Auswartiges Amt Research Articles

Gaining a Foothold in the Weimar Republic: Giuseppe Renzetti’s Activities in the years 1925-1927

The article studies Giuseppe Renzetti’s activities in the Weimar Republic in the mid-1920s. Besides adding to Renzetti’s colorful yet often opaque biographical picture, this article seeks to contribute to studies on the dissemination and propaganda of Fascism abroad and to the political culture of the Weimar Republic. Likewise, actors such as the fasci italiani all’estero, the German Foreign Office (Auswartiges Amt) or German newspapers can be highlighted. Based on a thorough analysis of Renzetti’s personal papers and documents today stored at the Auswartiges Amt, the article stresses how equally bustling and inauspicious Renzetti’s activities were, revealing the process which led to Renzetti’s designation as political intermediary.

A Nazi Diplomat Turned Apologist for Apartheid: Gustav Sonnenhol, Vergangenheitsbewaltigung and West German Foreign Policy towards South Africa

This article examines continuities in the personnel of the German foreign office by focusing on the case of Dr Gustav Adolf Sonnenhol, a German diplomat before and after 1945. A member of the Nazi Party and the SS, Sonnenhol served as German vice-consul in North Africa and headed the department Inland II B of the Auswartiges Amt (in charge of liaison with the SD). Exonerated by denazification, he continued his career in government, first in the ministry of the Marshall Plan, then once again in the foreign service. By 1968 he had become the West German ambassador to South Africa. The article analyses how Sonnenhol represented West Germany at the Cape at a time when international protests against the policy of apartheid forced West Germany to modify its policy toward South Africa in the late 1960s. While the process of social liberalization and generational change was in full swing in West Germany, the country embarked on a process of confrontation with Germany's colonial past and racism toward black Africa. Changing attitudes toward (South) Africa resulted in social and political conflict. Sonnenhol, like many Germans of his generation, remained trapped in colonial stereotypes, exacerbating the generational tensions within the foreign ministry. Ultimately, the foreign ministry of Willy Brandt could not free itself of an old guard of Nazi diplomats. As chancellor, Brandt was also unwilling to take a strong stand against the apartheid regime, which had powerful supporters in West Germany.

Deutsch als Weltsprache? Franz Thierfelder, the Deutsche Akademie in Munich and the Promotion of the German Language Abroad, 1923-1945

The Deutsche Akademie (DA) in Munich was founded in the context of a general upsurge in cultural diplomacy in Germany after the First World War and it was the precursor of today's Goethe Institute. After a difficult start, by the early 1930s the DA had become the leading institution in the promotion of the German language abroad. The emergence of the DA's language policy was closely intertwined with the general development of German cultural diplomacy, which was largely financed by the Auswartiges Amt but executed by private associations. It was also influenced by the discussions in the 1920s about the role of language in shaping German national identity, by contemporary developments in German linguistics and language teaching, and by the discourse of the socalled ‘conservative revolution’. Franz Thierfelder, secretary-general of the DA, managed to forge these developments into a coherent argument as to why Germany should intensify its language policy, centre it around the DA, and direct it mainly towards the Balkan countries. The language policy of the DA remained largely undisturbed by the Nazi seizure of power until the outbreak of war, even though the emphasis was now on race rather than language as the determining factor in German national identity. The reason for this was, firstly, that the cultural diplomacy of the Auswartiges Amt and its private institutions such as the DA continued to be dominated for some time by non-Nazis and, secondly, that Germany's cultural diplomacy was dictated more by the constraints and dynamics of international politics and by economic necessities than by ideology. It was only after the outbreak of war that the expansion of the DA's language programme became closely linked to the racially motivated ‘new order’ for a Europe under Nazi rule.

The role of Britain in West German foreign policy since 19491

Anglo‐German relations since 1949 have been a curious mixture of harmony and tension. This paper looks at the reasons both for cooperation and conflict and some of the ways in which German perceptions of Britain have changed since 1949. Attitudes to security, economic integration and political identity produced a complex pattern, where each side at times had unrealistic expectations of the other. Recently published documents from the Auswartiges Amt for 1963–64 give an insight into the ‘official mind’ of German foreign policy at a critical moment.

The Nyanga/Ngororombe Panpipe Dance: 1.Thunga la ngororombe - the panpipe dance group of Sakha Bulaundi

I first met Sakha Bulaundi, leader of a ngororombe dance group on September 15, 1990 at Jonathani village, T.A. Mulauli, Mwanza District, Malawi, during my field-work in that area. I have been in contact with him and the five members of his group ever since that date and recorded them repeatedly. This work was part of a larger project of field research on music and oral literature which I carried out from July 9 to October 15,1990, from February 11 to April 11,1992, and from July 11 to August 11,1992, with the financial assistance of the Auswartiges Amt of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Krämer case: A study in three dimensions

In a communication of 20 December 1941, Colonel Piekenbrock, the head of Section 1 of the Abwehr, after noting the effect of America's entry into the war upon the supply situation of German secret intelligence, drew the attention of Auswartiges Amt's representative at the High Command of Armed Forces (OKW) to the consequent need for intensifying intelligence collection in the neutral countries of Europe. Several facts, however, suggest that a number of important steps in this direction, had already been taken. Thus in May 1941, Dr Karl-Heinz Kramer, a member of Major Nikolaus Ritter's Abwehr Air Intelligence Staff in Hamburg, was sent to Stockholm to investigate the possibility of opening up intelligence activities in Sweden directed against Great Britain and the USA. This visit was followed by several others and by November 1942 he was attached to the. German Legation on a more permament footing. From the Swedish capital, Dr Kramer supplied various German central intelligence organs with a continuous flow of information virtually to the end of the war.

The Outbreak of the First World War and German War Aims

German innocence or at least relative innocence for the outbreak of the I9I4 war had for decades been something that could not be questioned in Germany. The function of this taboo varied according to the circumstances: in early August I914 it was designed to impress both the SPD and Britain, in order to get the former into the war, and if possible to keep the latter out of it. During the war it was to convince neutrals and Germans alike of the righteousness of the Reich's cause. Immediately after the war, even the left-wing governments of 1918-I9 clung in dealing with the Allies to the concept of German relative innocence, in the hope of getting a more lenient peace settlement. When they failed, later governments and public opinion in the Weimar Republic retreated from the relatively critical line of these earlier governments which, after all, had published the German documents and set up a Commission of Enquiry into the causes of Germany's defeat. The Weimar Republic opened a sustained campaign against article 23I of the Versailles treaty; it hoped, by disputing Germany's responsibility for the war, to dismantle the treaty as a whole. The campaign had started at Versailles itself, where Billow (later Secretary of State in the Auswartiges Amt) mapped out and initiated the strategy.1 In the Auswirtiges Amt a small sub-section, the Kriegsschuldreferat, inspired, directed, and financed the German innocence propaganda. Its chief instruments were two organizations, the Arbeitsausschuss Deutscher Verbande (ADV),