Willi Georg Steffen

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Willi Georg Steffen (born October 4, 1902 in Oberstein , Birkenfeld district, † October 10, 1977 in Bonn ) was a German diplomat in the Middle East .

education

Steffen was in 1920 from Mission Seminar "Marienhöhe" the community of Seventh-day Adventist Church for missionary trained. He then attended Livingstone College in London Leyton , where he qualified as a Medical Missionary. After intensive training in the English language at Stanborough College in Watford , he studied Arabic from 1925 to 1927 at the American University , School of Oriental Studies, in Cairo .

In April 1927 the Adventist community made him head of their mission station in Es Salt , Transjordan . From 1930 to 1935 he was chief director of the Iraq mission area in Baghdad and from June 1935 mission director and director of the Iraq mission school in Mosul . In 1934 he became a member of the foreign organization of the NSDAP (see BA, (formerly BDC) NSDAP-Gaukartei, membership card, member no.3402718). In September 1936 he joined the German Reich embassy in Baghdad as a “ dragoman ”, interpreter and translator for Arabic. In February 1939, on a first Lufthansa flight , he accompanied the envoy Fritz Grobba from Baghdad via Cairo to Dschedda in Saudi Arabia , who presented King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud with his credentials .

Second World War

After Iraq broke off diplomatic relations with Germany as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War, Steffen returned to Berlin in September 1939. There he was taken over in October 1939 as an office worker and from April 1, 1941 as a research assistant in the Middle East Department (Pol VII b, press) of the Foreign Office . Because of his knowledge of Arabic, the Wehrweldeamt Charlottenburg released him from military service at the request of the Foreign Office until the end of the war. Under the political direction of the envoy Grobba, he took part in Iraq in May 1941 in the unsuccessful "Junck Special Command" in support of the coup by the pro-Axis politician Raschid Ali al-Gailani . On April 1, 1943, the Foreign Office appointed him head of the Middle East Department (Pol VII b, press).

post war period

In the years after the Second World War, Steffen lived in Staudach-Egerndach in Upper Bavaria . There he worked as an interpreter, unskilled laborer, farmhand and peat cutter, studied philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, worked for a short time in the International Economic Service in Hamburg, advertised for an address publisher and tried his hand at traveling as a travel agent. On July 6, 1947, he was classified as a "fellow traveler" in the denazification process before the Traunstein Chamber of Justice.

In October 1950 he returned to more familiar areas as an employee of the Consulate General of the Kingdom of Egypt in Frankfurt am Main , before he returned to the diplomatic service of the Foreign Office in Bonn in April 1953 as an assistant in the “Middle East” section .

Steffen initially worked from September 1955 to April 1960 as a delegation counselor at the embassy in Dschedda in Saudi Arabia. From there he toured the Wadi Hadramaut (June 10–24 , 1959) and Oman (February 25– March 4, 1960) as the first diplomat from Bonn after the Second World War on behalf of the Foreign Office . As of April 1960, the Foreign Office transferred to him as Chargé d'affaires the management of the legation in Taizz / Yemen. There, six weeks before his death on August 7, 1962, he presented the letter of credence as envoy to Imam Ahmed . After the revolution on September 26, 1962, in intensive talks at the Foreign Office in Bonn, including with State Secretary Karl Carstens , he succeeded in ensuring that the Federal Republic of Germany became the first western state to recognize the Arab Republic of Yemen under international law. December 1962. The Hamburger Abendblatt reported on October 24, 1962: “The federal government has recognized the revolutionary government of Yemen. The German Chargé d'Affaires in Yemen has been instructed by the Foreign Office to notify the government there of this decision. The Federal Republic is the first western state to have decided to take this step. ”Then Steffen took over the representation of the Federal Republic in the Arab Republic of Yemen in the same function and from September 1963 to October 1964 as ambassador in Taizz.

In October 1964, the Foreign Office transferred Steffen as ambassador to Tananarive in Madagascar . During the state visit of Federal President Dr. Heinrich Lübke and Development Aid Minister Dr. Walter Scheel from February 22nd to 26th, 1966 on the island, Steffen became an ear-witness when Lübke greeted President Philibert Tsiranana and his wife in front of the town hall of the capital Tananarive with the words "Dear Mr. President, dear Ms. Tananarive". However, at that time the loudspeaker system had failed due to a thunderstorm, so that this slip of the tongue was only noticed by those in the immediate vicinity of the President, including representatives of the press. Steffen retired in Tananarive at the end of October 1967.

family

Steffen was married to Erna Pfingstl (1906–1980) from 1927 to 1944 and to Sylvia Langenscheid (1923–2002) from 1945 until his death in 1977. Three sons came from the first marriage: Ingo Steffen (1929–2009), Gerhard Steffen (1933–2000), actor in Vienna, and Günther Steffen (* 1937), Graz. He had three children from his second marriage: Heimo Steffen (1944–1998), Manfred Steffen (* 1946) and Gisela Klahre Aubry (1948–2011).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stanborough School
2. ↑ As-Salt see English Wikipedia en: Salt, Jordan
3. ↑ Information on employment in the Foreign Office cf. Personnel file in the AA archive
4. ↑ cf. Private estate of Willi Georg Steffen, PNL, corresponding entry in the military pass
5. ^ Colonel Werner Junck, see English Wikipedia en: Werner Junck
6. ↑ see English Wikipedia : Fliegerführer Irak
7. ↑ On Grobba's deployment in Iraq in 1941 and on further literature see the personal articles Fritz Grobba and Rudolf Rahn .
8. ↑ cf. Denazification file of the Traunstein Chamber of Commerce Az K .: 386/47
9. ^ Minutes of the 68th meeting of the Federal Cabinet on June 5, 1959 [1]
10. ↑ Minutes of the 123rd meeting of the Federal Cabinet on May 27, 1964 [2]
11. ↑ cf. Among other things, Der Spiegel 10/1966, "Lübke Reise, First inquire"