Kajus Köster

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Kajus Köster (born May 18, 1911 in Heidelberg ; † March 6, 1976 in Königswinter ), born Kai Köster , was a German diplomat during the Nazi era and in the post-war period.

Life

Kai Köster was the eldest son of the SPD politician Adolf Köster and his wife Käthe, née Mahr.

The parents made it possible for him and his younger brother to visit the reformed educational rural education home " Schule am Meer " founded by Martin Luserke on the North Sea island of Juist in 1925 . There he was called by his schoolmates Kajus (= "the merry one", originally Roman nickname "Caietanus"). He kept the nickname as his first name. After graduation , Kajus Köster began studying law at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg . There he made friends with Golo Mann , son of Thomas Mann . Both were members of the Heidelberg Socialist Student Group. Shortly after Christmas 1931, Golo took Kajus with him to Munich, so that he also got to know the other members of the Mann family.

On June 1, 1939, he joined the NSDAP .

In 1940 he married Clara von Mutius (1910-2006), with whom he had four (according to other sources: five) children.

In 1940 Köster entered the diplomatic service of the Foreign Office headed by Joachim von Ribbentrop . There he was employed under the later Federal Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger in the "Broadcasting Politics Department", where he finally rose to the position of personal assistant to the department head and SS- Oberführer Gerhard Rühle in the "General Propaganda" department .

He worked there until the end of the Second World War in 1945. Nothing is known about its denazification .

He worked for the Northwest German Broadcasting Corporation (NWDR) , but was already head of the press office of the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 1946 . After working as Ministerialrat at the German Secretariat of the Zone Advisory Council of the British Occupation Zone between 1947 and 1949 (as Secretary of Department I General (Personnel and Finance) Administration; contacts to the Allied Liaison Offices and the branch of the Prime Minister's Office in Bad Godesberg) In 1949 he was briefly General Secretary of the Parliamentary Council and in 1950 temporarily employed by the Federal Government's Press and Information Office (BPA).

In 1950 he returned to the diplomatic service and initially worked at the headquarters of the Foreign Office in Bonn before he was employed at the embassy in Paris in 1953 . After working as Consul General in Rotterdam from 1956 to 1960, he succeeded Paulus von Stolzmann as Consul General in La Paz , Bolivia . In 1963 he was put into temporary retirement and replaced by Karl Günther Motz . In 1966 he took over the office of ambassador to Panama and remained in this post until he retired in 1970.

Kajus Köster, together with other AA employees who were already active in the Third Reich, is said to have formed the core of a rope team that supported the former AA employee Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger in criticizing his Nazi past.

Works

  • Belief in the victory of the law , In: Dieter Oberndörfer : Encounters with Kurt Georg Kiesinger. Celebration for the 80th birthday . Chapter: The time of dictatorship. German publishing house. Stuttgart 1984. ISBN 978-3-421-06193-5 , pp. 109-110

Trivia

On August 8, 1945, on the occasion of the capitulation of Japan, Köster spoke the first political radio commentary after the war on Radio Hamburg: Germany and world peace .

literature

  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 2: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: G – K. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adolf Köster . In: Archive of Social Democracy, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. From: fes.de, accessed on April 9, 2017
  2. ↑ Thomas Mann, Katia Mann, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann, Golo Mann, Monika Mann, Elisabeth Mann Borgese: The letters of the Manns, a family portrait . S. Fischer Verlag. Berlin 2016. ISBN 978-3104037349 , Letter 39: Golo Mann to Katia Mann, Heidelberg, January 15, 1932
  3. ^ Adolf Köster . In: Archive of Social Democracy, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. From: fes.de, accessed on April 9, 2017
  4. ^ The Parliamentary Council 1948–1949. Files and minutes. Volume 8. The Relationship of the Parliamentary Council to Military Governments . Walter de Gruyter. Munich 1995. ISBN 978-3486702378 , Introduction, p. XXII
  5. ↑ Better order . In: Der Spiegel, 25, 12 June 1967. From: spiegel.de, accessed on April 9, 2017
  6. ↑ Gabriele Stüber: Zonal temporary and democratic experiment. The Zone Advisory Council for the British Zone of Occupation 1946–1948 . In: Geschichte im Westen, born in 1990, issue 2, p. 183
  7. ↑ Photo : Kajus Köster (left), Hermann Wandersleb (right). Recording by Erna Wagner-Hehmke . From: parlamentarischerrat.de, accessed on April 9, 2017
  8. ↑ Photo: Kajus Köster (right) . Recording by Erna Wagner-Hehmke . From: parlamentarischerrat.de, accessed on April 9, 2017
  9. ↑ Michael F. Feldkamp: Council of Elders, Rules Committee and Transition Committee . Walter de Gruyter, Munich 1997, Introduction: Committee of the Rules of Procedure, p. II.
  10. ^ Telegram from the Bavarian State Parliament in Munich to the executive director of the Parliamentary Council, Kajus Köster, in Bonn, on May 20, 1949 . From: hdg.de, accessed on April 9, 2017
  11. ↑ Appointment and promotion of state secretaries and higher officials: Occupation of the embassy in La Paz with consul general Kajus Köster (1959) In: Bundesarchiv. On: german-digital-library, accessed on April 9, 2017
  12. ^ Tobias C. Bringmann: Handbook of Diplomacy 1815-1963. Foreign heads of mission in Germany and German heads of mission abroad from Metternich to Adenauer Walter de Gruyter. Munich 2001, p. 115
  13. ^ Kajus Köster . In: Der Spiegel, Personalalien, 37, 12, September 1962. From: spiegel.de, accessed on April 9, 2017
  14. ↑ Köster, Kajus . In: Federal Archives. From: bundesarchiv.de, accessed on April 9, 2017
  15. ^ Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes , Moshe Zimmermann : The Office and the Past: German Diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010
  16. ^ First political commentary from Radio Hamburg . German Broadcasting Archive, Frankfurt am Main. From: ard.de, accessed on April 9, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Köster, Kajus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Köster, Kai
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Heidelberg
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1976
Place of death Koenigswinter