Ulrich Sahm (diplomat)

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Ulrich Sahm (center) at a reception in the Office of the Federal President

Ulrich Sahm (born October 13, 1917 in Bochum ; † August 22, 2005 in Bodenwerder ) was one of the leading diplomats in the Foreign Service of the Federal Republic of Germany and ambassador in Moscow , Ankara and Geneva .

Life

Sahm was born in Bochum in 1917 as the son of the later Senate President of the Free City of Danzig and the Lord Mayor of Berlin Heinrich Sahm (1877–1939) and Dora Rolffs (1883–1964), grew up in Danzig and later lived in Berlin as his father from 1931 to 1935 was an independent mayor of Berlin. On the advice of his father, he became a member of the NSDAP in 1938 as a law student .

In the war year 1941 he received his doctorate from the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg with the political science doctoral thesis perpetration and participation in Norwegian criminal law and in the German criminal law reform. In 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo in the wake of the failed putsch of July 20, 1944 and imprisoned for a week in the Potsdam police prison; he was accused of participating in collaboration with his brother-in-law Ulrich-Wilhelm Graf Schwerin (1902–1944).

In 1951 he joined the diplomatic service after a brief period in the Federal Ministry of Economics. He worked at the embassy in London and later on the Paris NATO embassy. In 1966 he became head of the East subdivision of the Political Department of the Foreign Office and in 1969 head of the Federal Chancellery .

Under the Willy Brandt government , he was one of the leading contributors to foreign, German and defense policy in the Chancellery. In this function he was the first Federal German civil servant to hold official talks with the GDR . From 1972 to 1977 he was the successor to Helmut Allardt's ambassador to Moscow and played a key role in Brandt's "Eastern Policy".

From 1977 to 1979 he was ambassador to Ankara , then to the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva until his retirement in 1982 .

With his book about the life of Rudolf von Scheliha , Sahm referred to the fate of various diplomats from the Nazi era and their widows. With the “Krapf case”, this was one of the triggers for the “uprising” of about 70 employees of the Foreign Office against Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, which manifested itself in a semi-public letter campaign in 2004/2005 .

Sahm was married to Insea Hohlt, the former abbess of the Mariensee Monastery , and later to Christiane von Alten. He had seven children, including the Middle East correspondent Ulrich W. Sahm .

Honors

literature

  • Ulrich Sahm: The Schuman Plan: Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community ; Publisher commentator Frankfurt am Main 1951, DNB 999396846
  • Heinrich Sahm, Ulrich Sahm: Memories from my Danzig years 1919–1930 ; Herder : Freiburg im Breisgau | Freiburg i. Br. 1955, DNB 454254881 . Marburg / Lahn: Johann Gottfried Herder Institute, 1958; DNB 36455682X
  • Ulrich Sahm: Diplomats are no good. From the life of a state servant , autobiography, Droste-Verlag: Düsseldorf 1994; ISBN 3770010337
  • Ulrich Sahm: Rudolf von Scheliha 1897–1942. A German diplomat against Hitler , CH Beck Verlag : München 1996; ISBN 3406347053

See also

Web links
predecessor Office successor
By fisherman Permanent representative of Germany to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva
1979–1982 		Hans Arnold
personal data
SURNAME Sahm, Ulrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat and ambassador
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Bochum
DATE OF DEATH August 22, 2005
Place of death Bodenwerder