Werner Junker

Werner Junker (born November 5, 1902 in Kiel , † January 3, 1990 in Bad Kissingen ) was a German ambassador .

Life

Werner Junker studied law and political science in Freiburg, Königsberg and Kiel and graduated in 1924 with the first state examination in law. That same year he became a doctor of law doctorate . After two years of commercial activity in Shanghai , he joined the foreign service in 1927 and passed the diplomatic-consular examination on December 21, 1929.

From September 1, 1930 he was employed in Department III (British Empire, America, Orient) of the Foreign Office in Wilhelmstrasse (Berlin-Mitte) . On February 28, 1931, he was appointed envoy in Beijing, but was an attaché in Vienna from 1931 to 1933 . When he took up service from April 11, 1933 to March 13, 1935 and from July 14 to October 26, 1934, he was paid as a temporary job with the personal representative of the envoy in Nanking. On May 26, 1934, he was promoted to legation secretary. Junker joined the NSDAP in 1935 ( membership number 27,621). On March 15, 1935, he took up service at the Consulate General in Shanghai . Until November 12, 1935, his duties are described as temporary employment. On November 13, 1935, he started work at the embassy in Nanking , where he was press manager of the NSDAP / AO in China until April 20, 1937 . On September 6, 1937, he was appointed to the Foreign Office, where he was employed in the commercial policy department on November 29, 1937. From spring 1938 to January 1, 1941 he was employed in the economic policy department of Section III / Southeast Europe (Italy, Middle East). From November 27, 1939 he headed Unit IVb Italy including colonies, Ethiopia, Albania and Romania. On April 20, 1939 he was promoted to Legation Councilor and on May 8, 1941 to Legation Councilor, first class. On December 14, 1943, he was promoted to lecturing councilor in the trade policy department. From 21 December 1943 to 8 May 1945 as he was an employee at the Special Commissioner of the Foreign Ministry for the Southeast in Belgrade , Hermann Neubacher operates.

Nothing is known about its denazification . From 1945 to 1947 his résumé identified him as a forest worker. From 1947 to 1951 he was employed as a consultant in the Senate Chancellery of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg. In 1951 he was hired by the Foreign Office and in 1956 he was entrusted with the management of subdivision 41, Commercial Relations with Foreign States .

In July 1956 Junker succeeded the then ambassador to Argentina, Hermann Terdenge . Here he campaigned for representatives of the German Nazi state who had fled to Argentina .

The family of the former head of the " Judenreferat " Adolf Eichmann issued the embassy under Junker with valid German passports and withheld this fact from the Bonn headquarters. He had also ignored the information received from the Cologne Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 1958 that Eichmann had gone into hiding in Argentina.

In August 1958, he also campaigned for federal German government agencies to stop the extradition proceedings against the former German diplomat Karl Klingenfuß, who lived in Argentina .

Junker reported in a letter on November 29, 1961 in detail, from hearsay about the Nazi propagandist Willem Sassen who had fled to Argentina . The author of the chapter The Past as a Foreign Policy Challenge in The Office and the Past, German Diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , concludes from the tone and content of the letter “that Junker was quite familiar with the circumstances of Sassen and certainly with him sympathized ”.

In 1962, the Stuttgart public prosecutor approached Junker in the case of former ghetto and camp commandant Josef Schwammberger with the request to check information about his stay in Argentina. Junker could not officially track down Schwammberger (although he knew the whereabouts) and gave arguments against extradition.

From 1963 to 1967 he was the German ambassador to South Africa.

literature

• Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 2: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: G – K. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X .
• Daniel Stahl: Nazi Hunt. South America's dictatorships and the prosecution of Nazi crimes (= contributions to the history of the 20th century. 15). Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1112-1 (also: Jena, University, dissertation, 2012).

Web links

Portrait of Werner Junker

Individual evidence

1. ^ Helmut Heiber: files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-486-51801-1 , p. 677 ( digitized version )
2. ↑ Brown Book. Diplomats Ribbentrops in the Foreign Service Bonn. ( Memento from November 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) National Council of the National Front of Democratic Germany, Documentation Center of the State Archive Administration of the GDR, State Publishing House of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1968
3. ↑ Daniel Stahl: Nazi Hunt: South America's Dictatorships and the Punishment of Nazi Crimes . Wallstein Verlag, 2013, ISBN 3-83532-425-X , p. 176.
4. ^ Federal Archives, Ministerial Officials
5. ↑ ^{a b} Entry Werner Junker In: Munzinger-Archiv , accessed on May 15, 2019.
6. ^ Werner Renz: Interests around Eichmann: Israeli justice, German prosecution and old comradeships. Campus Verlag, 2012, ISBN 3-59339-750-1 , p. 208.
7. ↑ Daniel Stahl: Nazi Hunt: South America's Dictatorships and the Punishment of Nazi Crimes . Wallstein Verlag, 2013, ISBN 3-83532-425-X , p. 397.
8. ^ Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes (historian) and Moshe Zimmermann : The office and the past - German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. P. 608
9. ↑ Oliver Schröm, Andrea Röpke: Silent help for brown comrades: the secret network of old and neo-Nazis . Ch. Links Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-86153-266-2 , p. 98.
10. ↑ Daniel Stahl: Nazi Hunt: South America's Dictatorships and the Punishment of Nazi Crimes . Wallstein Verlag, 2013, ISBN 3-83532-425-X , p. 399.

predecessor	Office	successor
Hermann Terdenge	German ambassador in Buenos Aires 1956–1963	Ernst-Günther Mohr
Karl Overbeck	German ambassador in Pretoria 1963–1967	Gustav Adolf Sonnenhol