Walter Truckenbrodt

Walter Truckenbrodt (born December 19, 1914 in Hermsdorf; † May 1, 1999 in Bonn ) was a German lawyer during the Nazi era and diplomat in the Federal Republic of Germany , who was last ambassador to Venezuela between 1969 and 1973 .

Life

Studies and PhD

After attending school, Truckenbrodt began studying law at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin . There he joined his 1940 promotion to Dr. jur. with a dissertation entitled Germany and the League of Nations. The handling of Reich German affairs in the League of Nations from 1920-1939 .

In this dissertation, published in 1941 in the series of publications of the German Institute for Foreign Policy Research , Truckenbrodt defended the thesis that in the course of developments after 1918 it was not the German Reich but the League of Nations that did wrong and thus forced the Germans to rearmament and go to war. He criticized the attitude of the League of Nations in the interwar period , e.g. As the referendum in Eupen-Malmedy (1920), justified the occupation of the Saarland in 1935 and the invasion of the Wehrmacht into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936 ( occupation of the Rhineland ) and the annexation of Austria to the German Reich . He accused the League of Nations for one-sidedness in the implementation of the Peace Treaty of Versailles . He was responsible for the fact that “(it) came to a life and death struggle between the greatest peoples of Europe”. The author postulated to make an “objective judgment about the real causes of the current struggle”: This war is a “German struggle for freedom”. The Laval government in France had protested against a new German air force and the reintroduction of conscription in March 1935 . Truckenbrodt regretted that 16 of the 17 responsible states in the League of Nations criticized the breach of the Versailles Peace Treaty . The German rearmament was "self-help", the League of Nations had not given the right to criticize it. Then he was a court assessor in the district of the higher regional court of Celle .

Diplomat in the Federal Republic of Germany

After the end of the war, Truckenbrodt worked as a court assessor and later as a research assistant at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg after denazification by decision of the public plaintiff in Göttingen on December 3, 1948 . In 1948 he published his German translation of the United Nations Charter together with Wilhelm Grewe . He then worked from 1950 to 1951 in the Ministry of Finance of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and then from 1951 to 1953 as personal assistant to the City of Essen's chief city director , Hellmuth Greinert .

In 1953 Truckenbrodt joined the higher foreign service of the Federal Republic of Germany and was initially head of the peace settlement section in the legal department of the Foreign Office in Bonn until 1957 and then, after his promotion to lecturer first class, between 1957 and 1959 head of the German delegation for the negotiations of the NATO troop statute . After completing this function, he was given leave of absence in 1959 and then served as Deputy Executive Secretary in the NATO General Secretariat . Subsequently, between 1962 and 1963, he worked at the permanent representation at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris and, after his return, from 1963 to 1964 on the planning staff of the Foreign Office, before becoming ministerial conductor between 1965 and 1969 Deputy Head of the Legal Department of the Foreign Office. In this function, on August 5, 1968, he submitted a revised draft of a declaration by the Three Powers on the relationship between the State of Berlin to the federal government to the State Secretary in the Foreign Office, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, and noted:

"The version now available takes into account, in particular, the wishes that the representative of the Federal Chancellery put forward on the basis of personal instructions from the Federal Chancellor."

Truckenbrodt last became ambassador to Venezuela in 1969 . During a state visit by Federal President Gustav Heinemann in the spring of 1971 , he explained about his work as ambassador to Venezuela :

“There are two German ambassadors here. One of them is the representative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation , and President Rafael Caldera always receives him . I am the other. And I am happy when I am admitted to his place. "

He held this post until he left the diplomatic service prematurely in 1973 in protest against the signing of the Basic Treaty . His successor on December 7, 1973 was Rudolf Spang , the previous head of the human resources department at the Foreign Office.

From 1991 to 1993 Truckenbrodt represented the right-wing conservative German Social Union (DSU) in an unsuccessful election review procedure before the Federal Constitutional Court as its lawyer. In 1992 he gave a speech to the Hamburg- based State and Economic Political Society , an association that is also close to the right-wing conservative spectrum.

Publications

• Germany and the League of Nations. The handling of Reich German affairs in the League of Nations from 1920-1939 , dissertation University of Berlin, Essen publishing house, Essen 1941
• The statutes of the United Nations: With the preparatory documents and the statute of the International Court of Justice , co-editor Wilhelm Grewe , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1948
• Reunification instead of reunification? A critical word on the situation in Germany , Hamburg 1980

literature

• Gideon Botsch: "Political Science" in World War II. The “German Foreign Studies” in action 1940–1945 , Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-506-71358-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Truckenbrodt in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography in the Federal Archives (page accessed on November 1, 2017)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Truckenbrodt 1941, quotations from the foreword.
2. ↑ Truckenbrodt 1941, p. 170
3. ^ Walter Truckenbrodt: Germany and the League of Nations. The handling of Reich German affairs in the League of Nations from 1920-1939. Ed. Fritz Berber , Publications of the German Institute for Foreign Policy Research , Volume 9, Essen 1941
4. ↑ ^{a b} Hinrich Rüping : Lawyers in the Celle district during National Socialism . BWV Verlag, 2010, p. 193, ISBN 3-8305-1735-1 ( limited preview in Google book search, accessed on June 20, 2017).
5. ↑ Personal details . 2nd cabinet meeting on November 7, 1957 (Federal Archives). Retrieved June 20, 2017.
6. ↑ 46th cabinet meeting on December 8, 1958 (Federal Archives). Retrieved June 20, 2017.
7. ↑ Conclusion of the negotiations on the supplementary agreements to the NATO troop statute. 46th cabinet meeting on December 8, 1958 (Federal Archives). Retrieved June 20, 2017.
8. ^ Mechthild Lindemann, Matthias Peter: 1968 . Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 1999, ISBN 3-486-71819-3 , p. 976 ( limited preview in Google book search, accessed on June 20, 2017).
9. ↑ Josef Foschepoth : Monitored Germany. Post and telephone surveillance in the old Federal Republic . 4th, through Edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-525-30041-1 , p. 194 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
10. ^ Occupation of German missions abroad. 168th Cabinet meeting on June 4, 1969 (Federal Archives). Retrieved June 20, 2017.
11. ↑ HEINEMANN TRAVEL: Bolivar's aid . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1971 ( online ).
12. ↑ Decision in the electoral review procedure of the Federal Constitutional Court, decision of November 23, 1993, 2 BvC 15/91 (BVerfGE 89, 291), rubrum. Retrieved June 20, 2017.
13. ^ André Freudenberg: Freedom-conservative small parties in reunified Germany . Engelsdorfer Verlag, 2013, ISBN 3-86901-393-1 ( limited preview in Google book search, accessed on June 20, 2017).
14. ^ State and Economic Political Society: Lecture events . Retrieved October 30, 2013.
15. ^ State and economic society. An honorable society In: Alliance no foot width to the fascists (ed.): Antifascist information. Right-wing organizations in Hamburg , number 1, June 2, 1995.