Peter Hermes

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Peter Hermes 1977

Peter Hermes (born August 8, 1922 in Berlin-Dahlem ; † October 14, 2015 in Bonn ) was a German diplomat and, among other things, State Secretary in the Foreign Office .

Life

Hermes was the second oldest of five children of the Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture (1920-1922), Reich Minister of Finance (1922-1923), member of the Prussian Landtag (1924-1928), member of the Reichstag (1928-1933) as well as the Center and later CDU politician Andreas Hermes and his wife Anna. After his father was arrested by the National Socialists in 1933, he first moved to live with an aunt in Osnabrück , and his siblings followed later. His parents had to emigrate and lived in Colombia from 1936 to 1939. The family did not get back together in Bad Godesberg until 1939 .

Shortly after graduating from high school in 1940, Peter Hermes was committed to the Reich Labor Service in East Prussia . From September 1940 to March 1941 he studied law and economics in Munich and from April to July 1941 in Vienna. He was involved in Catholic student communities. In September 1941, when he was 19 years old, he was called up and deployed as an anti-aircraft soldier in Rendsburg in Holstein. It was used in Vienna and, from summer 1942, in northern France. In the winter of 1942/43 Hermes was relocated to Russia. In 1944 he was at his father's resistance and its proximity to the circle of participation due bombers July 20, 1944 in a penal battalion staggered and fell in 1945 in Soviet captivity . After the end of the war, his father Andreas Hermes, as the founding chairman of the CDU in the Soviet occupation zone, was pressured by the Soviets to lead the CDU to the political line of the so-called bloc parties with the possibility of his son being dismissed . Andreas Hermes did not bow to this pressure from the Soviets and moved to the West; his son Peter Hermes remained in Soviet captivity in various Russian camps until 1950.

Just one week after his return from five years of Soviet captivity, Peter Hermes began studying law at the University of Bonn. In 1951 he passed the state examination, 1952, he was with the thesis "The South Tyrolean autonomy, as a contribution to minority rights" to Dr. iur doctorate. In 1955 the assessor exam took place.

In 1955 he entered the diplomatic service . This was followed by foreign assignments in the legal department of the Consulate General in San Francisco (1956-1958), as first secretary in the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Holy See (1958-1961) and as head of the department for trade and agricultural policy and fisheries in the organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) in Paris (1961–1965). As an expert in foreign economic relations, Hermes became deputy head of the department for economic relations with the West with special responsibility for the USA and Canada (1965-1970), then commissioner for trade contract negotiations (1970-1973), and finally head of the department for foreign economic policy, development policy and European economic integration (1973 -1975).

In 1975, Hans-Dietrich Genscher took him to the Bonn headquarters of the Foreign Ministry as State Secretary with responsibility for economic, legal and cultural issues, succeeding Hans-Georg Sachs . In 1979 he was appointed Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Washington , USA. There he honored the organizer of the Berlin Airlift , William H. Tunner , with the Great Federal Cross of Merit with a star in 1982 . The Catholic ended his diplomatic career from August 1984 to 1987 as Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Holy See .

After retiring, he became a member of the Commission for Contemporary History as well as deputy chairman of the Theodor Wiegand Society. Society of Friends of the German Archaeological Institute , of which he was chairman until 2002. Peter Hermes was an honorary member of the German Archaeological Institute .

Peter Hermes was born in 1955 with Maria Hermes. Wirmer, a daughter of the resistance fighter Josef Wirmer , married; there are six children from the marriage.

Honors

Fonts

  • South Tyrolean autonomy (1952)
  • The Christian Democratic Union and Land Reform in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany in 1945 (1963)
  • Socialism or people's party. Andreas Hermes and the founding of the CDU in Berlin in 1945 (Die Politische Demokratie, 25/1980)
  • German diplomatic missions to the Holy See (1984)
  • Hostage in captivity (Die Politische Freiheit, 40/1995)
  • Retrospectives and Insights 1933–1950 (1996)
  • Merging and moderation. Andreas Hermes (1878 to 2003) on his 125th birthday (Die Politische Demokratie, 48/2003)
  • My contemporary history 1922–1987 (2007)
  • The maintenance of peace and German foreign policy; Jenninger, Philipp [Hrsg.] Alois Mertes to remember: Speeches and obituaries.Kevelaer: Butzon and Bercker, 1986. ISBN 3766694987

Web links

Commons : Peter Hermes  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)
  2. ↑ Honorary Degrees Recipients-Alphabetical , UNL, accessed on October 22, 2015 (English)
predecessor Office successor
Berndt from Staden German Ambassador to the United States
1979–1984 		Günther van Well
Walter Gehlhoff German ambassador to the Holy See
1984–1987 		Paul Verbeek
personal data
SURNAME Hermes, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Dahlem
DATE OF DEATH October 14, 2015
Place of death Bonn