Reinhart von Eichborn

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Reinhart von Eichborn (born November 1, 1911 in Breslau ; † November 2, 1990 in Burscheid ) was a German lawyer, lexicographer and publisher. He was a witness in investigations into the Katyn massacre as well as the author of the "Great Eichborn", a German-English economic dictionary.

Life

Reinhart von Eichborn grew up as the son of a banker ( Bankhaus Eichborn & Co. ) in Wroclaw in wealthy circumstances. He was the great-grandson of the chess player Louis Eichborn from the noble Eichborn family . After graduating from high school, he studied law in Halle . One of his fellow students was the later resistance fighter Fabian von Schlabrendorff . Eichborn went to Oxford to study for a year . He completed his studies in Berlin.

With the beginning of the Second World War he was drafted as a reserve lieutenant in the 537 intelligence regiment. From the beginning of 1941 to March 1943 he headed the switchboard of the staff of the Army Group Center in Smolensk . Here he met Fabian von Schlabrendorff again. He supported this and Colonel Henning von Tresckow when they planned an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in Smolensk .

During the penultimate year of the war, von Eichborn, now a first lieutenant , served in the communications department of the Army High Command, where he worked with Erich Fellgiebel , Hitler's opponent, who was also from Breslau . He experienced the end of the war in Bavaria, where he made himself available to the US occupation forces as an interpreter in Starnberg .

As a lawyer with an excellent command of English, he became head of department at the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau , then a general representative of a Frankfurt private bank before he switched to industry as a legal expert. During all these years he worked on a German-Spanish and an English business dictionary. The latter saw numerous editions under the name "The Great Eichborn" and also appeared under license in Great Britain and the USA. He founded the Siebenpunkt-Verlag in Burscheid for his lexica.

Role in the Katyn case

In the summer of 1945, von Eichborn learned through a newspaper article that the former commander of the 537 intelligence regiment, Friedrich Ahrens, was named in the Soviet indictment for the first of the Nuremberg trials as responsible for the Katyn massacre. Eichborn succeeded in determining Ahrens' whereabouts. It was on his initiative that the German defense lawyers asked for witnesses to be questioned about the Katyn cause.

He himself was heard as a witness in Nuremberg, along with Ahrens and the then news leader of Army Group Center, Lieutenant General Eugen Oberhäuser. All three confirmed that, due to their position , they would have learned of a mass execution of Polish officers by the Wehrmacht or the SS , had there been such an order. However, the three former communications officers were unable to make any statements about the investigations into the mass graves of Katyn.

Von Eichborn as well as Ahrens and Oberhäuser repeated their statements in 1952 before an investigative committee of the US Congress under the leadership of the Democratic MP Ray J. Madden . The members of the Madden Commission had specially traveled to Frankfurt am Main to question the German witnesses .

Works

  • The Katyn case. Summary presentation. o. O. 1952 (unpublished manuscript)
  • Economic dictionary. English-German, German-English. 2 volumes. Düsseldorf 1967/68.
  • Economic dictionary. German Spanish. Spanish German. 2 volumes. Burscheid 1972/74.
  • Little Eichborn. Pocket dictionary of business language. English German. English German. Burscheid 1975.
  • The big Eichborn: economy, law, administration, traffic, colloquial language. German English. English German. 2 volumes. Düsseldorf 1981/82.
  • German dictionary: economics, law, administration, general. Cambridge 1983.
  • Business Spanish. 2 volumes. Düsseldorf 1990.
  • The language of our time. German-English, English-German. 4 volumes. Burscheid 1990-1996.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Katyń w Norymberdze , in: Gazeta Wyborcza , supplement: Ale historia, April 4, 2015, pp. 6-7.
  2. ^ The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg , July 1, 1946.
  3. ^ Biographical note in: Reinhart von Eichborn: Wirtschaftslexikon German-English . 3rd edition, Düsseldorf 1970.
  4. ↑ Karl-Heinz Janssen, Katyn: Fight against the lie, in: Die Zeit , July 22, 1988, p. 10.
  5. ^ Nuremberg Trial Proceedings. Vol. 17, 168th Day. Ed. Library of Congress. Washington 1947-1949, pp. 297-308.
  6. ^ Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff : Soldier in the downfall. Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 199.
  7. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre. US Government Printing Office Washington 1952 , Vol. V., pp. 1281-1286.
personal data
SURNAME Eichborn, Reinhart von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, lexicographer and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH November 2, 1990
Place of death Burscheid