Max Kohnstamm
Max Kohnstamm ( May 22nd, 1914 in Amsterdam, † October 20, 2010 ) was a Dutch historian and diplomat.
Life and career
Max Kohnstamm was the son of German - Jewish physicist, philosopher and educator Philip Kohnstamm ( 1875-1951 ). He studied History at the University of Amsterdam before it from 1938 to 1939 as a fellow at the American University in Washington, DC visited the U.S. and conducted research there to the economic and labor market reforms of the New Deal.
Since 1940, student resistance active, he was imprisoned from 1942 to 1944 in the set up by the German occupying forces in the Netherlands transit camp Amersfoort, the police prison and detention center hair and the bearing Sint- Michielsgestel.
After the war he served from 1945 to 1948 the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina as private secretary and was from 1948 to 1952 the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs operates. There he was involved in the administration of the Marshall Plan and the Dutch policy towards Germany, recently. As head of the Office of German Affairs Later stages of his diplomatic career and his commitment to a united Europe, he completed from 1952 to 1957 as Secretary of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community ( ECSC) and as General Secretary and later Vice- President of the Action Committee for the United States of Europe. The European University Institute in Florence, he was in the years 1976 to before 1981 as the first president.
His eldest son, Jacob Kohnstamm ( b. 1949 ) became involved after his studies of law also in Dutch politics and acted among others from 1982 to 1986 as chairman of the party Democraten 66 from 1994 to 1998 as Secretary of State for Internal Affairs. Since 2004 he has headed the Dutch Data Protection Authority and since 2010 Chairman of the Article 29 Group of Data Protection Commissioners of the EU Member States.
Writings (selection )
- The European Tide In: Daedalus 93, No. 1, 1964 ISSN 0011-5266, pp. 83-108.
- Co-edited with Wolfgang Hager: civilian power Europe - superpower or partner? Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1973.
- Jean Monnet, the power of ingenuity. Office of Off. Publications d Europ. Communities, Luxembourg 1981.