Kurt Goepel

Kurt Goepel , also Kurt Göpel (born February 2, 1901 in Berlin , † July 5, 1966 in Wiesbaden ) was a German science functionary in the DAAD in the Weimar Republic and during the National Socialist era .

Goepel attended the Lessing-Gymnasium in Berlin and studied political science in Berlin and Giessen, where he received his doctorate. Among other things, he dealt with the homecoming camps of German expellees (until 1923) from the areas ceded to Poland in 1919. In 1926 he was first employed at the Foreign Ministry, in December of that year as an employee and finally managing director of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and an employee of the DAAD. He supervised many students from different nations, including the French Pierre Bertaux and the Croat Mladen Lorković . His salary came from the German Commission for Intellectual Cooperationand the Foreign Ministry under Gustav Stresemann , which was interested in international scientific integration. In addition, Goepel was chairman of the Central Office for Student League Work in Germany , the German branch of the International University League in Brussels. The German cooperation was intended to help overcome the isolation among the powers. Finally he was one of the leading functionaries of the student university groups of the DVP and greatly admired the chairman Stresemann. In 1928 he became a member of the party executive. In 1930, after the DVP crisis, he became a member of the more left-wing liberal German State Party . In his mind he moved along the lines of the youth movement , modern criticism of civilization and the state, as well as the belief in an elite as a renewer of culture after the First World War.

With the change of power in 1933 Goepel left the DAAD briefly in April, but remained in the Foreign Ministry. Finally he became an employee of the German Commission under the head of the DAAD managing director Adolf Morsbach . There he organized the German contribution to the International Museum Conference in Madrid in 1934. When Morsbach was removed from office in the summer of 1934, Goepel took over a position as a speaker after recommending himself through an essay on national cultural policy. In 1937 he joined the NSDAP (membership number 5.386.212). He was also the managing director of the Humboldt Foundation again until 1945. Various offices came into conflict over foreign cultural relations, and the bombed office in Berlin was relocated to Salzburg .

From there Goepel fled to Berchtesgaden in 1945 , where he became a farm worker. In 1948 he was denazified as a follower and moved with his wife to Wiesbaden, where both ran a textile business with great success. During the reconstruction of the DAAD and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Goepel was brought in as a consultant in Bonn, but was not reinstated.

Fonts

• Editor of the journal of the DAAD University and Abroad. Monthly for Science and Cultural Life, 1930 to 1945 (articles, reviews)
• The refugee movement from the areas of Poznan and West Prussia ceded as a result of the Versailles Treaty and their significance for the German economy, dissertation Gießen 1924

literature

• Holger Impekoven: The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Foreign Studies in Germany 1925–1945: From »Silent Propaganda« to Training the »Spiritual Defense« of »New Europe« , Bonn University Press, Göttingen 2013 ISBN 978-3899718690
• Jochen Oltmer : Migration and Politics in the Weimar Republic, Göttingen 2005 ISBN 978-3525362822 (with evaluation of the dissertation)