Wilhelm Tannenberg

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Ernst August Wilhelm Tannenberg (born October 23, 1895 in Bremen ; † April 17, 1983 in Bad Pyrmont ) was a German lawyer and diplomat .

Life

Tannenberg was born in Bremen in 1895 as the son of a businessman. After attending the secondary school there , he studied law at the Georg-August University in Göttingen from 1913 to 1914 and from 1918 to 1921 , where he joined the Holzminda fraternity in 1913 .

The First World War forced him to interrupt his studies from 1914 to 1918; he did his military service on the western front and returned from the war as a lieutenant and regimental adjutant in the infantry regiment "Bremen" (1st Hanseatic) No. 75 .

On March 19, 1920, students from Göttingen formed a volunteer force against the communist uprising in the Ruhr area , in which Lieutenant Tannenberg was the company leader . In 1921 he finished his studies with the first state examination , received his doctorate and passed the assessor examination in 1923 . He then went to the Bremen Regional Court and married in Bad Pyrmont in 1925. In 1924 he entered the diplomatic service and in 1925 went to the United States as an attaché . From 1925 to 1932 he was an economic attaché at the German Embassy in Washington . In 1931 he passed the diplomatic and consular examination and became secretary of the legation in the same year .

In 1931 he succeeded Karl von Lewinski as German state representative ("agent") at the German American Mixed Claims Commission . From 1933 to 1936 Tannenberg was Deputy Consul General at the Consulate General in Chicago , and from 1937 to 1939 lecturer at the German Embassy in Washington. There, as an opponent of National Socialism, he sabotaged the German-American Confederation , which led to demands from Berlin for its detachment. However, his support in the Foreign Office was so high that it was not recalled . After the USA entered the war , he was interned with his family in a hotel from 1941 to 1942 and then returned to Berlin and Bad Pyrmont in 1942 on a diplomatic exchange. From 1942 to end of the war he worked as a lecturer Counselor First Class in the Foreign Office in Berlin, which he the last, as one including as a companion of the apostolic nuncio and other foreign diplomats, with destination Bad Gastein left.

After the end of the Second World War , he was briefly held as an American prisoner of war from 1945 to 1946 in a camp in Stuttgart - Kornwestheim . Subsequently, he supported the military government within the denazification programs in the democratization of Germany until he retired in 1948 as a lecturer in the Legation Council for reuse. In 1949 he founded the Europa-Union Bad Pyrmont and held various honorary positions and freelance activities up until his death in 1983.

Awards

literature

  • Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871 - 1945. 5. T - Z, supplements. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 .
  • Karl-August Franke (Ed.): Alte-Herren-Zeitung of the fraternity Holzminda Göttingen. Seelze 1984, pp. 4-7.
  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 6: T-Z. Winter, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-8253-5063-0 , p. 8.

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Tannenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Willy Nolte (Ed.): Burschenschafter Stammrolle. List of the members of the German Burschenschaft according to the status of the summer semester 1934. Berlin 1934. P. 495.
  2. ^ Henning Tegtmeyer : History of the fraternity Hannovera 1928-1945. Hilden 2009, p. 9.
  3. ^ Theodor Sonnemann : Born in 1900. Up and down in the flow of time . Würzburg 1980, pages 122-131.
  4. ^ Heinrich Bünsow: History and directory of the members of the fraternity Brunsviga zu Göttingen 1848-1933 , Göttingen 1933, p. LV.
  5. ^ Drew Pearson: Merry-Go-Round. In: The Palm Beach Post, July 31, 1944, p. 4.
  6. ↑ a b B. Lundius (ed.): Alte-Herren-Zeitung of the fraternity Holzminda Göttingen. Born 1919, Altona-Ottensen, p. 27.
personal data
SURNAME Tannenberg, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tannenberg, Ernst August Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH April 17, 1983
Place of death Bad Pyrmont