Martin Schlimpert

Martin Schlimpert (born October 31, 1890 in Meißen ; † December 15, 1944 in Landshut ) was a German diplomat. Among other things, he was the special representative of the Foreign Office at the Franco-German Armistice Commission during the Second World War .

Life

After participating in the First World War and receiving his doctorate as Dr. jur. Schlimpert joined the Foreign Service. After passing the diplomatic-consular examination, he was sent to the German legation in Lisbon as legation secretary , where he began his service on February 5, 1923. In 1927 he moved to the German embassy in Washington DC as a legation counselor , of which he was a member until the early 1930s. In his next position he was used as a delegation counselor at the German embassy in Budapest , which he temporarily headed as chargé d'affaires. Otherwise he was the second man at this location under the envoy Hans Georg von Mackensen .

From 1939 to 1942 Schlimpert was a member of the German legation in Rio de Janeiro under Curt Prüfer .

After his return to Europe in May 1942, Schlimpert was appointed permanent special representative of the Foreign Office to the Franco-German Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden with the rank of envoy, which had been appointed after the German occupation of France in 1940. American war propaganda alleged that in this position he had suggested in September 1942 that women of French officers be arrested as hostages in the Loire Interieur department and, as a sanction for the fact that the French population had allegedly not shown the necessary understanding for the spirit of the 1940 armistice conditions, to be shot . According to the Federal Foreign Office , reports confirming the shooting of hostages are not known. If this had actually existed, this document would be known and published, the office announced.

The Wiesbaden Armistice Commission continued to exist even after the liberation of France in the summer of 1944, allegedly because the Nazi government wanted to express its will to regain the lost French territories, so that Schlimpert was still on his post in 1944 despite the Allied advance .

In February 1945, the American propaganda publication News for the Troops spread the false report that Schlimpert had been found stabbed to death in a hotel in January. According to records from the responsible hospital in Landshut and files from the Political Archives of the Foreign Office, he suffered a ruptured appendix and died of it in December 1944.

Fonts

• The neutrality of Belgium , Meissen 1919.

literature

• Foreign Office (Ed.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 , Vol. 4, Paderborn 2012, pp. 88 f.
• “German diplomat stabbed”, in: Nachrichten für die Truppe , Vol. 3 (= Issues 275–381), Issue of February 4, 1945, p. 79.
• Rewriting History: The Original and Revised World War II Diaries of Curt Prüfer, Nazi Diplomat , 1988.
• Reinhard R. Doerries: Diplomats and Agents. Intelligence Services in The History of German-American Relations , 2001.