Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz

{{Righteous Among the Nations}}

Duckwitz was born on 29 September 1904 in Bremen, Germany,{{cite web |url=http://www.gratefulness.org/giftpeople/duckwitz_danes.htm |title=G. F. Duckwitz and the Citizens of Denmark |last=Frye |first=Amelia |accessdate=2009-07-29 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090521105316/http://www.gratefulness.org/giftpeople/duckwitz_danes.htm |archivedate=2009-05-21 }} to an old patrician family in the Hanseatic City.{{cite web|url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/duckwitz.asp|title=Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz Righteous Among the Nations|accessdate=2009-07-29|archive-date=8 April 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120408102826/http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/duckwitz.asp|url-status=live}} After college, he began a career in the international coffee trade.

From 1928 to 1932 Duckwitz lived in Copenhagen, Denmark. In November 1932, he met Gregor Strasser, the leader of the leftist branch of the German nationalistic Nazi Party, in Bremen. Throughout their conversation, Duckwitz found that "elements of Scandinavian socialism [were] connected with nationalistic feelings" and decided to enroll in the party. On 1 July 1933, he joined the Nazi Party's Office of Foreign Affairs in Berlin. Throughout his tenure, he became increasingly disillusioned by Nazi politics. In a 4 June 1935 letter to Alfred Rosenberg, the head of the office, he wrote, "My two-year employment in the Reichsleitung [i.e. executive branch] of the [Nazi Party] has made me realize that I am so fundamentally deceived in the nature and purpose of the National Socialist movement that I am no longer able to work within this movement as an honest person". Around the same time, the Gestapo (secret police) made its first notes on Duckwitz after he had sheltered three Jewish women in his Kurfürstendamm apartment during a local antisemitic Sturmabteilung event. He later wrote that he had then become "a fierce opponent of this [Nazi] system".{{cite news| title = Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz – geheimnisvoller Mister X| newspaper = Weser Kurier| location = Bremen| language = German| date = 30 September 2013| url = https://www.weser-kurier.de/bremen_artikel,-Georg-Ferdinand-Duckwitz-geheimnisvoller-Mister-X-_arid,674392.html| access-date = 26 September 2017| ref = {{harvid|Weser Kurier|2013}}| archive-date = 26 September 2017| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170926100839/https://www.weser-kurier.de/bremen_artikel,-Georg-Ferdinand-Duckwitz-geheimnisvoller-Mister-X-_arid,674392.html| url-status = live}}

He eventually left the Office of Foreign Affairs to work for the Hamburg America Line shipping company. In 1939, he was assigned to the German embassy in Copenhagen as a maritime attaché.

{{main|Rescue of the Danish Jews}}

After 1942, Duckwitz worked with the Nazi Reich representative Werner Best, who organised the Gestapo. On 11 September 1943, Best told Duckwitz that all Danish Jews were to be arrested on 1 October. In response, Duckwitz travelled to Berlin to try to prevent the operation by appealing to the authorities. He failed to convince them, and he flew to Stockholm two weeks later, ostensibly to discuss the passage of German merchant ships. There, he contacted Swedish Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson and asked whether Sweden would be willing to receive Danish Jewish refugees. In a couple of days, Hansson promised them a favourable reception.{{citation needed|date=October 2014}}

Back in Denmark on 29 September, Duckwitz contacted the Danish Social Democrat Hans Hedtoft and notified him of the intended deportation. Hedtoft warned the head of the Jewish community, C. B. Henriques, and the acting chief rabbi, Marcus Melchior, who spread the warning. Sympathetic Danes in all walks of life organized a mass escape of over 7,200 Jews and 700 of their non-Jewish relatives by sea to Sweden.Denmark, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005209 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141015065233/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005209 |date=15 October 2014 }}

Image:Frieboeshvile, 2008-05-04.jpg 2, Kongens Lyngby.]]

Afterward, Duckwitz went back to his official duties.

After the war, Duckwitz remained in the German foreign service. In 1955 to 1958, he served as West German ambassador to Denmark and later as the ambassador to India. When Willy Brandt became Foreign Minister in 1966, he made Duckwitz Secretary of State in West Germany's Foreign Office.{{citation needed|date=September 2017}} After Brandt became Chancellor, he ordered Duckwitz to negotiate an agreement with the Polish government. Brandt's work culminated in the 1970 Treaty of Warsaw. Duckwitz worked as Secretary of State until his retirement in 1970. On 21 March 1971, the Israeli government named him Righteous Among the Nations and included him in the Yad Vashem memorial. He died two years later, at age 68.

Duckwitz was portrayed by Patrick Malahide in the film Miracle at Midnight.

{{Reflist}}

{{commons category}}

• [http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206623.pdf Yad Vashem honouring of Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz as Righteous among the Nations] – an article from the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust
• [http://db.yadvashem.org/righteous/family.html?language=en&itemId=4042999 Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz] – his activity to save Jews' lives during the Holocaust, at Yad Vashem website
• [https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-45919900 The tip-off from a Nazi that saved my grandparents]
• {{cite news| title = Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz – geheimnisvoller Mister X| newspaper = Weser Kurier| location = Bremen| language = German| date = 30 September 2013| url = https://www.weser-kurier.de/bremen_artikel,-Georg-Ferdinand-Duckwitz-geheimnisvoller-Mister-X-_arid,674392.html| access-date = 26 September 2017| ref = {{harvid|Weser Kurier|2013}}}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Duckwitz, Georg Ferdinand}}

Category:1904 births

Category:1973 deaths

Category:20th-century Freikorps personnel

Category:German Righteous Among the Nations

Category:Denmark in World War II

Category:People from Bremen (city)

Category:Ambassadors of West Germany to Denmark

Category:Ambassadors of West Germany to India

Category:Diplomats in the Nazi Party

Category:Officials of Nazi Germany

Category:Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Category:German resistance to Nazism

Category:Nazi-era German officials who resisted the Holocaust

Category:German people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust