Paul Graf Yorck von Wartenburg

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Hans Ludwig David Goetz Peter Paul Yorck von Wartenburg (* 26. January 1902 at Gut Klein-oil , district Oława , province of Silesia ; † 9. June 2002 in Neureichenau ) was the last inheriting commissioner on small oil lecturer Counselor First Class, Resistance fighter against National Socialism and first consul of the Federal Republic of Germany in France .

family

Paul Yorck was the eldest son of Heinrich Graf Yorck von Wartenburg (1861-1923) and his wife Sophie Freiin von Berlichingen (1872-1945). His great-great-grandfather was Field Marshal Ludwig Graf Yorck von Wartenburg . One of his nine siblings is Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg , who was involved in the preparation of the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 and who was executed in 1944 . Paul Yorck married the Reinhardt-Bühnen actress Else Eckersberg (1895–1989) on May 5, 1940 in Berlin . In 1950 he adopted his stepson Alexander Freiherr Schey von Koromla (1927–2012).

see also: Yorck von Wartenburg

Life

Paul Yorck grew up with his siblings on Klein-Öls, one of the largest estates in Silesia and the center of a humanistic educational culture that has been cultivated for generations. As a child he spoke and understood Latin and Greek fluently. At the age of 13 he went to the boarding school of the Roßleben monastery school and after graduating from high school he studied agriculture, philosophy and law at the universities of Göttingen , Geneva , Berlin and Bonn . He temporarily left the Corps Borussia Bonn , to which he had been a member since 1922, in October 1935 in protest that some old men had advised Jewish Corps brothers to voluntarily resign. York's decision led to the immediate dissolution of the Corps Borussia, which prevented the implementation of the Nuremberg Race Laws in this Corps.

After the death of his father, he had to break off his studies in order to dedicate himself as heir to the management of small oil with its seven secondary goods. Until 1945 he managed to keep the property undiminished despite the economically and politically difficult times. In May 1932, Paul Yorck became a member of the NSDAP in order to become politically active against an impending military dictatorship. He made Klein-Öls a meeting point for Silesian party celebrities and called Hitler a "genius" to his sister-in-law Marion Yorck . When he had to realize after the seizure of power and the events surrounding the Reichstag fire that the National Socialists were establishing a tyranny aimed at war and destruction and that the National Socialist image of man was incompatible with that of Christianity , he forced a party to withdraw from the party. As a member of the Confessing Church in Silesia , he was called to the Brotherhood Council, where oppressed pastors and people of Jewish origin found support in him. Paul Yorck hid people persecuted several times on Klein-Öls, and a Jewish family survived the Nazi regime in the castle.

As an officer in the Wehrmacht , he and his brothers refused to take the oath of leadership on Adolf Hitler when the army was sworn in . As an orderly officer of the 34th Infantry Division, Paul Yorck took part in the war against the Soviet Union . In December 1941, by intervening with the general staff officer in charge of Army Group Center , he prevented a retaliatory shooting of Russian civilians. After his brothers Hans (1909–1939) and Heinrich (1915–1942) had fallen, Paul Yorck was seriously wounded in 1943 and after a long stay in a hospital he returned to Klein-Öls as unfit for war, where he established connections with resistance groups.

After the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , he and his wife as well as his mother, sister-in-law and the unmarried sisters Dorothea and Irene were taken into kin custody. The requests for his release were rejected by the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler on the grounds that his opposition to National Socialism was on record. On September 23, 1944, he was transferred to the Gestapo department of the Berlin-Moabit prison. On January 27, 1945, he and other relatives of the July 20 conspirators were taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Initially housed in the camp's quarantine block, Paul Yorck was transferred to the infirmary with a high fever and was operated on by a Dutch inmate and medical student there for sinus ulceration. After the invasion of the Red Army , he was able to leave the concentration camp on April 25, 1945 .

Grave slab of Count Paul Yorck von Wartenburg and his wife in Jagsthausen

After the war he was one of the founding members of the CDU in Berlin and in 1945 took over the management of the Evangelical Aid Organization in the French occupation zone. In 1950 he moved to the World Council of Churches in Geneva , where he worked in the department for refugee issues and campaigned for the concerns of many persecuted by National Socialism, including Oskar Schindler . In 1953, Count Yorck joined the Foreign Office and was entrusted with the opening of the consulate in Lyon , which he headed for almost ten years as a respected and trustworthy representative of the Federal Republic of Germany. France honored him with the award of the order of officer of the French Legion of Honor . In 1964 he again did pioneering work in setting up and managing the German commercial agency in Bucharest . In September 1966 he returned to the headquarters of the Foreign Office and asked to be transferred to retirement.

From 1968 Count Yorck lived with his wife in a secluded life in Neureichenau in the Bavarian Forest . In 1971 he brought out a collection of his speeches and essays under the title Reflection and Decision .

Paul Yorck died in Neureichenau in 2002 at the age of 100 and was buried in the grave of the Barons von Berlichingen in the Jagsthausen cemetery.

Works

  • Reflection and decision. Questions to the present: essays etc. Lectures. Vorwerk, Stuttgart 1971.

literature

  • Günter Brakelmann : Peter Yorck von Wartenburg: 1904 - 1944. A biography. CH Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63019-4 .
  • Günter Brakelmann: The Kreisauers. Consequential encounters. Biographical sketches for Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, Carlo Mierendorff and Theodor Haubach. Publication series of the Research Association July 20, 1944 eV Volume 4.
  • Günter letter (ed.): Christian democrats against Hitler. Freiburg, Basel, Vienna 2003.
  • Series of publications by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation . Vol. 5: Winfried Meyer (Ed.): Conspirators in the concentration camp. Edition Hentrich 1999.
  • Joachim Ringelnatz : The Complete Works in Seven Volumes. Vol. 6: My life until the war. Zurich 1989, pp. 275-299.
  • Marion Countess Yorck von Wartenburg : The strength of silence. Munich 1984.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Frédérique Dantonel: Paul Yorck von Wartenburg, in: Biographic-bibliographic church encyclopedia , Vol. XXXII, Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2011 Sp 1585 to 1588..
  2. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility , vol. 77: Graefliche Häuser, vol. X, Starke, Limburg / Lahn 1981, p. 504.
  3. ↑ Detlef Graf von Schwerin: "Then it's the best minds you have". The young generation in the German resistance, Munich and Zurich 1991, pp. 73–74.
personal data
SURNAME Yorck von Wartenburg, Paul Graf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Count Yorck von Wartenburg, Hans Ludwig David Götz Peter Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat, resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Klein Oels , District of Ohlau , Province of Silesia
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 2002
Place of death Neureichenau