Walter Franz Schleser

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Photo of Walter Fr. Schleser from his last diplomatic card, issued in 1989 by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs

Walter Franz Schleser (born October 25, 1930 in Bölten , Czechoslovakia ) is a former German diplomat . Before that he was the leading representative of the displaced German student body.

Life

Schleser was born as the son of the dairy owner Franz Schleser. From 1936 to 1949 he was a student in Bölten, Neutitschein , Vienna , Bruchsal and Büdingen . The school days were interrupted in 1945 by the use of Schanz with the Hitler Youth , Soviet captivity and expulsion . After graduating from high school, he studied in Marburg , Frankfurt am Main and Bonn . During his studies he worked as a student trainee (molding sand tester, civil engineering worker, bank clerk and assistant editor of the “Guide to Displaced Persons”).

In 1953 he married Johanna Perl from Karlsbad in Frankfurt am Main . He has been widowed since 2016 and has two sons.

Representation of the displaced German student body

In 1950, Schleser was co-founder and managing director, later chairman and honorary chairman of the Association of Displaced German Students (from 1954: Association of Displaced German Students ) , which had around 6,000 members in the 1950s . During this time, Schleser was also a co-founder and board member of the student education center in Bad Homburg vd H. as well as co-founder and chairman of the Friends of East German Academics (FOA) .

Foreign service

Even before completing his studies, Schleser joined the Foreign Service of the Federal Republic of Germany on November 4, 1952 . Until the end of 1993 he worked alternately in Bonn and Vienna .

Until 1959 he was a clerk for citizenship law (StAR) and military law in Bonn's central office, and from 1956 he was deputy chairman of the staff council . He also imparted basic knowledge of German citizenship law to the consular officers who have been transferred abroad. In 1956 he initiated the Association of Foreign Service Employees (VAAD) eV, which he later led, with its own newsletter. In "pre-Internet times", this was an important link to the homeland, also because of brief domestic political reports.

From 1959 to 1971, Schleser worked in the consular department of the embassy in Vienna, then until 1977 as a personnel officer in the head office a. a. with the additional task of putting the foreign language collective agreement of November 19, 1969 into practice and grouping several hundred employees in accordance with the collective agreement. In 1976/77 he was also chairman of the Foreign Service section of the ÖTV trade union .

From 1977 to 1981, Schleser was a social attaché in Austria, then head of the “Resettlement Working Group” at headquarters until 1989 and head of the legal and consular department at the Vienna Embassy from 1989 until he retired on January 1, 1994.

During his service hours in Bonn, Schleser also gave classes in citizenship law to civil servant candidates in the middle and senior foreign service in the training and further education facility of the Foreign Office in Bonn (now: Academy Foreign Service in Berlin). In the 1960s he worked in Vienna with the naturalization of displaced German people and advised Germans from the "Oder-Neisse areas" who wanted to visit relatives in the federal territory or want to flee there. In 1968 he advised Czechs and Slovaks who were on vacation in the free West for the first time in Vienna, who did not want to return to their homeland after the fall of the Prague Spring , but wanted to be accepted and work in the federal territory.

From 1977 to 1981, Schleser employed in Vienna as a social attaché and notified Embassy in cooperation with the social speakers of parliamentary factions, the Minister of Social Affairs and the social partners, in particular the exchange of information on legislation in the labor and social sectors.

Russian-German resettlement applicants in front of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Moscow, Bolshaya Grusinskaya Street 17, in early September 1988

In 1986, as the head of the "Resettlement Working Group" in the legal department of the Foreign Office in Bonn, Schleser led expert discussions on questions of family reunification and the resettlement of Germans with delegates from the ČSSR , Poland , Romania and the USSR at the CSCE expert meeting on human contacts in Bern and at the 3rd . CSCE -Folgetreffen in Vienna in 1987 ( see also free purchase of Romanian Germans ).

GDR refugees seeking help in front of the Consulate of the Federal Republic of Germany in Budapest, Nogradi utca 8, in July 1989

In 1988/1989 he was a member of the German-Soviet working group for cooperation on humanitarian issues. He took part in bilateral talks in Bonn and Moscow for the purpose of promoting exit applications, but also of measures to preserve the German nationality of the Russian Germans . When war broke out in 1941, they were deported to the Far East of the USSR and were only able to transmit their German language orally.

In July 1989, Schleser was seconded as a consul from Vienna to Budapest to advise Germans from the GDR . Subsequently, as head of the legal and consular department of the Vienna Embassy, ​​in particular with the Austrian Red Cross and the Malteser Hospitaldienst Austria, he was responsible for the care and forwarding of refugees from the GDR , around 6500 of whom had fled from Hungary to Austria. After the opening of the Hungarian border on September 11, 1989, more than 55,000 refugees were added. The date of the border opening roughly corresponded to the advance notice of the Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Németh at his secret meeting with Federal Chancellor Dr. Kohl at Gymnich Castle near Bonn at the end of August.

Honors

Overview:

  • 1954 Honorary Chairman of the Association of Expellees and Refugee German Students (VHDS)
  • Certificates of honor from the Federation of Expellees (1965), the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft (1968), the Heimatlandschaft Kuhländchen (1980), the Austrian Black Cross [War Graves Commission] (1979)
  • Certificates of thanks from the Federal Foreign Minister , with which he expressed gratitude and appreciation for the loyal service rendered to the German people in 1977 and 1992 on the occasion of the completion of the 25th and 40th year of service, respectively. 159 days of work in the entrenchments and Soviet captivity in 1945 were counted as service time.
  • 1971: Silver Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria
  • 1981: Great Gold Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria
  • 1990: Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany

Fonts (selection)

Photo of the 4 editions 1955 (without the additions 1956, 1957 and 1971), 1975, 1976 and 1980 of the work "The German Citizenship"
  • German citizenship . 4. revised u. additional edition, 438 pages, Verlag für Standesamtwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-8019-5603-2 .
  • 15 in '45. Memories of a Sudeten German. Vienna 2004 - see: members.aon.at/boelten/links:(Schicksalsjahr 1945).
  • Repatriation, resettlement and family reunification of Germans from Eastern and Southeastern Europe. In: Königsteiner Studies , Book I a. II 1984, pp. 89-112. See DNB 1005054207
  • On the long way to German unity. GDR refugees in Hungary and Austria before a peaceful revolution in their homeland. A contemporary witness report on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Vienna 2009. DNB 1005053863

Web links

literature

  • Beyond the Elbe and Oder - 10 years of VHDS. Erlangen 1960, DNB 1007247614 .
  • Fate of displacement. Commemorative book for the sponsorship of the municipality of Höchst i. Odw. With the communities of the parish of Bölten / Ostsudeten. 2nd edition, 1988, ISBN 3-924388-03-2 . Under “Deserved Citizens”: Walter Fr.Schleser, pp. 138/139.
  • Deutscher Ostdienst (DOD) , Bonn, No. 19 of May 11, 1990, DNB 010082999 (acknowledgment by the BdV President Herbert Czaja ).
  • Walter Schleser on his 85th birthday. In: Alte Heimat Kuhländchen . Announcements of the association of home-loyal cooler dealers , 68th year, episode 5, 2015, pp. 438–439 ( online ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ More details from chairman Erhard W. Appelius in the commemorative publication Jenseits von Elbe und Oder - 10 years VHDS. Erlangen 1960, p. 102 f. On the observation of the FOA by the state security of the GDR Rainer Eckert, in: Georg G. Iggers (ed.): The GDR historical science as a research problem. Supplement 27, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1998, p. 100, DNB 953811913 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Letters of thanks and appreciation from the Austrian Minister for Social Affairs Gerhard Weißenberg and the Austrian Federal Chamber of Commerce are attached to Walter Fr. Schleser: 15 in '45. Memories of a Sudeten German. Vienna 2004, p. 76 f., Http://d-nb.info/1008613266 . See also the reports on the farewell from Vienna in the Sudetenpost in Linz in volume 11 of June 4, 1981, p. 2 ( PDF ) and - identical - under “Bölten” in the Alte Heimat 1981, p. 42/43 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Repatriation, resettlement and family reunification of Germans from Eastern and Southeastern Europe. In: Königsteiner Studies, Book I a. II 1984, pp. 89-112, DNB 1005054207 .
  4. ^ See resettler admission procedure of the Federal Administration Office in Cologne; Monthly and annual statistics on (late) repatriates admitted .
  5. ↑ In 1988 in Moscow, Schleser informally informed the participating former Soviet consul in Vienna about the autonomous Jewish national raion Birobidzhan with the suggestion that the re-establishment of such national raion, which would allow state subsidies, also for Germans should be considered. For further positive developments, see, for example, the article on the history of the German National Rajon Halbstadt in the Altai region. See also the article about the visit of the former Parliamentary State Secretary Hartmut Koschyk to the Deutsches Nationalrajon Asowo in the Omsk region at https://www.koschyk.de/international/koschyk-besucht-deutschen-nationalrayon-asowo-und-das-aelteste- deutsche-dorf-in-sibirien-alexandrowka-25114.html and regarding the oldest German village in Siberia, Alexandrowka: https://siedlung.rusdeutsch.ru/de/Siedlungsorte/45?c=1 . Https://www.aussiedlerbeauftragter.de/AUSB/DE/Themen/deutsche-minderheiten/deutsche-minderheiten-gus/deutsche-minderheiten-gus_node.html provides information on German funding / support since the 1990s (by BMI and BVA Cologne) V. The consensual funding in the Russian Federation is based on a German-Russian protocol for the gradual restoration of statehood of Russian-Germans from 1992 and a German-Russian agreement on cultural cooperation of December 16, 1992.
  6. ↑ See at https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/uebersicht/199290 the websites of the German embassies Budapest, Prague and Warsaw and there information about the care of GDR refugees in 1989. With regard to Braies see also the recording by the then ambassador Hermann Huber on "GDR refugees in the embassy 1989" at https://prag.diplo.de/blob/1306460/0020956963f201c763d685c779036d46/erinnerungen----huber-data.pdf Reference is also made to the article refugee trains Prague and the article 13 words that heralded the end of the GDR in: DER TAGESSPIEGEL from April 1, 2016 as well as the 18-part documentary (TV Movie 2014) "Train to Freedom" by Sebastian Dehnhardt and Matthias Schmidt on Youtube
  7. ^ Walter Fr. Schleser: On the long way to German unity. GDR refugees in Hungary and Austria before a peaceful revolution in their homeland . A contemporary witness report on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Vienna 2009, DNB 1005053863 .
  8. ^ Appendices to Walter Fr. Schleser: 15 in '45. Memories of a Sudeten German. Vienna 2004, DNB 1008613266 .
  9. ↑ With a map booklet about the former German settlement areas in Eastern Europe and information about the former German resident population there. In addition, on page 430, reference is made to ten other publications on citizenship law by Walter Fr. Schleser. The 4th edition contains 2 articles by Alfred Heinzel (BMI), especially for registrars in training he has instructed . See DNB 810177404 . Schleser defined citizenship in 1976 and 1980 as follows: " One German citizenship entitles and obliges in accordance with the law, contains a protection and loyalty relationship, connects the citizens of a nation in divided Germany." Reviews (copies from the publisher's brochure)
personal data
SURNAME Schleser, Walter Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Boelten , Czechoslovakia