Werner von Rheinbaben

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Werner von Rheinbaben

Werner Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Rheinbaben (born November 19, 1878 in Schmiedeberg in the Riesengebirge , † January 14, 1975 in Losone near Ascona ) was a German politician ( DVP ), diplomat and publicist .

Life and work

Early years (1878-1919)

Werner von Rheinbaben was born in 1878 as the son of the Prussian regional court president Hans von Rheinbaben (1849-1933) from the noble family Rheinbaben and his wife Klara von Lingk (1857-1918). After attending grammar school in Breslau ( Magdalenengymnasium , Wilhelmgymnasium), Lübeck ( Katharineum ) and Berlin (Friedrichsgymnasium), von Rheinbaben joined the Imperial Navy as a cadet in 1895 . In 1898 he became a naval officer and in the following years, among other things, took part in the expedition to put down the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900/01 and was repeatedly in the vicinity of Wilhelm II from 1903 to 1905 as the companion of the Emperor's son Adalbert . From 1905 to 1907 he was visited by Rheinbaben attended the Naval Academy and then from 1908 to 1910 he was Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz (1849–1930) in the Reichsmarineamt . On a special recommendation from Tirpitz, he was selected in 1911 for the post of naval attaché at the German embassy in Italy. He arrived in Rome on November 23, 191 and prepared, together with the currently incumbent naval attaché Theodor Fuchs (1868–1942), to take on the new duties. The German ambassador at the time was Gottlieb von Jagow (1863–1935) in London. The task that Rheinbaben expected here was extraordinarily difficult because it put him in a decidedly forced situation. On the one hand, he was required to represent the extremely questionable positions of the Tirpitzschen naval rearmament policy and, on the other hand, to take into account the line of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg (1856-1921) aimed at moderation in relations with Great Britain . On April 1, 1912, von Rheinbaben took over the responsibility of the naval attaché at the German embassy in Rome. After almost a year in office, he handed over the duties to his successor Alexander von Senarclens-Grancy (1880–1964) on September 30, 1913 . In the same year he ended his military career with the rank of corvette captain .

After returning to Germany in autumn 1913, Werner von Rheinbaben transferred to the diplomatic service of the Foreign Office. In the following four years he worked successively at the representations in Paris, Brussels, Oslo, Bucharest and Kristiania. This activity was only interrupted by the brief (on loan) renewed employment in the Reichsmarineamt . The most important diplomatic event in which he participated during this period was the handover of a German ultimatum to the Belgian government on August 2, 1914 by the German envoy Claus von Below-Saleske (1866-1939). The documents presented by the German government were accompanied by a letter from the Chief of the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke (1848–1916), demanding that the Belgians allow the German army to march unhindered through Belgium to France. The handing over of this document marks the beginning of the German invasion of Belgium at the beginning of August 1914 and thus the beginning of the First World War on the western theater of war. After the above-mentioned assignments abroad, von Rheinbaben was recalled to the Foreign Office in 1917, where he acted as press spokesman for the rest of the war.

Political activity in the Weimar Republic (1919–1933)

Werner von Rheinbaben (right) as head of the Reich Chancellery, together with Gustav Stresemann during a reception for representatives of the foreign press in the garden of the Reich Chancellery

In July 1919 Werner von Rheinbaben resigned from the Reichsdienst as legation secretary and in October of the same year he joined the German People's Party (DVP) founded by Gustav Stresemann . In the same year he married Lisa Freiin von Paleske (1897–1985), a daughter of Rittmeister Olof Freiherr von Paleske and his wife Viktoria von Laffert (1874–1946), who later became the wife of Dirksen. The two sons Georg Wilhelm (* 1920), Colonel in the General Staff of the Bundeswehr , and Hans-Kaspar (1922–2004), co-owner of the banking house JH Stein , emerged from the marriage.

In the early 1920s, Werner von Rheinbaben built up good networks and positions in politics. In addition to his work as a parliamentarian for the DVP - he sat in the Reichstag for four terms from June 1920 to September 1930 for the constituency of Wroclaw - he also achieved various higher political offices. From August to October 1923 he was State Secretary as head of the Reich Chancellery in the Stresemann government (1923). According to his own account, he resigned because he could not win Stresemann for a temporary dictatorial government, but apparently pressure from the parliamentary group also played a role in this decision. As a result, von Rheinbaben was the spokesman for the DVP in the Foreign Affairs Committee.

After the German Reich entered the League of Nations in 1926, until it left a few months after the National Socialist “ seizure of power ” in 1933 - which he tried in vain to prevent - von Rheinbaben represented the Reich as a delegate at the League of Nations meetings in Geneva. After Stresemann's death in 1929, he was even briefly discussed for the office of foreign minister, which eventually went to Julius Curtius . In 1932/1933 Rheinbaben was then deputy head of the German delegation at the Geneva Conference on Disarmament . From the late 1920s - especially from 1929 to 1933 - he acted as an advisor and unofficial emissary to Kurt von Schleicher (1882-1934), who in those critical years was head of the political department in the Reichswehr Ministry (de facto State Secretary), Reichswehr Minister and Reich Chancellor held important key positions and with whom he was also close friends in private. As Schleicher's liaison, he maintained close ties with the French ambassador André François-Poncet (1887–1978) and traveled regularly to France to use his good contacts in Paris society to accelerate the revision of the provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty .

In the early 1930s, Werner von Rheinbaben, as a friend of Kurt von Schleicher, opposed the claims to power of National Socialism. As the surest way to keep the National Socialists out of power, he recommended General von Schleicher to achieve a "great national success" in the field of foreign policy. Because such, he calculated, would disperse the mass supporters of the Hitler party. After the "seizure of power" by the National Socialists in January 1933, von Rheinbaben was almost immediately called a "Strese man" by many leading National Socialists. H. stamped as a supporter of the republican foreign minister Stresemann, who was badly reputed by the new rulers. Hitler himself initially considered his appointment to a high ambassadorial post, but later refrained from doing so. Von Rheinbaben himself stated in his memoir that he had been informed that, after a lecture by him, Rheinbaben, in the Reich Chancellery in the spring of 1933, in which he, Rheinbaben, recommended Hitler to leave the German Reich in the League of Nations, from showed him disappointed. From then on Hitler viewed him as an "internationally contaminated" diplomat, so that he could no longer be employed in a leading position in the new state.

Time of the Hitler dictatorship and the Second World War

In the spring of 1933 Werner von Rheinbaben became head of the German delegation at the disarmament conference in Geneva after the original delegation leader Rudolf Nadolny was recalled from this post by the Hitler government. In October 1933 he gave the last speech by a German diplomat to the assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva, in which he announced that Germany had decided to leave the organization. After the German business was settled in Geneva, he was given early retirement as a diplomat on November 1, 1933, in accordance with Section 6 of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of April 7. He then worked in leading positions at Vereinigte Krankenversicherung AG (VKV) and EOS life insurance.

On May 1, 1937, von Rheinbaben joined the NSDAP - according to his personal information, for pragmatic reasons . In the later 1930s and in the early years of the war, he undertook extensive trips to other European countries, during which, as a "private diplomat", he tried to keep the peace, taking advantage of his old contacts with high-ranking personalities abroad. In addition, before and during the war, he distinguished himself through extensive lectures in Scandinavia, France and Portugal. However, he also published a number of propaganda writings in which he partially supported the foreign policy of the Hitler regime. He presented alleged evidence of Anglo-French guilt for the outbreak of war and justified the Second World War as a “Greater German War of Liberation”. Von Rheinbaben spent the years 1942/43 as an employee of the German Red Cross in connection with prisoner-of-war matters in Portugal.

After the Second World War

After the defeat of the Hitler regime and the end of the Second World War, Werner von Rheinbaben maintained relationships with various public figures in the emerging Bonn republic. Timely presented a series of memory books in which he dealt with the political and historical events of the recent past and described considerations about the opportunities and mistakes of world politics in the time since the turn of the century. He defended the monarchy as a form of government in a special way.

His memoir Viermal Deutschland , published in 1954 - initially in excerpts in Tagesspiegel , then also in book form - in which Werner von Rheinbaben describes his memories of the German Empire, Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and the young Federal Republic, are the most information-rich work from among his autobiographical writings . Later works such as Auf dem Monte Veritá and Kaiser, Kanzler, President (1969) contain to a large extent repetitions of what has already been said in Four Times Germany . Concerning his remarks in his last book about personalities, with whom he had to do mainly on a political level, the publisher Munziger concluded that “personal admiration (for Tirpitz) reflects Werner von Rheinbaben's view of the political valuation of Tirpitz as well as of the Reich President von Hindenburg ”. All in all, it is a book “that does not offer much new information to contemporary historical research”.

Werner von Rheinbaben was awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit with a star by the Federal Republic of Germany .

Werner von Rheinbaben died on January 14, 1975 at the age of 96 in Losone in Ticino, Switzerland. He was buried in Munich. His estate has been in the Federal Archives in Koblenz since 1976 .

Fonts

  • Germany and the League of Nations. Berlin 1926 (with contributions by Rheinbaben, Paul Löbe and others; foreword by Gustav Stresemann)
  • From Versailles to freedom. Path and goal of German foreign policy. Hamburg 1927
  • The second post-war era. From the Dawes Plan to the Hague Agreement. Berlin 1930
  • Geneva Disarmament Conference - what now? The German struggle for disarmament and equality. Berlin 1932
  • The English disarmament plan in the German judgment. Berlin 1933
  • Co-author of the publication "Ibero-America y Alemania: Obra colectiva sobre las relaciones amistosasm desarme e igualdad de derechos", 1933
  • Germany demands equality. A collection of essays and broadcasts on the issues of equality, security and disarmament. Ed. Hans Weberstedt, Armanen-Verlag , Leipzig 1933. With contribution. Rheinbaben, Wilhelm Ziegler and many more
  • Europe, forces and effects. To a new Europe. Berlin 1939
  • England's war for a new Europe. Facts and problems. 1939
  • Troubled Europe. A political survey. Facts and problems. Bernhard-und-Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen Frankfurt / Main 1939
  • The origins of the war in 1939. Berlin 1940th series: Writings for politics and foreign studies. Volume 49/50
  • "Het ontstaan ​​van den oorlog 1939", co-author: Vuerhard-Berkhout, Den Haag, Stok Verlag 1940
  • The Great German War of Liberation. Prehistory, course, confidence in victory. Berlin 1942
  • "Tyskland svarer verden", Herolddens forl, 1941
  • Brief Political History of the War, 1939–42. Berlin 1942
  • Four times Germany. From the experience of a seaman, diplomat, politician 1895–1954. Berlin 1954
  • On the Monte Verità. Memories and thoughts about people. Zurich 1954 (with Eduard Freiherr von der Heydt )
  • Missed opportunities in the German Empire. Munich 1962
  • Experienced contemporary history. Hanover 1964 (including a reprint of Erlebte Zeitgeschichte and a new look at the history of the Weimar Republic)
  • Germany and England 1912 and 1925. In: Donald Cameron Watt (ed.): Historical requirements of the present British image of Germany. Bonn 1965 (Federal Agency for Political Education)
  • Kaiser, Chancellor, President: "How I experienced it" 1895/1934. Mainz 1969 (foreword by Franz Josef Strauss )

literature

Web links

Commons : Werner von Rheinbaben  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sebastijan Rojek, Sunken Hopes, The German Navy in Dealing with Expectations and Disappointments 1871–1930, De Gruyter Verlag 2017
  2. ↑ Hans Hildebrand, formation history and job description of the German armed forces: 1915–1990, Volume 2 Marine, Biblio Verlag Osnabrück, 2000
  3. ↑ Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Federal Foreign Office, Volume 3, Paderborn 2008.
  4. ^ Biographical sketch and historical documents about Werner von Rheinbaben, files of the Reich Chancellery of the Weimar Republic, from 1920 to 1930; in: https://www.bundesarchiv.de/aktenreichskanzlei/1919-1933/adr/adrmr/kap1_6/para2_90.html
  5. ^ Wolfgang Elz:  Rheinbaben, Werner Karl Ferdinand Freiherr. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 488 f. ( Digitized version ).
  6. ↑ Werner von Rheinbaben, Four times Germany. From the experience of a seaman, diplomat, politician 1895–1954. Berlin 1954
personal data
SURNAME Rheinbaben, Werner von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rheinbaben, Werner Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (DVP), MdR, diplomat and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Schmiedeberg in the Giant Mountains
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 1975
Place of death Losone