Wolfgang von Welck

Curt Wolfgang Heinrich Freiherr von Welck (* 6. September 1901 in Nice , † 7. May 1973 in Starnberg ) was a German diplomat in the era of National Socialism and the Federal Republic.

Life

His parents were Gertrud von Hüttner and Kurt Maximilian von Welck, Imperial German Vice Consul. From 1912 to 1921 he attended the Vitzthum-Gymnasium Dresden . From 1921 to 1925 he studied law at the Universities of Freiburg in Breisgau, Munich and Berlin and passed a legal traineeship.

Wolfgang von Welck joined the foreign service in 1927 . In 1929 he passed a diplomatic-consular examination. From 1930 to 1936 he was accredited at the embassy of the German Reich in Reval. In 1934 he was promoted to legation secretary . On August 1, 1938, he joined the NSDAP .

From 1936 to 1938 he was accredited to the consulates in Kharkov , Leningrad and the embassy in Moscow . From 1938 to 1939 he was accredited at the Embassy of the German Reich in London. From 1939 to 1940 he was accredited at the Embassy of the German Reich in Budapest. In 1940 Welck was promoted to the Legation Council and came to the Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden , which negotiated from June 26, 1940 under the chairmanship of Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel and Charles Huntziger . From August 28 to December 6, 1943, he was imprisoned in the Gestapo cellar cells on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin on suspicion of political unreliability and defeatism and on charges of supporting French requests for help . On March 28, 1944, he was dismissed from the Foreign Service, losing his pension entitlement.

From 1946 to 1950 he was employed by the "Central Office of the Aid Organization of the Evangelical Church in Germany" (EHIK). The EHIK looked after prisoners of war and war criminals in custody when the German Red Cross and the National Socialist People's Welfare were banned by the Control Council Act No. 2 of October 12, 1945.

In 1950 he was re-employed in the foreign service. From 1950 to 1951 he was accredited at the German Embassy in Brussels. From 1953 to 1958 he headed the federal department of the Foreign Office. On May 16, 1958, von Welck came to Madrid as the new ambassador and was received by the negotiator Luitpold Werz at the Estación de Norte . During his tenure in Madrid, military negotiations with the Francisco Franco regime became ripe.

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 , pp. 225–227
• Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes and 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 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Welck, Wolfgang Freiherr von on the side of the Federal Archives
2. ↑ Lega a Madrid el nuevo embajdor alemán, barón Von Welck. (PDF; 989 kB) In: Ofensiva. 17th May 1958
3. ↑ Birgit Aschmann : "Faithful friends ..."? West Germany and Spain, 1945–1963. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-515-07579-8 , p. 220 ( digitized version )

predecessor	Office	successor
Karl Heinrich Knappstein	German ambassador in Madrid 1957–1963	Helmut Allardt
Ernst-Günther Mohr	German ambassador in Bern 1963–1966	Friedrich book