the building work of the Chinese people . Sachsen-Verlag, Dresden 1951.
• The "dictatorship of the people's democracy" in the People's Republic of China and its tasks in building socialism . Institute for Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the SED, Berlin 1954.

Essays

• The leading role of the CPC . In: Einheit (1949), Issue 1, pp. 51–58.
• On the 30th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party . In: Einheit (1951), No. 11, pp. 696-705
• An army of the people . In: Einheit (1952), Issue 9, pp. 873-881.
• The People's Republic of China in the transition period to socialism . In: Einheit (1954), Heft 4, pp. 402-413.

Awards

• Patriotic Order of Merit in silver (1954 and 1959) and in gold (1963)

literature

• Jürgen Radde: The Diplomatic Service of the GDR. Names and dates . Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1977, ISBN 3-8046-8529-3 , p. 82.
• Günter and Genia Nobel: As political emigrants in Shanghai . In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement , No. 6 (1979), pp. 882-894.
• Werner Meissner (Hrsg.): The GDR and China 1949 to 1990. Politics, economy, culture . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-05-002806-8 , pp. 64, 254f. and 303.
• Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945–1990 . Volume 1: Abendroth - Lyr . KG Saur, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-11176-2 , p. 420
• Ingrid Muth : The GDR Foreign Policy 1949–1972. Contents, structures, mechanisms . 2nd Edition. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 978-3-86153-224-8 , pp. 63, 80f., 119, 130, 147 and 157.
• Tobias C. Bringmann : Handbook of Diplomacy 1815–1963. Foreign heads of mission in Germany and German heads of mission abroad from Metternich to Adenauer . Saur, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-11095-684-5 , p. 170.
• King, Johannes . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 , p. 473f.
• Siegfried Bock , Ingrid Muth, Hermann Schwiesau: The GDR foreign policy, an overview. Data, facts, people (III) . LIT Verlag Dr. W. Hopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-10559-2 , p. 322f.
• Andreas Herbst, Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  König, Johannes . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich . Würzburg 2000, p. 431.
2. ^ Günter and Genia Nobel: As political emigrants in Shanghai . In: BzG (1979), No. 6, p. 887.
3. ↑ Mechthild Leutner, Wolfram Adolphi , Peter Merker (eds.): Germany and China 1937–1949. Politics - military - economy - culture. A collection of sources . Berlin 1998, p. 464f.
4. ↑ Werner Meissner (Ed.): The GDR and China 1949 to 1990. Politics, economy, culture . Berlin 1995, p. 30.
5. ^ Ingrid Muth: The GDR foreign policy 1949-1972. Contents, structures, mechanisms . Berlin 2001, p. 119.