Wilhelm head

Wilhelm Johann Kopf (until January 17, 1936 with the last name Kalbskopf ; * July 2, 1909 in Schwarzenbach am Wald , † April 5, 2001 in Bad Steben ) was a German ambassador .

Life

Origin and studies

The son of the chief postmaster Johann Kalbskopf and his wife Anna, b. Schmidt, attended the secondary school in Bayreuth, where he passed the Abitur examination in March 1929. From 1929 to 1932 he studied at the universities of Munich and Erlangen University to study history, German and geography and a doctorate with a study on the policy of alliances of the European powers before the war to Dr. phil. During his studies he became a member of the AGV Munich . Before 1933 he was a member of the Bavarian People's Party .

time of the nationalsocialism

Kalbskopf passed the 1st state examination in May 1933, and the 2nd state examination for higher education in May 1934 in the Bavarian school service. He then worked as a research assistant at the University of Erlangen until May 1935 and from January 1936 at the Galataray Lyceum in Istanbul . In January 1936 he had his last name changed from calf's head to head.

Kopf was a member of the SA between 1933 and 1935 . On January 1, 1938, he joined the NSDAP .

The Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service dated Kopf's entry into service as a research assistant in the information department of the Foreign Office under Joachim von Ribbentrop on October 16, 1940. From November 26, 1940, he was listed there as a student councilor. From March to April 1941, he was in the embassy Sofia for the "processing of censorship issues" responsible before it on 26 April 1941 his ministry in the news and press department of the Foreign Office (AA) under whose department head Paul Karl Schmidt took up and down worked on May 6, 1941 for the representative of the AA in the Wehrmacht Propaganda Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. From February 1942, Kopf completed military service as an "instructor in the Azerbaijan Legion". On February 1, 1944, he returned to the AA's news and press department and worked in its VIIa / Orient department. In June 1944 he started his job at the Embassy in Ankara for “processing press matters”. He carried out this task until diplomatic relations were broken off on August 2, 1944, and was interned in Turkey from September 1944 to April 1945.

From 1945: Work for the state of Bavaria

From October 1945 Wilhelm Kopf was again active in the Bavarian school service. In September 1946 he moved to the Munich University Administration as a consultant . From there he came to the Bavarian State Chancellery in June 1948 , where in November 1949 he reached the level of government councilor . From 1950 he was the Bavarian representative at the federal government .

Re-entry into the Foreign Service in 1952

In June 1952, Kopf returned to the Foreign Service of the Federal Republic of Germany by secondment . In October 1952 he took over the "business of the Legation Council" at the embassy in Karachi ( Pakistan ). In March 1954 he was appointed Legation Councilor, First Class. From January 1955 to June 1957 he was Chargé d'affaires of the Federal Republic of Germany in Rangoon ( Myanmar ). From 1957 to March 1960 he was employed as Legation Councilor 1st class in various departments of the Foreign Office : initially in the Science / Higher Education Division of the Cultural Department, from March 1958 in the Department for German Eastern Issues in the Eastern Department, from August 1958 in the NATO and Defense Department West II and from May 1959 to March 1960 in the department for repatriation, homeless people, foreigners, refugees in the department East.

Ambassador (1960–1974): Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Uganda

In April 1960 Kopf took over the management of the newly established consulate in Mogadishu ( Somalia ) and carried the official title of Consul First Class. After the legation was converted into an embassy in July 1963, he was appointed ambassador and remained there until 1963, before taking over the affairs of ambassador in Riyadh ( Saudi Arabia ) from November 1963 to July 1965 .

After assignments in the ministerial office of the Foreign Office in Bonn from the end of July 1965 and an activity in the "India / Pakistan Crisis Team" of Political Department I from December 1965, Kopf was ambassador to South Vietnam from 1966 to 1968 . On April 1, 1966, he arrived in Saigon . On June 28, 1966, he and the South Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ signed an agreement on a German commercial credit amounting to 20 million German marks . From February 1969 to June 1970 Kopf served as Consul General in Calcutta. The news magazine Der Spiegel wrote about the many diplomatic stations of Kopf's : “The foreign minister who traveled widely in the service of the federal government - meaning Walter Scheel  - remembers: 'Whether I came to Jeddah, Mogadishu, Saigon or Calcutta, Mr. Kopf was everywhere on the airport' . "

On July 30, 1970, Kopf was given temporary retirement . But from this he was appointed as ambassador again in November 1971, this time until 1974 to Kampala ( Uganda ).

Retirement and end of life

In June 1974, Kopf was retired and then devoted himself to a journalistic activity. He died in Bad Steben in 2001 at the age of 92 .

Fonts

• (as Willy Kalbskopf) The foreign policy of the Central Powers in the Tripoli War and the last renewal of the Triple Alliance 1911–1912. A study of the alliance policy of the major European powers before the world war. Erlangen 1932 (= Univ. Erlangen, Phil. Diss.)
• Turks . Luken & Luken, Berlin 1943. Overall title: dealing with peoples - Volume 3.
• Saudi Arabia. Island of the Arabs . Seewald, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-512-00648-5
• Heirs of the desert. Saudi Arabia's way . Olms-Presse, Hildesheim 1991, ISBN 3-487-08297-7

literature

• Biographical manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 2: GK . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X , pp. 602-604
• Ulrich Brinkhoff: Nightmares on the Saigon River, South Vietnam 1965–1968 . Foreword by Walter Scheel . agenda-Verlag Münster, 2014, ISBN 978-3-89688-516-6 , 243 pages with 120 images (also by Wilhelm Kopf)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book and Vademecum. Ludwigshafen am Rhein 1959, p. 73.
2. ^ ^{A b c} Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 2: GK . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, p. 602 f.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 2: GK . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, p. 603.
4. ↑ Tobias C. Bringmann : Handbuch der Diplomatie 1815-1963. KG Saur, Munich 2001, p. 126 (there Riyadh) ( books.google.de )
5. ↑ Wilhelm Kopf . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 1966 ( online ).
6. ↑ The degree of opportunism is enormous . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1972 ( online ).
7. ↑ ^{a b} Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 2: GK . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, p. 604.

predecessor	Office	successor
	Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Mogadishu 1960 to 1963	Karl Rolf Nagel (* 1918)
Oswald von Richthofen	Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Riyadh 1963 to 1965	1974–1976: Norbert Montfort
Hasso Rüdt from Collenberg	Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Vietnam March 1966 to October 1968	Horst of Rome
Hans-Joachim Eick	Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Kampala November 4, 1971 to 1974	Richard Ellerkmann