Karl Schnurre

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Karl Schnurre (born November 24, 1898 in Marburg , † September 29, 1990 in Bonn ) was a German diplomat and lawyer .

Live and act

After studying law , Schnurre first worked as a Prussian district judge and attaché at the German- British mixed arbitration tribunal in London . On January 2, 1928, he was appointed to the Foreign Office in Berlin . On August 16, 1930 he came to the German embassy in Budapest , where he remained until 1936, from March 5 of the same year in the rank of Legation Council II class.

On August 1, 1935, he joined the NSDAP . On April 20, 1936, Schnurre took over a leading position in the trade policy department of the Foreign Office. On June 9, 1936, he was promoted to the lecturing councilor, and on March 11, 1940, he was finally promoted to Ministerial Conductor to Envoy First Class. Further promotion steps were the appointment as acting and on September 28, 1944 the appointment as the actual head of the trade policy department as the successor of Emil Wiehl.

Hitler-Stalin Pact

In the summer of 1939 Schnurre had negotiated secretly with the head of the Soviet trade agency in Berlin, Barbarin, about the German-Soviet economic agreement, which was signed on August 19, 1939 and which represented a decisive step towards the so-called Hitler-Stalin Pact . On August 23 and 24, 1939, Schnurre accompanied Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to Moscow to conclude the pact and later remained responsible for economic negotiations with the USSR until 1941.

Trade agreements

On September 23, 1943, Albert Speer and Schnurre negotiated with the Vichy Minister Jean Bichelonne about production orders to be carried out by France, which was willing to collaborate . In 1944/1945 he was head of the German delegation for negotiations with Switzerland and involved in the gold transactions for looted gold . He had brought his wife and daughter to safety on the Swiss border in Säckingen before the bombing .

Nuremberg Trials

At the end of the war, Schnurre made himself available to the government of Karl Dönitz in Flensburg - Mürwik , where he was arrested and interned in May 1945. After his release on May 1, 1947, Schnurre appeared as a witness at the Wilhelmstrasse Trial in Nuremberg , where he testified both in favor of State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker and in favor of his long-time boss, Ambassador Karl Ritter , that both diplomats were convicted.

After the war Schnurre worked in industry as managing director of the Association of German Oil Mills and wrote an autobiography in 1986 - four years before his death - which has not yet been published.

Works

  • From an eventful life. Cheerful and serious. , Godesberg 1986. Estate unpublished, quoted by Niels Joeres: The Architect of Rapallo. The German diplomat Ago von Maltzan in the German Empire and in the early Weimar Republic . Dissertation, Heidelberg 2006. p. 21 ( PDF )

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nestler, Ludwig [ed.]: The fascist occupation policy in France. - Berlin: Dt. Verl. D. Knowledge , 1990 ISBN 3-326-00297-1 , Doc. 193, pp. 283f.
  2. ↑ Martin Meier, Stefan Frech, Thomas Gees, Blaise Kropf: Swiss Foreign Economic Policy 1930–1948. Structures - Negotiations - Functions , 2002 ISBN 978-3-0340-0610-1 ( Online )
  3. ↑ Switzerland and the gold transactions in World War II. Interim report. 2002, passim
  4. ↑ Switzerland and the gold transactions in World War II. Interim report. 2002, p. 195.
personal data
SURNAME Schnurre, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Marburg
DATE OF DEATH September 29, 1990
Place of death Bonn