Sigismund von Braun

Sigismund Freiherr von Braun receives the Turkish President Celâl Bayar on a state visit, May 9, 1958.

Sigismund Freiherr von Braun (born April 14, 1911 in Zehlendorf near Berlin ; † July 13, 1998 in Bonn ) was a German diplomat and State Secretary in the Foreign Office (1970–1972).

Life

Sigismund Freiherr von Braun was the eldest son of the East Prussian landowner and later Reich Food Minister Magnus Freiherr von Braun and the Emmy von Quistorp. He was the older brother of the rocket researchers Wernher and Magnus von Braun , and the father of the politician Carola von Braun and the cultural scientist Christina von Braun .

He attended school in Gumbinnen in East Prussia and later the French grammar school in Berlin , where he graduated from high school in 1929. After an apprenticeship in a bank, he studied law, went to Cincinnati (USA) for a year in 1934 with the help of a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service and then went on a world tour (Japan, China, Malaya, India, etc.). In 1936 he joined the Foreign Service as an attaché. Since April 1937 he was the personal assistant to the German ambassador in Paris Johannes von Welczeck , but was transferred to Addis Ababa in September due to a dispute with Baldur von Schirach . On October 1, 1939, he joined the NSDAP . In 1940 he married Hildegard Beck-Margis (1915–2001), and five children were born from the marriage. In 1943 he took up his post as secretary of the legation at the embassy to the Holy See in Rome, where he remained until 1946.

In the course of the denazification process , he was classified as “exonerated” despite party membership, as he “supported clerical and other agencies at great personal risk in concealing religious, political and racial persecution and preventing their deportation”. After internment in Germany, he worked temporarily in the private sector, then as an assistant in several Nuremberg trials , such as the Wilhelmstrasse trial against Ernst von Weizsäcker , and finally as an employee of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1954 he joined the diplomatic service of the Federal Republic of Germany and was among other things chief of protocol at the Foreign Office. The urbane, quick-witted and charming master of the balancing act showed his negotiating skills in a wide variety of positions: from 1962 to 1968 as permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, from 1968 to 1970 and 1972 to 1976 as German ambassador to France and from 1970 to 1972 as State Secretary in the Foreign Office under Federal Foreign Minister Walter Scheel . Since 1956 he was a member of the FDP .

Awards

• 1962: Large gold medal with the star for services to the Republic of Austria

Publications

• France and Germany in view of the European elections; Lecture held at the invitation of the Ostpreußenblatt and the Staats- und Wirtschaftspolitische Gesellschaft e. V. Hamburg on May 16, 1979 in Hamburg / Sigismund Freiherr von Braun. - Hamburg: Staats- und Wirtschaftspolitische Gesellschaft, 1979. - 16 pages - (Small swg series; H. 17)
• Sigismund von Braun: Fleeting guests. On a world tour 1933–1935. Haag + Herchen, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 978-3-89228-980-7

literature

• Christina von Braun : Silent Mail. Another family story. Propylaen-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-549-07314-8 .
• Jobst etiquette : the ambassador and the pope. Weizsäcker and Pius XII. The German Vatican Embassy 1943–1945. Publishing house Dr. Kovac, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8300-3467-4 .
• Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 1: Johannes Hürter : A – F. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2000, ISBN 3-506-71840-1 .

Web links

Commons : Sigismund von Braun  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Sigismund von Braun in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.munzinger.de/search/portrait/sigismund+freiherr+von+braun/0/8267.html
2. ↑ http://www.quistorp.de/Quistorpia/QuistorpCrenzowerZweig.pdf
3. ↑ Quoted from: Christina von Braun: Stille Post. Another family story. List Taschenbuch, Berlin 2008, p. 357, ISBN 978-3-548-60810-5 .
4. ^ DIED: Sigismund von Braun . In: Der Spiegel . No. 30 , 1998 ( online ).
5. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)

predecessor	Office	successor
Karl Heinrich Knappstein	Head of the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United Nations 1962 - 1968	Alexander Böker

predecessor	Office	successor
Manfred Klaiber Hans Helmuth Ruete	Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in France 1968 - 1970 1972 - 1976	Hans Helmuth Ruete Axel Herbst