Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz

Georg Ferdinand Duck joke ( born September 29, 1904 in Bremen, † February 16, 1973 in Bremen ) was a German diplomat, most recently Secretary of State in the Foreign Office. When Denmark was under German occupation, he saved 7,000 Jews from deportation to the extermination camps.

Life

Duck joke comes from a long-established Bremen merchant family. His great-grandfather was the Bremen merchant and Mayor Arnold Duck joke. He was a young man, a soldier in a volunteer corps. He started after high school at the Albert- Ludwigs- University of Freiburg to study economics and joined the Corps in 1924 Rhenaniastraße Freiburg. He broke off his studies and entered 1927 in the service of Kaffee Hag. For the company, he went in 1928 as a branch manager to Copenhagen. From the ideas of Adolf Hitler's enthusiastic, he became in 1932 a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. He has worked since 1933 on the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the NSDAP (APA ), which was headed by Alfred Rosenberg. There he worked as a speaker Scandinavia. After Seraphim Duck joke one of the longest-serving employees Rosenbergs in APA was. After the Röhm - Putsch Duck joke began to turn from inside the Party but without leaking. In 1935, he resigned from the NSDAP and moved to the shipping business, which led the move to New York City where he worked for the Hamburg -America Line.

To September 1, 1939 Duck joke entered the service of the Reich Transport Ministry, which put him in Copenhagen as a shipping expert. In 1941 he moved to the jurisdiction of the Federal Foreign Office. In this capacity, he gave in September 1943 his knowledge of German plans to deport Jews from Denmark, further, where he used his contacts to Danish shipowners. He helped its bargaining policy Jews to escape to Sweden. After the deportation order on September 18, 1943 with the German ambassador in Copenhagen Werner Best was received and had the date of a scheduled campaign of arrests against Duck joke leaked, Duck joke negotiated with the connivance Bests already three days later in Stockholm with the Swedish Government on the admission of Jewish refugees. This 7,000 Danish Jews were saved from deportation, about 500 were transported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, of which 90 % survived.

Duck joke got about Paul Kanstein, the Deputy Minister at Copenhagen, in contact with the resistance fighters of 20 July 1944, in particular to Ulrich von Hassell, Fritz- Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg and other employees of the Foreign Office. Had the coup was successful, Duck joke would have as the new ambassador ( he was supposed to replace Best ) to handle the occupation regime in Denmark and Norway.

After the end of World War II Duck joke not initially returned to Germany, but remained in Copenhagen, which had become a second home to him, and worked there as a representative of the West German chambers of commerce in the Knotting business contacts. In the re-establishment of the Foreign Office, he was employed there and began his career at General Consulate in Copenhagen as Head of the Economic Department, before moving in 1953 as consul to Helsinki. In 1955 he returned to Copenhagen, where he was Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1958 he became head of the Eastern Department of the Foreign Office in Bonn. He demanded to apply the Hallstein doctrine not on the hijacked by the German Reich states such as Poland and not to Israel. One must make moral here before political categories. When he could not prevail with this view, he moved to the post of German ambassador in India to New Delhi. In 1965 he was transferred at his own request to retire.

Duck joke had from his time as head of the Eastern Department of the Foreign Office close ties with then Mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt, with whom he shared the view of the necessity of a new Ostpolitik. As Brandt 1966 Federal Foreign Minister was, he fetched already in October 1967 Duck joke back as secretary of state active duty, an office which he retained even under Walter Scheel. After the Warsaw Treaty on the German -Polish relations - Duck joke here was the chief negotiator for the Federal Republic of Germany - had been signed, he finally came to retire. He died on February 16, 1973 and was buried at the cemetery in Bremen Rien Berger ( grave Location: V 101, Coordinates: 53 ° 5 ' 37.2 " N, 8 ° 51' 36.3 " O53.0936611111118.8600861111111 ).

His nephew 2nd degree Edmund Duck joke is since October 2010, German Ambassador to Mexico.

Honors

Publications

  • Erindringer om et hus i Lyngby. Lyngby 1966.
  • The turning point in the east. In: Foreign Policy. Born 1970, Issue 1
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