Stauffer-Dönhoff controversy

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The Stauffer-Dönhoff controversy is a dispute between historians and those affected, the starting point of which is two books by the Swiss diplomat and historian Paul Stauffer and which primarily relates to two controversial points, namely on the one hand the truthfulness and authenticity of statements and writings by the Swiss and ICRC diplomat and historical writer Carl Jacob Burckhardt , so above all in his book Meine Danziger Mission , on the other hand to read a document in Burckhardt's memorabilia , which Burckhardt claims to have sent to the later publicist Marion Countess Dönhoff as early as 1938 and that she was an early part of Resistance to the National Socialist regime "authenticated" (Stauffer: "Resistance Certificate" and "Credentials").

Up to his 100th birthday, Carl Jacob Burckhardt was a much admired figure of light in Switzerland and Germany. His memories of his work as the League of Nations High Commissioner in the Free City of Danzig from 1937 to 1939 under the title My Danzig Mission , published in 1960, had become much-cited historical sources. In 1954 he had received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (the keynote speaker was Federal President Theodor Heuss ).

In 1985 Dönhoff had assured Stauffer in a letter that he had seen the document in 1971, that is to say, with a delay of over thirty years. Burckhardt wrote the letter in 1938, but withheld it for fear of the Gestapo censorship. Only in connection with the award of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade to Dönhoff (1971) did he “make the document available” to her. Furthermore, she had stated that she had already had "resistant" contact with Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg during Burckhardt's time in Danzig (1937–39) .

In his book (1998), Stauffer explains that in the extensive literature on the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, there was no evidence of any contacts between Dönhoff and Count Stauffenberg and that the conspiratorial activities of Hitler's assassin Claus von Stauffenberg had been shown not to begin until 1943.

Although she herself portrayed the course of events at the time, Dönhoff later claimed that it was an invention of the “forger” Stauffer. Later she had stated in another version that she had read Burckhardt's letter for the first time in a commemorative publication in 1969.

According to the representation in Alice Schwarzer's Dönhoff biography A Resistant Life (1996), her letter to Burckhardt did reach Burckhardt in the winter of 1938 "in a roundabout way". In accordance with the sender's request, she immediately destroyed the original after reading it as a precautionary measure. Another (not named) Swiss diplomat - according to Stauffer a "product of Dönhoff's ingenuity" - had kept a copy of the document on behalf of Burckhardt, so that the contents of the letter allegedly destroyed in 1938 could be saved in 1971.

Stauffer accused Dönhoff, like Burckhardt, of having worked on their own self-stylization and self-glorification (Dönhoff: "It is not the facts that are decisive, but the idea that people have of the facts.")

Even Fritz J. Raddatz , who until 1985 literary editor of the time , was tossed in his memoirs troublemakers before his long-time boss, they have just "busy quietly as the veil of Selbstmythisierung" woven. After all, the Germans, from Alice Schwarzer to former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Rudolf Augstein, fell for the self-transfiguration and assigned the Zeit editor to the “circle of anti-fascist resistance”. Theo Sommer , former editor-in-chief and also co-editor of Die Zeit , then stated that it was “completely indecent” from Raddatz to accuse Dönhoff that she “had wrongly presented herself as a resistance fighter”.

literature

  • Paul Stauffer: Carl Jakob Burckhardt - Between Hofmannsthal and Hitler. Facets of an Extraordinary Existence , 1991.
  • Paul Stauffer: "Six terrible years ...". In the footsteps of Carl Jakob Burckhardt through the Second World War , 1998.
  • Marion Countess Dönhoff: For the sake of honor. Memories of the friends of July 20th . Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-88680-532-8 (first edition), ISBN 3-442-72009-5 (paperback edition).
  • Eckart Conze : Revolt of the Prussian nobility. Marion Countess Dönhoff and the image of the resistance against National Socialism in the Federal Republic of Germany . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , volume 51, issue 4. R. Oldenbourg, Munich 2003 ( PDF ).
  • Rainer Blasius : The forger and the lady. Carl J. Burckhardt's "Documents" and the resistance of Countess Dönhoff . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 3, 1999.