Karl Nohr

Alwin Werner Karl Nohr (born April 11, 1905 in Fermersleben near Magdeburg , † April 28, 1973 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED ), trade unionist and diplomat .

Life

Nohr, son of a foundry worker , completed an apprenticeship after primary school and worked as a vulcanizer , core maker and roofer . In 1923 he joined the KJVD and the KPD. From 1930 to 1933 Nohr was the organization leader of the "League for Maternity Protection and Social Family Hygiene" in Magdeburg.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he emigrated to France in 1933 . Between September 1933 and April 1935 Nohr was secretary or archivist at the sex researcher Professor Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935). From 1935 to 1939 he was a political employee of the Red Aid in France. He was then interned from 1939 to 1942. Between 1942 and 1945 Nohr was a member of the British Army , from which he was released in January 1945. He was then a painter in a US unit in Algeria .

In October 1945 Nohr returned to Germany after several months in France: in 1945 he became a member of the Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB) and in 1946 a member of the SED. He initially took on union functions: from 1945 to 1949 he was chairman of the FDGB district committee in Magdeburg. In 1949/50 he was head of the organization department and member of the FDGB federal executive committee. In 1950/51 he was a consultant in the department for work and social welfare and the economic department of the Central Committee of the SED , and from 1952 to 1960 he was a political employee of the FDGB federal executive committee. From 1958 to 1960 he also worked for the World Trade Union Confederation in Prague .

In 1960 he joined the diplomatic service of the GDR and became an employee of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the GDR (MfAA). Between 1960/61 he was temporarily head of the representation or designated ambassador of the GDR in Conakry , Guinea . The exchange of ambassadors between the GDR and Guinea, which had been granted independence two years earlier, triggered a diplomatic crisis between Bonn and Conakry: In line with the Hallstein Doctrine , the Federal Republic of Germany broke off economic and diplomatic relations with a country if it did GDR diplomatically recognized. Guinea would have been the first non-socialist state to diplomatically recognize the GDR. After the GDR news agency ADN reported the exchange of ambassadors as a fait accompli , Federal Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano called in the Federal German Ambassador Herbert Schroeder temporarily. The Guinean President Ahmed Sekou Toure , however, declined in mid-March 1960 - not least due to pressure from Bonn and Washington - an accreditation Nohrs as ambassadors from. Nohr, who was already there, then returned to the GDR. From 1961 to 1963 Nohr was the GDR's ambassador in Hanoi , Democratic Republic of Vietnam .

From 1963 to 1968 Nohr was a research assistant at the trade union college "Fritz Heckert" in Bernau near Berlin .

literature

Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig : Biographical Handbook of the SBZ / GDR. 1945–1990 . Volume 2: Maassen - Zylla . KG Saur, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-598-11177-0 , p. 603.
William Glenn Gray: Germany's cold war: the global campaign to isolate East Germany, 1949-1969 . UNC Press, Chapell Hill 2003, ISBN 0-8078-2758-4 , pp. 110ff.
Andreas Herbst : Nohr, Karl . In: Dieter Dowe , Karlheinz Kuba, Manfred Wilke (Hrsg.): FDGB-Lexikon. Function, structure, cadre and development of a mass organization of the SED (1945–1990). Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86872-240-6 .
Bonn / Guinea - The elephant . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1960, pp. 15-23 ( online ).
"Everyone makes mistakes" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1960, pp. 16 ( online - interview between the President of Guinea, Sekou Touré, and the Spiegel editor Bernt Engelmann ).

Individual evidence

↑ Fermersleben birth register in 1905 in the Magdeburg registry office
^ Ilona Schleicher: FDGB offensive in West Africa . In: Ulrich van der Heyden, Ilona Schleicher, Hans-Georg Schleicher (eds.): The GDR and Africa , Volume 2: Engaged for Africa . Lit, Münster 1994, ISBN 3-8258-2080-7 , pp. 82-93, here p. 83.

personal data
SURNAME	Nohr, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Nohr, Alwin Werner Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German politician (SED), trade unionist and diplomat, ambassador of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH	April 11, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH	Fermersleben
DATE OF DEATH	April 28, 1973
Place of death	Berlin

[1] Fermersleben birth register in 1905 in the Magdeburg registry office

[2] Ilona Schleicher: FDGB offensive in West Africa . In: Ulrich van der Heyden, Ilona Schleicher, Hans-Georg Schleicher (eds.): The GDR and Africa , Volume 2: Engaged for Africa . Lit, Münster 1994, ISBN 3-8258-2080-7 , pp. 82-93, here p. 83.