Kurt Brunhoff

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Kurt Brunhoff (born September 7, 1900 in Kiel , † June 15, 1986 in Sydney ) was a German diplomat during the National Socialist era and in the Federal Republic of Germany .

Life

The son of the military doctor Heinrich Brunhoff attended the humanistic high school in Kiel and Potsdam . His stepfather was the naval attachée Hans Humann . From August 1918 he was a soldier and after the German surrender went to the Reinhard Brigade . He completed his law studies at the Universities of Königsberg , Tübingen and Berlin in 1924 with the trainee exam. Since 1921 he was a member of the Corps Rhenania Tübingen . After various voluntary activities in Berlin and in the United States , he was drafted into the Foreign Service in 1927 .

After completing his training, he came to the German Embassy in Moscow in 1930 and was Legation Secretary in the Embassy in Stockholm from 1932 to 1940 . There he joined the NSDAP on October 1, 1934 , and in 1937 became organizational leader of the NSDAP / AO in Sweden . In January 1940, back at the headquarters in Berlin, he headed the Scandinavia Department and the Soviet Union / General Government Department and quickly rose to the rank of Legation Councilor, 1st class. Through his marriage to Viktoria von Tiedemann in April 1942, he deepened his social relations with the Prussian nobility.

On September 3, 1942, he was transferred to the embassy to the allied Hungary in Budapest . In Budapest he also held a position as head of the legal office in the national group of the NSDAP / AO. Until the beginning of 1944 Dietrich von Jagow was the ambassador there, after the German occupation of Hungary Edmund Veesenmayer was appointed "Plenipotentiary of the Greater German Empire in Hungary". As of April 1944, was Eichmann command with support from the Hungarian authorities and the German Embassy here, 400,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz to deport . On June 12, 1944, Brunhoff, as a press attaché, told a representative of the Arrow Cross Party, which was still powerless, “that a foundation should be established from Jewish assets to increase workers' wages in order to alleviate social tensions”. On June 16, 1944, the Sztójay government burned 447,627 books by Jewish authors in the presence of Brunhoff. After the coup d'état carried out by the Arrow Cross members in October 1944, which was supported by the Germans, the Budapest Jews were to be deported to Germany for forced labor. Due to the war, this was only partially carried out.

Nothing is known about internment after the end of the war or about his denazification ; in his memoirs (1983), Brunnhoff did not mention the multi-year deployment in Hungary, although it is on record at the Foreign Office and has been published. From October 1945 Brunhoff was employed by an industrial company in Aach (Hegau) as an interpreter and their representative for the occupation authorities.

From 1949 onwards again in the public service, Brunhoff returned to the foreign service in April 1952 and went to Vancouver as consul . From 1958 until his retirement in 1965 he was consul general in Sydney under the ambassadors Hans Mühlenfeld and Joachim Friedrich Ritter . Until 1975 he was still a lecturer for the German language at the University of Sydney .

Fonts

  • Australia: Travel guide with regional studies , 6th, completely new. u. exp. Edition by Hans W. Luyken. Lim. by Kurt Brunhoff, Frankfurt am Main: Mais Travel Guide-Verlag 1984 ISBN 3-87936-117-7 .
  • Note on the margin . Coogee ( Randwick City ), 1983

literature

  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 1: Johannes Hürter : A – F. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2000, ISBN 3-506-71840-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1996, 133 , 837
  2. ↑ Brunhoff quoted in: Christian Gerlach , Götz Aly : The last chapter. Realpolitik, ideology and the murder of the Hungarian Jews. DVA, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-421-05505-X , p. 199
  3. ^ René Geoffroy: Hungary as a place of refuge and place of work for German-speaking emigrants (1933–1938 / 39) . Frankfurt am Main: Lang 2001, p. 265 (there as Brunnhoff)
  4. ↑ Christian Gerlach, Götz Aly: The last chapter. Realpolitik, ideology and the murder of the Hungarian Jews. DVA, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-421-05505-X , p. 199, fn. 249
personal data
SURNAME Brunhoff, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH 7th September 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiel
DATE OF DEATH June 15, 1986
Place of death Sydney