Vollrath from Maltzan

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Vollrath von Maltzan, Freiherr zu Wartenburg and Penzlin (born December 22, 1899 in Berlin ; † November 22, 1967 in Wiesbaden ) was a German diplomat who, in 1953, was the first German civil servant to be awarded a medal by the head of state of a former enemy state after the Second World War by the President of Brazil Getúlio Vargas with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross . Most recently he was ambassador to France between 1955 and 1958 .

Life

Studies and beginning of the diplomatic career

Von Maltzan, whose father Vollrath Levin von Maltzan captain and later owner of a manor in Odratzheim was and had already died at age 57, entered after visiting the school in Strasbourg during the First World War in the army and made there until the end of the war his military service . He then began to study law at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin and the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and in 1922 received his doctorate as Dr. iur. with a dissertation on the usufruct of shares . After completing the state examination , he became a court assessor in Berlin.

In 1925 von Maltzan joined the foreign service and after completing his preparatory service in 1927, he became secretary to Reich Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann during the Conference of the League of Nations in Geneva . He was then employed at the legation in Poland between 1928 and 1929 and at the embassy in France from 1929 to 1933 , before he was a legation adviser in the economic department of the Foreign Office in Berlin between 1933 and 1938 .

Dismissal from the foreign service and IG Farben

In 1938 von Maltzan was retired "for racial reasons" and because of "Jewish infiltration". The decisive factor in this was the Jewish descent of his mother, who was arrested by the Secret State Police in 1942 together with von Maltzan's sister . According to the Nuremberg Race Laws, he was considered a "1st degree hybrid"

After his discharge from the Foreign Office, he had accepted a position at IG Farben in Berlin, but shortly afterwards was again employed in the Foreign Office on a provisional basis. His new position, including as assistant to Karl Ritter , who at the beginning of the war was entrusted with the management of all tasks related to the economic war in the Foreign Office and until 1945 in the rank of ambassador z. b. V. was the liaison between Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW). During this time he dealt in 1940 with Hilger van Scherpenberg , who was head of the Northern Europe division as legation counselor in the economic department of the Foreign Office, with questions of the supply of raw materials from Scandinavia and with negotiations on a German- Danish economic, customs and trade - and financial agreements. He held this position from the beginning of the Second World War until May 1942.

Then he was again an employee of IG Farben as a consultant for export issues in the central administration. Attempts by Maltzans to save relatives who are threatened because of his position only succeeded to a limited extent: his mother apparently died shortly before her deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp , his sister survived the war in a concentration camp .

Post-war period and activities in the bizone

After leaving IG Farben in January 1946, he worked for a short time in the Ministry of Economics and Transport in Greater Hesse , before becoming the representative of the State Council of the American Occupation Area for interzonal and foreign trade based in Stuttgart on August 1, 1946 . He held this position until September 30, 1946. As such, he was responsible for the maintenance and promotion of trade between the American zone of occupation and the other zones as well as with foreign countries and also supervised the Berlin Representation of the Economic Council of the State Council. He was succeeded in this function in November 1946 by Eduard Gümbel .

In December 1946 he took up a job in the administrative office for economy in the emerging bizone. There he worked at the side of Friedrich Leopold Freiherr von Fürstenberg , the head of the press department of the administrative office for economy, before he became head of the department for foreign trade in this administrative office in 1948 with the rank of ministerial director. In this position, he brought numerous former diplomats from the Foreign Office to his department from 1949 and entrusted them with important foreign trade policy tasks. These employees included Helmut Allardt (later ambassador to Indonesia , Spain and the Soviet Union ), Hans Kroll (later ambassador to Yugoslavia , Japan and the Soviet Union), Friedrich von Lupine , Carl-Hermann Mueller-Graaf , the first ambassador to Austria after the end of the war was, Wolfgang Seeliger , Rolf Otto Lahr (Ambassador to Italy and the European Community and State Secretary in the Foreign Office) and Hilger van Scherpenberg, who was also State Secretary in the Foreign Office and most recently Ambassador to the Holy See .

As head of the foreign trade department of the Bizone, von Maltzan informed the Vice President of the Economic Council of the United Economic Area , Gustav Dahrendorf , on March 30, 1948 , about the extortionate machinations of the Rohstoff-Waren-Kompensation Handelsgesellschaft (ROWAK), which had already taken place during the National Socialism of many had been used as a significant political burden abroad. He spoke out against a revival of this company, as this counterpart of the HISMA operating in Spain during the Spanish Civil War should be regarded as the typical exponent of the National Socialist regime.

Ministerial Director in the Federal Ministry of Economics

Federal Minister of Economics Ludwig Erhard , whose most important advisor on foreign trade issues was Vollrath von Maltzan between 1949 and 1953

After the central administration of the Bizone in Frankfurt am Main was dissolved, its predecessor, Main Department V, headed by him, was transferred to the Federal Ministry of Economics in January 1950 . He headed Department V, which is responsible for foreign trade , until he was replaced by Hermann Reinhardt in 1953.

During his work in the Federal Ministry of Economics, he was one of the closest employees of Federal Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard , but also worked with Roland Risse , who also worked in the Federal Ministry of Economics, and Karl Albrecht , who was head of the foreign trade department of the Reichsgruppe Industrie during the Second World War and between 1949 and 1949 1953 Ministerialdirektor in the Federal Ministry for Affairs of the Marshall Plan . In the fall of 1950 he held talks with the head of the human resources and administration department of the Foreign Affairs Office, Wilhelm Haas , and the State Secretaries Walter Hallstein and Eduard Schalfejew in order to define the details of the delimitation of competencies in the field of foreign trade and between the controversial foreign trade departments.

In this function he was head of a German delegation in September 1952, which led contract negotiations on trade relations with Spain. He also held talks with the Spanish delegation under the leadership of the head of the presidential chancellery, Luis Carrero Blanco , about the property problem, which, however, did not meet with approval from the Spanish side. During his activity the establishment of the Eastern Committee of the German Economy also fell .

In January 1953, von Maltzan was the first German civil servant to be awarded a medal by the head of state of a former enemy state after the Second World War , namely by the President of Brazil Getúlio Vargas with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross . The award recognized his services as head of a trade mission that initialed the German-Brazilian trade agreement and as chairman of a German-Brazilian special commission to regulate the German-Brazilian exchange of goods.

As one of Erhard's closest collaborators in matters of foreign trade policy, von Maltzan was one of the co-authors of the book Germany's Return to the World Market, published by Ludwig Erhard, alongside the cofounder of the Handelsblatt , Herbert Gross .

Ministerial Director in the Foreign Office and Ambassador to France

At the beginning of 1953, von Maltzan moved with a larger group of employees to the new Foreign Office, where he became Head of the Department of Trade Policy as Ministerial Director. At the same time he was chairman of the inter-ministerial trade policy committee (cabinet committee for economy) from 1951, while his deputy was his successor as head of the foreign trade department of the Federal Ministry of Economics, ministerial director Hermann Reinhardt. On December 1, 1953, he was awarded the rank of ambassador.

Adenauer's return on September 14, 1955 after the Federal Chancellor 's trip to Moscow, which Vollrath von Maltzan helped to prepare, at Cologne-Wahn airport

In 1955 Maltzan, who was also awarded the Grand Cross of Merit with a star in 1955 , succeeded Wilhelm Hausenstein as ambassador to France and held this position until he retired in 1958. Herbert Blankenhorn , the previous ambassador to NATO , then became new Ambassador to France. His successor as head of the trade policy department in the Foreign Office was then Hilger van Scherpenberg . Three weeks after taking office in Paris, preparations for Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's trip to Moscow in September 1955 began through him and the Soviet Ambassador Vinogradov on June 7 , 1955.

As ambassador in Paris, he was not only committed to promoting Franco-German trade relations, but also prepared the first visit of Federal President Theodor Heuss to France in 1956 .

During his tenure as ambassador to Paris, he intervened against the participation of the documentary Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard) directed by Alain Resnais in the competition for the Palme d'Or at the 1956 Cannes International Film Festival . The film was about the so-called night and fog action of the Nazi state , in which people suspected of the resistance disappeared without a trace and were secretly deported to the concentration camps of the Third Reich . Von Maltzan justified the German objection by stating that “only films may be shown that do not offend the national feelings of another people or that do not impair the peaceful coexistence of peoples.” At the request of the Foreign Ministry and the French Ministry of Industry and Trade, the film was released actually withdrawn from the competition, but shown outside of the competition after protests in Cannes .

Publications

  • Usage of shares , 1923
  • Germany's return to the world market , publisher Ludwig Erhard with the collaboration of Herbert Gross , Düsseldorf 1953
  • Industry in the struggle for the world market , Deutsche Industrieverlagsgesellschaft, Cologne 1954

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary notice of Vollrath Levin von Maltzan in the Vossische Zeitung , January 3, 1921 , accessed on November 24, 2017.
  2. ^ Bernhard Löffler: Social market economy and administrative practice: The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard , 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 , p. 191
  3. ^ Paul Seabury, The Wilhelmstrasse. The history of German diplomacy 1930–1945 , Nest, Frankfurt 1956 (English 1954), p. 247 dnb
  4. ^ Bernhard Löffler: Social market economy and administrative practice: The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard , 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 , p. 178
  5. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past: German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic of Germany , pp. 359, 418
  6. ^ Walter Vogel: West Germany 1945–1950: the establishment of constitutional and administrative institutions over the countries of the three western zones of occupation , Volume 2 , 1956, ISBN 3-7646-1888-4 , p. 50
  7. ^ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past: German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic of Germany , p. 359
  8. ^ Bernhard Löffler: Social market economy and administrative practice: The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard , 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 , p. 168
  9. ↑ Beer talks: Spelling wrong . In: Der Spiegel (12/1949)
  10. ↑ Birgit Aschmann: Treue Freunde ...?: West Germany and Spain 1945 to 1963 , 1999, ISBN 3-515-07579-8 , p. 119
  11. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past: German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic of Germany , p. 463
  12. ^ Bernhard Löffler: Social market economy and administrative practice: The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard , 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 , p. 236
  13. ^ Bernhard Löffler: Social market economy and administrative practice: The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard , 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 , p. 57
  14. ^ Bernhard Löffler: Social market economy and administrative practice: The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard , 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 , p. 423
  15. ↑ Birgit Aschmann: Treue Freunde ...?: West Germany and Spain 1945 to 1963 , 1999, ISBN 3-515-07579-8 , p. 173
  16. ↑ Diplomats of the Economy - Reading sample: 60 years of the Eastern Committee of the German Economy: an interim balance sheet ( memento of the original dated November 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ost-ausschuss.de
  17. ^ Vollrath Freiherr von Maltzan . In: Der Spiegel (2/1953)
  18. ^ Bernhard Löffler: Social market economy and administrative practice: The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard , 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 , p. 279
  19. ^ Bernhard Löffler: Social market economy and administrative practice: The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard , 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 , p. 420
  20. ^ Cabinet Committee on Economics 1951–1953
  21. ^ Cabinet Committee on Economics 1954–1955
  22. ^ Bernhard Löffler: Social market economy and administrative practice: The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard , 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 , p. 423
  23. ^ Mechthild Lindemann, Hans-Peter Schwarz: Files on the foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany: July 1 to December 31, 1953 , 2001, ISBN 3-486-56560-5 , p. 1185 with additional information
  24. ^ Vollrath Freiherr von Maltzan . In: Der Spiegel (5/1955)
  25. ^ Bernhard Löffler: Social market economy and administrative practice: The Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Erhard , 2002, ISBN 3-515-07940-8 , p. 429
  26. ↑ Adenauer's Moscow trip in 1955 (Homepage of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation ; PDF; 68 kB)
  27. ^ Maltzan activity . In: Die Zeit of November 8, 1956
  28. ^ Mareike König, Wolf D. Gruner, Matthias Schulz: The Federal Republic of Germany and European Unification, 1949-2000. Political Actors, Social Forces and International Experiences , 2004, ISBN 3-515-08465-7 , p. 74
  29. ↑ Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz: Lexicon of “Coping with the Past” in Germany: Debate and Discourse History of National Socialism after 1945 , 2007, ISBN 3-89942-773-4 , p. 117 f.
personal data
SURNAME Maltzan, Vollrath of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maltzan Freiherr zu Wartenburg and Penzlin, Vollrath von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, administrative officer and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 1967
Place of death Wiesbaden