Walter Eytan

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Walter Eytan (center) on February 24, 1949, as head of the Israeli delegation, when the ceasefire agreement was signed between Israel and Egypt. On his right is the Israeli chief of staff, General Yigal Yadin .

Walter Eytan (born July 24, 1910 in Munich as Walter Ettinghausen ; † May 23, 2001 in Jerusalem ) was an Israeli diplomat and is considered the father of the Israeli diplomatic service.

Walter Eytan was born in Munich in 1910 as Walter Ettinghausen as one of three children. During the First World War the family left Germany and went to Switzerland and soon in the United Kingdom , where Ettinghausen grew up. His father Maurice Ettinghausen owned a second-hand bookshop on Turl Street in Oxford .

Ettinghausen attended St Paul's School in London . One of his classmates here was Isaiah Berlin . He then studied at Queen's College at Oxford University , where from 1934 he taught medieval and modern German as a lecturer . After Hitler came to power in 1933, he helped emigrated German academics to settle in the UK. During the Second World War he was drafted in the summer of 1940 and after basic military training he was deployed to Bletchley Park .

After the war, Ettinghausen settled in the British Mandate Palestine in 1946 and acted as spokesman for the Jewish Agency . Shortly after arriving in Palestine, he took the name Eytan. In 1947 he founded a diplomatic school at the request of Moshe Sharets . After the establishment of the State of Israel, he became the first General Director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry . He held this office for the next ten years. Eytan was now the Israeli ambassador to France from 1960 to 1970 . In 1970 he returned to Jerusalem and became an advisor to the Foreign Minister. From 1972 to 1978 he served as chairman of the Israel Broadcasting Authority .

He spent his twilight years in Rechavia , a Jerusalem district. Eytan was married twice and had three children, two sons and a daughter.

Publications (selection)

  • Luther: Exegesis and Prose Style (1937)
  • The First Ten Years: diplomatic history of Israel (1958)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Eytan, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ettinghausen, Walter (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 2001
Place of death Jerusalem