Werner Schmidt (diplomat)

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Werner Schmidt (also Werner Schmidt-Pretoria ; born September 26, 1902 in Erfurt , † 1978 in Lans (Tyrol) ) was a German legation councilor and author of racist writings on South Africa during the National Socialist era . After the Second World War he worked as a private scholar and author of books on countries in southern Africa .

Life

Professional background

Werner Schmidt was the son of the chief inspector and general agent Friedrich Schmidt and his wife Emma, ​​née Jödecke. He attended the Realgymnasium in Erfurt , obtained his Abitur there in 1920 and then completed a teaching degree at the Pedagogical Academy in Erfurt and the University of Jena , which he graduated with the state examination in 1925. From 1925 to 1932 he worked in the school department of the regional council of the Erfurt administrative district of the Prussian province of Saxony in Erfurt. Meanwhile he was on behalf of the Foreign Office in South West Africa from 1928 to 1932 and prepared a report on the conditions of German school education there. At the same time he worked as a private tutor at the German farm school Klein-Gandern near Keetmanshoop and then from 1932 as a lecturer at the Technical College in Pretoria .

Career in National Socialism

On May 1, 1934, Schmidt joined the NSDAP and studied history and political science in Pretoria from 1935 to 1936. In February 1937, he became head of the site at the cultural office of the NSDAP's foreign organization (NSDAP / AO). In the course of a program of the Afrikaans -Deutschen-Kulturvereinigung (ADK) an intensive exchange of scholars and students as well as a "cultural exchange" took place between the German Empire and South Africa, in the context of which Schmidt's writings were also relevant. According to the historian Albrecht Hagemann, Schmidt's widespread racist theses can be characterized in such a way that he “ wanted to have recognized a specific blood relationship between Afrikaans and Germans on the basis of so-called blood percentage research and derived from this a certain say of the 'Third Reich' with regard to the political future of South Africa”. Schmidt asserted a "racial kinship" between Germans and Boers and demanded in 1937 that "wherever German blood and German work are woven into a foreign fate, the participation of the German people in the further development of that community is given". In his main work, The Cultural Share of Germanness in the Development of the Boer People , which he dedicated to his Gauleiter, the head of the NSDAP / AO Ernst Wilhelm Bohle as “guarantor of a German abroad anchored in the Third Reich”, Schmidt attempted in 1938, which he claimed was considerable to work out the German “blood percentage” in the Afrikaans, which he already numbered in 1937 as equal to the “Dutch” percentage and the French “blood percentage” many times over.

On March 3, 1938, Schmidt was hired as legation secretary in the Foreign Office, in whose cultural and political department he worked in Section W for general academic relations with foreign countries, before taking over the management of the Section for German Language Acquisition Abroad on June 1, 1938. On February 3, 1940, he moved to the news and press department of the AA, where he held a special assignment in the context of monitoring the foreign press. On 1 October 1942, he resigned as untersturmführer in the SS one, completed in 1943 military service in the Waffen-SS and was appointed on 23 August 1944 Counselor appointed. In a set of maps from 1943, which served to illustrate the German colonial expansion up to the planned "German reorganization of Africa as a raw material supplement area of ​​the new Europe" and which followed on from his writings at the end of the 1930s, Schmidt referred to the "German blood percentage in the Boer national body " "33%". During his tenure in the news department of the AA Schmidt took over in 1941 a lecturer in British politics at the international faculty of the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin, where he on 21 June 1941 doctorate and in March 1944 his habilitation . Schmidt's study German migration to South Africa in the 19th century , with which he completed his habilitation, was based on the "foreign achievement" of an unpublished dissertation by the South African Boer E. Schnell on German immigrants at the Cape .

After the war

After the war, Schmidt worked as a private scholar. His habilitation thesis from 1944 was published in 1955 with the support of the German Research Foundation . Initially residing in Munich, later in Tyrol, he then published a number of books on South African countries. This appeared from 1958 to 1970 in the existing from to 1978 German Africa Society published series African countries , which according to a report in the news magazine Der Spiegel to 1970 "determined politically problematic in hand Men" was before political left oriented and lost their financial support from the Foreign Office.

Fonts (selection)

  • The German Association of Pretoria. A sketch of its history from 1888 to 1933 . Pretoria 1933.
  • South Africa yesterday and today . Enke, Stuttgart 1937.
  • The cultural share of Germanness in the structure of the Boer people . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover 1938.
  • Germany's colonial shield of honor. Map of German colonial work . Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1941.
  • A president. The novel by Paul Kruger . Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1942
  • German migration to South Africa in the 19th century . Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1955. (= Habilitation thesis, Faculty of Foreign Studies at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, 1944)
  • South African Union . Schroeder, Bonn 1958 (= The countries of Africa; Vol. 4; published by the German Africa Society).
  • Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland . Schroeder, Bonn 1959 (= The countries of Africa; Vol. 16; published by the German Africa Society).
  • Zambia . Schroeder, Bonn 1965 (= The countries of Africa; Vol. 31; published by the German Africa Society).
  • Rhodesia . Schroeder, Bonn 1970 (= The countries of Africa; Vol. 40; published by the German Africa Society).
  • Lobengula. Black rulers, white millionaires . Non-fiction. Stocker , Graz 1970.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 4: p . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2012, p. 118 f.
  2. ↑ Albrecht Hagemann: National Socialism, Afrikaaner Nationalism and the Emergence of Apartheid in South Africa (PDF; 1.2 MB) . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 39, 1991, issue 3, pp. 413–436, here p. 419; Hagemann is referring to Schmidt's writing from 1937, South Africa yesterday and today .
  3. ^ Albrecht Hagemann: National Socialism, Afrikaaner Nationalism and the Emergence of Apartheid in South Africa . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 39, 1991, p. 420.
  4. ^ Albrecht Hagemann: South Africa and the "Third Reich". Racial affinity and power political rivalry . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1989, p. 95 f. Quotations after Hagemann from Schmidt's essay: On the blood-like influence of Germanness on the Burennation . In: Auslandsdeutsche Volksforschung 1, 1937, pp. 163–179, here p. 173.
  5. ^ Albrecht Hagemann: South Africa and the "Third Reich". Racial affinity and power political rivalry . Campus, Frankfurt / Main 1989, p. 96. Hagemann refers to Schmidt's writing on Germany's colonial shield of honor. Map of German colonial work , p. 27.
  6. ^ Gideon Botsch: "Political Science" in World War II. The "German Foreign Studies" in action 1940–1945 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 139 u. P. 146.
  7. ^ Gideon Botsch: "Political Science" in World War II. The "German Foreign Studies" in action 1940–1945 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 140.
  8. ↑ That is adventurous . The foreign office wants to cancel the subsidies for the left-wing German Africa Society . In: Der Spiegel , November 25, 1974.
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmidt-Pretoria, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Erfurt
DATE OF DEATH 1978
Place of death Lans (Tyrol)