Werner von Grundherr zu Altenthann and Weiherhaus
Werner von landlord to Altenthann and Weiherhaus (born 22. January 1888 in Nuremberg , died 8. November 1962 in White Castle in Bavaria ) was a German diplomat in the era of National Socialism and Ambassador of the Federal Republic in Greece .
Life
The son of a Bavarian officer was a cadet in the Oranienstein cadet institute and in the main Prussian cadet institute in Groß-Lichterfelde . After graduating from high school and military service, he studied political science and history at the universities of Berlin and Greifswald from 1909 . From August 1914 to January 1918 von Grundherr was a soldier in World War I , most recently with the rank of Rittmeister .
On January 30, 1918, he joined the Foreign Service . After his training he worked in Bucharest and Athens and between 1925 and 1934 at the legation in Helsingfors . From 1934 he worked again in Berlin and headed the Scandinavia department. From 1940 he held the official title of envoy. He was also involved in the financing of the quisling regime in Norway .
Application for NSDAP membership
Von Grundherr applied for membership in the NSDAP on June 4, 1940, which was rejected with Martin Bormann's letter of September 13, 1941 with the reason “pronounced vanity, class arrogance, earlier disinterest in the NSDAP and obvious opportunism” . After the war, von Grundherr complained that he had been banned from promotion precisely because he had not been a party member.
Participation in the Holocaust
At the end of 1941 he and Franz Rademacher , the Jewish advisor in the Foreign Office, as Scandinavia advisor, had “verbally asked the ambassador in Denmark Cécil von Renthe-Fink ” “on a suitable occasion to point out that, according to the Fiihrer's words, the Jewish question in Europe would be finally resolved and it would therefore be wise if Denmark prepared itself for it in good time. "
The representative of the Foreign Ministry in Copenhagen was also in the plans for the deportation of Danish Jews (cf.. Rescue of the Danish Jews involved) and was designed on 17 September 1943 in one of him by Otto von Erdmannsdorff initialed and Andor Hencke signed form asks "to make precise suggestions about the method of carrying out the deportation of the Jews, which has been decided in principle" .
On May 5, 1945 he was arrested by the landlord near Salzburg and was interned in America until March 1947 . In the indictment against Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop , he was initially planned as a witness in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals . Nothing is known about its denazification .
In January 1950 he was reinstated in the Foreign Affairs Department at the Federal Chancellery and was initially involved in the reinstatement of senior civil servants. From October 1950 he headed the Consulate General in Athens, which became an embassy in 1951. In July 1952 he was given leave of absence at the request of the Committee of Inquiry 47 of the German Bundestag on personnel policy in the Foreign Service and went into retirement and thus, according to the biography of the Munzinger Archive , rendered objections irrelevant, which, as in the similar cases of some other previous members of the Foreign Service of the Federal Republic had been charged in the press against his re-employment and continued employment. The Foreign Office feared diplomatic interference in Scandinavia and Greece if the landlord was heard in the Bundestag committee.
Even after his retirement, von Grundherr remained connected to the Federal Republic of Germany's Foreign Service and was commissioned to train prospective diplomats at the diplomatic training center in Speyer .
Fonts
- On the economic and political importance of capital investments abroad , Greifswald, Phil. Diss., 1914
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 .
- Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes , Moshe Zimmermann : The Office and the Past . German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .
- Hans-Jürgen Döscher , The Foreign Office in the Third Reich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the final solution. Siedler Verlag Berlin 1987 ISBN 3-88680-256-6
Web links
- Werner von Grundherr zu Altenthann and Weiherhaus , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 18/1963 of April 22, 1963, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Conze u. a., The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , Munich 2010, p. 528.
- ↑ a b Hans-Jürgen Döscher, The Foreign Office in the Third Reich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the final solution. Berlin 1987, p. 70, note 14
- ↑ Files on German Foreign Policy , Ser. E, 1941–1945: Vol. 1: December 12, 1941 to February 28, 1942. 1969, p. 186: Editor's note on a letter of January 6, 1942.
- ↑ Léon Poliakov , Joseph Wulf : The Third Reich and its servants. Fourier, Wiesbaden 1989, ISBN 3-925037-45-4 . P. 102.
- ↑ After his biography at Munzinger, he retired of his own accord.
- ↑ Conze u. a., The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , Munich 2010, p. 483.
- ↑ Conze u. a., The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , Munich 2010, p. 527f
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Landlord of Altenthann and Weiherhaus, Werner von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Landlord, Werner von; Landlord zu Altenthann and Weyherhaus, Werner von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German diplomat |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 22, 1888 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Nuremberg |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 8, 1962 |
| Place of death | Weißenburg in Bavaria |