Richard Meyer (diplomat)

Richard Meyer von Achenbach (born October 28, 1883 in Kassel , † August 2, 1956 in Stockholm ) was a German diplomat .

Live and act

Meyer was born in Kassel in 1883 as the son of the Jewish senior government councilor Paul Meyer and his wife Helene Speyer. After studying law , which he completed with a Dr. jur. graduated, Meyer entered the diplomatic service in 1913, while still in the empire , and was employed as a low-ranking diplomat at several German diplomatic missions abroad.

He experienced the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 as an attaché at the German mission in Beijing . Then he succeeded in adventurous detours - he traveled for four months under a false name as a coal digger on a Norwegian merchant ship - to undermine the British blockade and surveillance of the access routes to Europe and to return home. Participation in the First World War followed. During the war he achieved the rank of officer, earned the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class, but also lost his right leg (1917).

In September 1917 he returned to the Foreign Office (since July with the rank of Legation Secretary ), where he was employed in the Politics department. In November 1918 he moved to the diplomatic mission of the Reich in Warsaw , returned to Berlin in December to be a member of the German peace delegation in Versailles in February 1919 .

During the Weimar Republic , Meyer was mainly used as a German envoy abroad. His ambassadorships corresponded to today's ambassadorial posts (at that time only nine German highest representatives in other countries held the title of ambassador, which was reserved for representatives of "great powers"). His activities took him to Paris , Brussels and Rome (April 1922 to August 1925, from January 1923 in the rank of counselor of the embassy) and finally as envoy for Paraguay to Asunción (May 1926 to July 1930).

This was followed by activities in the Western Europe Department of the Foreign Office (until February 1931), where he was responsible for the business of “conductor” and in Department IV (Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, East Asia). In this he was from February 1931 deputy head with responsibility for the Middle East and Scandinavia (from March 1931 as a lecturer in the Legation Council ). In August 1931 Meyer was appointed ministerial director and head of the Eastern Department. In this function he was primarily entrusted with the supervision and coordination of the activities of the Foreign Service with regard to the two largest Eastern European neighbors of the Reich, the Soviet Union and Poland . Because of his impulsive, slightly uplifting manner, his colleagues and employees referred to him as the "rocket richard".

In August 1933 he married Marina von Achenbach, with whom he had two children, Alexis-Riachard (* 1934) and Carla Marina (* 1936). As a result of the marriage, he changed his name to Meyer von Achenbach on June 28, 1943.

Despite his Jewish descent, Meyer was able to keep his post as head of the Eastern Department for a good two years after the Nazis came to power in 1933 and the following anti-Jewish laws and administrative regulations. In December 1935 he was retired in accordance with Section 3 of the Reich Citizenship Act and Section 4 of the 1st Ordinance on the Reich Citizenship Act of November 14, 1935. In August 1939 he emigrated to Sweden . In November 1941, according to the 11th ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Act, citizens were expatriated in Germany.

In March 1952 he was given the title of ambassador a. D. according to the law regulating the reparation of National Socialist injustices for members of the public service dated May 11, 1951.

In the early 1950s he wrote a memorandum on behalf of the Foreign Office in Bonn on the possibilities of German foreign policy in the East, which dealt in particular with the question of the most appropriate policy towards the Soviet Union. Since Meyer's proposals - taking a neutral position between the western and the eastern bloc system, waving between the two groups, pursuing an independent course - ran counter to the policy of the then Chancellor Adenauer , which sought unconditional reference to the West, especially the United States, his memorandum, which was considered "explosive", disappeared for a few decades in the vaults of the Foreign Office. It was not until the 1980s, after the usual blocking period of thirty years for state documents , that this was made available to the public in book form with the help of Meyer's close friend Marion Countess Dönhoff .

His sister Else Meyer (born March 4, 1882–1968) was deported to Theresienstadt on April 7, 1944 as a widowed Countess Else von Schlitz , where she survived. The brother Alex Meyer was an aerial skipper and aviator and was removed from civil service in Düsseldorf by the National Socialists as a senior government councilor.

Works

• Richard Meyer von Achenbach: Thoughts on a constructive German Ostpolitik: a suppressed memorandum from 1953. Ed. By Julius H. Schoeps. Frankfurt / Main: Athenaeum, 1986. ISBN 3-7610-8414-5 .

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 .

Web links

• biographical data in the Federal Archives
• Literature by and about Richard Meyer in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans-Otto Meissner: Young Years in the Reich President's Palace , 1988, p. 385.
2. ↑ Erich Kordt: Not from the files , 1950, p. 28.
3. ↑ see brief biographical information on Else, Alex and Richard Meyer at Ghetto Theresienstadt ; see also the nephew Albrecht Graf von Goertz