Foreign Office of Germany

Foreign Office
Auswärtiges Amt
Agency overview
Formed	1870, Reichsauswärtigesamt
Jurisdiction	Government of Germany
Headquarters	Berlin
Minister responsible	Sigmar Gabriel, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs;
Website	http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de

The traditional name of the ministry handling Germany's foreign affairs is the Foreign Office or AA (German: Auswärtige Amt). It is responsible for the foreign policy as well as the German EU politics. It is led by the federal Minister for Foreign Affairs (German: Bundesminister des Auswärtigen)

Auswärtiges Amt

The old Reichsbank and the new buildings

The Foreign Office is part of the foreign service of Germany. The other part is the parts of the other agencies of the federal government based abroad.

The Foreign Office handles contact between Germany and other countries or international organisations such as the United Nations. This included trying to get a permanent seat in the Security Council of the United Nations as part of the proposed 2005 UN reforms. The Foreign Office is near the old DDR Foreign Ministry in Berlin. The big old building in the Werderschen Markt became the Reichbanks headquarters in 1940 and from 1959 the central committee headquarters of the SED. The Foreign Office has a "second headquarters" on Adenauerallee in Bonn.

Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) has been Foreign Minister since January 2017.

Organisation

There are German embassies and consulates or consulates-general in most capitals of the world as well as in larger towns of the countries.

The Berlin headquarters job is to coordinate German diplomacy, and study the information passed on from the embassies, permanent representations and consulates. These are the "eyes, ears and voice" of the Federal Government abroad.

The Foreign Office has 145 embassies, 59 consulates general, twelve permanent representations (at international organisations) and ten offices abroad.

There are also three "German Information Centres (GIC)" with the job of giving information about Germany and the German language.

The biggest GIC is in Washington, DC, after it moved from New York in 2003. A GIC in Cairo is for the Arabic speaking world. The other GIC is in Paris, for French speaking areas

There are also 356 honorary consuls. These are often German businessmen who do some work for the Foreign Office.

Bonn

The Bonn office handles information technology particularly. Every German agency abroad is connected to Bonn, which can send the information to Berlin. The Bonn office also arranges communications for the Foreign Minister and the Chancellorwhen they are abroad.

Problems

Some people say that there is corruption in the way senir jobs are filled.

This is because the Foreign Office does not publish the qualifications of its top diplomats anymore. They stopped after terrorists used the information to attack the German embassy in Stockholm in 1975 and the RAF murdered diplomat Gerold von Braunmühl in 1986.

History

North German Confederation

The Foreign Office started in 1870 as a part of the North German Confederation. It was headed by a permanent secretary, just like the Foreign Office of the German empire. There were ministers only since 1919. This was why it was called an Office not a ministry .

German Empire (1871-1918)

The Foreign Office of the German Empire was based in Berlin Wilhelmstraße 76.

The empire tookover the Foreign Office of the North German alliance unchanged. However the German federal states kept a considerable degree of independence in their own foreign policy.

The AA had two departments

Department I

Higher politics, personnel, ceremonies, budgets, registeration of the schools and churches. The head of this department was a permanent secretary who was also the permanent representative of the German Chancellor in the Foreign Office at the same time. The German Chancellor had the topmost responsibility in foreign policy.

Department II

The second department was responsible for trade, traffic, consulates, national law, civil law, the art and science, the private matters of Germans abroad, also, justice, police and Post Office, emigration, ship matters. This department was headed by the director of the Foreign Office.

Other departments

Legal matters were transferred to the new Department III in 1885. A colonial department was formed in 1890, it became the Imperial Colonial Office in 1907. Department IV was formed in 1915 to handle intelligence.

Directors of the colonial department
No	Name	Start of term	End of term
1	Friedrich Richard Krauel	1890	1890
2	Paul Kayser	1890	1896
3	Oswald Freiherr von Richthofen	1896	1898
4	Gerhard von Buchka	1898	1900
5	Oscar Wilhelm Stüberl	1900	1905
6	Ernst Fürst von Hohenlohe-Langenberg	1905	1906
7	Bernhard Dernburg	1906	1907

Weimar Republic 1919-1933

The Foreign Office became a ministry in the Weimar Republic, headed by a Reich Minister. The permanent secretary no longerThe minister had the sole responsibility for the foreign policy now. The name "Foreign Office" was kept, out of tradition. Gustav Stresemann was the most famous foreign minister of this time, and moulded German foreign policy just like Bismarck had done during the empire.

The Third Reich 1933-1945

When the Nazis seized power the Foreign Office started following Nazi Party ideas. However, there was some resistance, especially from people like Adam von Trott zu Solz and Ulrich von Hassell.

The Foreign Office wrote a formal letter about the Jews and foreign policy in 1939: It said that giving the Jews a homeland in Palestine was dangerous to world peace. This note is a big reason why the second set of Nuremberg Trials included officials from the Foreign Office.

Also see: Fritz Kolbe, Kurt Georg Kiessinger

After the Second World War Germany stayed under allied control, at least in part, until 1955. This meant that there was no need for a Foreign Office until 1951, when the new Germany got more control overs its own affairs.

Federal Republic of Germany

The new Foreign Office was set up on March 15th, 1951 in Bonn and kept the name of "Office".

Many of the senior officials of the AA were ex nazis. in fact More ex party members were in charge parts of the Foreign Office than there were party members doing the same type of job during the Third Reich.

Since 1966 the Foreign Minister has often been the leader of the smaller coalition partner in coalition governments. The exceptions were the vice-chancellorships of Jürgen Möllemann and Franz Müntefering.

German Democratic Republic

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs handled the foreign policy of the government of the DDR.

Foreign Ministers

Außenstaatssekretäre 1871 - 1919
No	Name	Term start	Term end
1	Hermann von Thile	1871	1872
2	Hermann Ludwig von Balan¹	1872	1873
3	Bernhard Ernst von Bülow	1873	1879
4	Josef Maria von Radowitz¹	1879	1880
5	Chlodwig Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst¹	1880	1880
6	Friedrich Graf zu Limburg-Stirum¹	1880	1881
7	Clemens Busch¹	1881	1881
8	Paul Graf von Hatzfeld zu Trachenberg	1881	1885
9	Herbert Fürst von Bismarck²	1885	1890
10	Adolf Freiherr Marschall von Beiberstein	1890	1897
11	Bernhard Fürst von Bülow	1897	1900
12	Oswald Freiherr Richthofen	1900	1906
13	Heinrich Leonhard von Tschirschky und Bögendorff	1906	, 1907
14	Wilhelm Freiherr von Schoen	1907	1910
15	Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter	1910	1912
16	Gottlieb von Jagow	1913	1916
17	Arthur Zimmermann	1916	1917
18	Richard von Kühlman	1917	1918
19	Paul von Hintze	1918	1918
20	Wilhelm Heinrich Solf	1918	1918
21	Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau	1918	1919
¹	acting
²	acting until 17 May 1886

Reichsminister des Auswärtigen 1919 - 1945
No	Name	Term start	Term end	Party
1	Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau	13 February 1919	21 June 1919	Independent
2	Hermann Müller (SPD)	21 June 1919	26 March 1920	SPD
3	Adolf Klöster	10 April 1920	8 June 1920	SPD
4	Walter Simons	25 June 1920	4 May 1921	Independent
5	Friedrich Rosen	10 May 1921	22 October 1921	Independent
6	Joseph Wirth	26 October 1921	31 January 1922	Centre
7	Walther Rathenau	1 February 1922	24 June 1922	DDP
8	Joseph Wirth	24 June 1922	14 November 1922	Centre
9	Friedrich von Rosenberg	22 November 1922	11 August 1923	Independent
10	Gustav Stresemann	13 August 1923	3 October 1929	DVP
11	Julius Curtis	4 October 1929	9 October 1931	DVP
12	Heinrich Brüning	9 October 1931	30 May 1932	Centre
13	Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath	1 June 1932	4 February 1938	NSDAP(from 1937)
14	Joachim von Ribbentrop	4 February 1938	1 May 1945	NSDAP
15	Arthur Seyß-Inquart	1 May 1945	2 May 1945	NSDAP
16	Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk	2 May 1945	23 May 1945	Independent

Minister für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten der DDR 1949 - 1990
No	Name	Life data	Term start	Term end	Party
1	Georg Dertinger	1902-1968	12 October 1949	15 January 1953	CDU
2	Anton Ackermann¹	1905-1973	15 January 1953	July 1953	SED
3	Lothar Bolz	1903-1986	July 1953	24 June 1965	NDPD
4	Otto Winzer	1902-1975	24 June 1965	20 January 1975	SED
5	Oskar Fischer	1923-	3 March 1975	12 April 1990	SED
6	Markus Meckel	1952-	12 April 1990	20 August 1990	SPD
7	Lothar de Maizière²	1940-	20 August 1990	2 October 1990	CDU
¹	Acting
²	Jointly as prime minister of the DDR

Bundesminister des Auswärtigen seit 1951
No	Name	Life data	Term start	Term end	Party
1	Konrad Adenauer¹	1876-1967	15 March 1951	6 June 1955	CDU
2	Heinrich von Brentano	1904-1964	6 June 1955	17 October 1961	CDU
3	Gerhard Schröder	1910-1989	14 November 1961	30 November 1966	CDU
4	Willy Brandt	1913-1992	1 December 1966	20 October 1969	SPD
5	Walter Scheel	1919-2016	21 October 1969	15 May 1974	FDP
6	Hans-Dietrich Genscher	1927-2016	17 May 1974	17 September 1982	FDP
7	Helmut Schmidt¹	1918-2015	17 September 1982	4 October 1982	SPD
8	Hans-Dietrich Genscher	1927-2016	4 October 1982	17 May 1992	FDP
9	Klaus Kinkel	1936-	18 May 1992	26 October 1998	FDP
10	Joschka Fischer	1948-	27 October 1998	22 November 2005	Green
11	Frank-Walter Steinmeier	1956-	22 November 2005	27 October 2009	SPD
12	Guido Westerwelle	1961-2016	28 October 2009	17 December 2013	FDP
13	Frank-Walter Steinmeier	1956-	17 December 2013	27 January 2017	SPD
14	Sigmar Gabriel	1959-	27 January 2017	14 March 2018	SPD
15	Heiko Maas	1966-	14 March 2018	8 December 2021	SPD
16	Annalena Baerbock	1980-	8 December 2021	Present	Green
¹	Jointly as Chancellor of the Federal Republic

Two Chancellors also Foreign Minister. Konrad Adenauer as the first Foreign Secretary of the Federal Republic of Germany and Helmut Schmidt, after FDP had left coalition and cabinet. Hans-Dietrich Genscher was Foreign Minister under both an SPD and a CDU chancellor.

Spies of the DDR Ministry of State Security ("Stasi")

Name	Year joined BRD Foreign Ministry	Year recruited by Stasi	Assumed name
Christine Bauer		1986	Jasmina
Helge Berger
Hagen Blau	1961	1960	Detlef, Merten
Herbert Kemper
Ruth Kemper
Reiner Müller
Ludwig Pauli			Adler
Lilli Pöttrich	1983	1976	Angelika
Gisela von Raussendorff			Blume
Klaus von Raussendorff		1957	Brede
Karl-Heinz Rode			Maro

Related pages

German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), mainly funded by the Foreign Office

Other websites

Official Website
History of the AA
GIC/CIDAL Paris; GIC Kairo Archived 2006-12-25 at the Wayback Machine; GIC Washington Archived 2007-02-17 at the Wayback Machine
Historic Buildings Archived 2005-12-11 at the Wayback Machine
The AA in the Third reich
The AA and the Jewish Question
Ämterpatronage bei Gründung der Bundesrepublik Archived 2007-11-02 at the Wayback Machine
Joschka Fischer

German Federal Cabinet

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