Peter Pfeiffer (diplomat)

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Peter Hermann Joseph Maria Pfeiffer (born February 3, 1895 in Speyer ; † August 19, 1978 in Kraiburg am Inn ) was a German diplomat in the Weimar Republic , during the National Socialist period and in the Federal Republic of Germany , and President of the Goethe Institute .

Life

Peter Pfeiffer was born as the son of the Catholic district teacher Franz Xaver Pfeiffer and Anna Maria Barbara Bosch and had thirteen older siblings, including the politician Maximilian Pfeiffer (1875-1926), the archivist Albert Pfeiffer (1880-1948) and the politician Anton Pfeiffer ( 1888-1957).

After attending the seminar Model School and Humanistic Gymnasium in Speyer Pfeiffer began in 1914 in Munich , a law degree , which he after military service in World War I and British captivity in 1920 in Berlin continued. In 1922 he passed the first legal exam and in 1924, after completing his internship in the Bavarian judicial and administrative service, the second state exam. In December 1925, Pfeiffer was drafted into the Foreign Service and, after completing his training, was deployed in Prague , Moscow and Kharkov .

Before the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, Pfeiffer had belonged to the center ; on December 1, 1940, he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 8.128.186). From 1934 to 1938 he was Minister Counselor in Paris and then in Rome . In Tirana , which had been occupied by Italians since 1939 , he became consul general in November 1940 and diplomatically accompanied the Italian invasion of Greece . In the planning of the German occupation of the Soviet Union , Pfeiffer was envisaged as an envoy in the Moscow office. But first he was sent to the French colony of Algeria after the Greek surrender , where he re-established the consulate general in October 1941. There he was interned in the United States in November 1942 after the Allied conquest of Algeria , most recently in Staunton (Virginia) . Pfeiffer was able and wanted to return to the Greater German Reich in March 1944 as part of a diplomatic exchange and was deployed there again in the Paris embassy and, after the Allied invasion , in Berlin in the political department of the Foreign Office .

After the end of the war, Pfeiffer was interned in the US from October 1945 to September 1946, and on May 4, 1948, he was denazified by a court in Munich as "exonerated" . In 1946 he was a co-founder of the Baden Christian Social People's Party, which later became part of the CDU , but left it in protest against the alleged separatist policy of the South Baden state president Leo Wohleb .

After the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany , Pfeiffer was employed in the Federal Chancellery in November 1949 , from 1950 onwards he headed the training of candidates for the Foreign Service and set up a training academy in Speyer. When the Foreign Office was re-established in 1952, Pfeiffer became head of the personnel and administration department and in 1954 received the nominal rank of ambassador. A posting as permanent observer for the Federal Republic of Germany at the UN , planned for the same year, was withdrawn in view of domestic and foreign policy objections because of his membership in the NSDAP, as was the posting as ambassador to NATO in 1955 . In 1958 and 1960 he was head of the German delegation at the International Conference on the Law of the Sea in Geneva . After his retirement in 1960, he was President of the Goethe Institute from 1963 to 1971 .

Pfeiffer received the Great Federal Cross of Merit with Star in 1960 and the shoulder ribbon in 1970, and the Bavarian Order of Merit in 1968 .

literature

  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 3: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: L – R. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-71842-6 .
  • Walter J. Schütz : From the school of diplomacy. Contributions to foreign policy, law, culture, leadership. Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Peter Pfeiffer , Düsseldorf; Vienna: Econ-Verl. 1965
  • Steffen R. Kathe: Cultural policy at any price, the history of the Goethe Institute from 1951 to 1990 , Munich: Meidenbauer 2005

Web links

  • Peter H. Pfeiffer , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 40/1978 of September 25, 1978, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)
  • Hans Riesser in the files of the Reich Chancellery
  • UN OBSERVER: Tomatoes and Eggs , in: Der Spiegel , 13/1954
  • Final report of the Committee of Inquiry 47 of the Bundestag (first electoral period). He examined the employment practice of the federal government, which had been publicly accused of employing too many Nazis in the AA. Peter Pfeiffer was also featured there on pages 325–328.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Heinz Debus (Ed.): The State Archives Speyer . Publications of the Landesarchivverwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz, Volume 40, Koblenz 1987, ISBN 3-922018-54-8 . On Albert Pfeiffer and his brothers p. 31 f.
  2. ↑ Further references for Maximilian at AA and Spiegel, for Anton at Munzinger and Spiegel
  3. ↑ Files on German Foreign Policy, Series D: 1937–1941, Volume XII, 2, p. 801
  4. ^ Obituary in: DER SPIEGEL 35/1978
  5. ↑ FOREIGN OFFICE in: DER SPIEGEL 6/1955
  6. ↑ http://dipbt.bundestag.de/doc/btd/01/034/0103465.pdf
personal data
SURNAME Pfeiffer, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pfeiffer, Peter Hermann Joseph Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Speyer
DATE OF DEATH 19th August 1978
Place of death Kraiburg am Inn