West Germany Sends a Liberal to the UN:
GEORGE, MANFRED
WEST GERMANY SENDS A LIBERAL TO THE UN A portrait of Felix von Eckardt By Manfred George A SIGNIFICANT reshuffling is currently taking place in West Germany's diplomatic service. The new...
...Even Eckardt occasionally showed signs of strain...
...In 1929, he was appointed press attache of the German Embassy in Brussels...
...Where else among German bureaucrats would one find a room with several large aquariums containing tropical fish, or a Brazilian toucan named Ramses, a bird with an enormous beak that would on occasion shatter the solemnity of press conferences with its irreverent gurgling noises...
...When the Russians came, he fled to the West...
...He will become West German observer at the United Nations, with the rank of ambassador...
...When Hitler came to power in 1933...
...This was regarded as an unequaled feat of intellectual acrobatics, for Dr...
...Eckardt has always been a man of liberal and unorthodox views, alert to the philosophical and social implications in contemporary polities, deeply devoted to literature, the theater and fine arts, and anxious to preserve his intellectual independence...
...It was a short-lived career...
...He is prone to sudden autocratic decisions, thus confounding his ministerial advisers and upsetting their most subtle conceptions...
...He is the man who gave the late Danish Prime Minister Hans Hedtoft the timely warning that the Nazis were planning to deport Denmark's Jews, whereupon Hedtoft and Duckwitz assembled a fleet of fishing boats which ferried the intended victims to Sweden under cover of darkness...
...Eckardt picked up his hat...
...Adenauer is not an easy man to work with...
...He can be quite ruthless in his domestic policies and is ready without batting an eyelid to disavow his subordinates if it suits his purposes...
...put on his gloves, reached for his walking stick, and resigned in disgust...
...The new German Ambassador in London is Hans Heinrich Hervath von Bit-tenfeld, until recently Chief of Protocol of the Bonn Federal Government...
...Both men are career diplomats...
...To visiting American newspapermen in Bonn, Felix von Eckardt was a familiar figure, as he headed the vast Federal press service housed in a former infantry barracks in the Ermekeil Strasse...
...Manfred George edits the New York German-language newspaper Aufbau...
...I shared an office with Eckardt at the Ullstein Publishing House in pre-Hitler days and even then appreciated his sound grasp of history and politics...
...Then, in the process of reorganizing the German press, the American authorities licensed him to resume publication of the eminently respectable Weser Kurier in Bremen, which he directed until 1952, when he was made head of the Federal Press Information Department...
...An innate superiority, combined with a peerless knowledge of the international press and a rare moral courage, helped Eckardt to deal with the Chancellor—even to the point of telling him unpleasant truths...
...His office, which I repeatedly visited during my postwar trips to Germany, was oddly revealing of the man who worked in it...
...Few high-ranking German civil servants have a journalistic background...
...But the truly remarkable thing was that Eckardt could cope with Chancellor Adenauer on his own terms...
...Felix von Eckardt, now 52, was born in Berlin, raised in Hamburg, and served three years with the Prussian Cadet Corps, the equivalent of West Point...
...G. F. Duckwitz, present German Consul in Helsinki, is being transferred to Copenhagen...
...is a diplomat, a liberal, a raconteur of wit and charm, and an ambassador of good will who treasures the United Nations' ideal of universal peace and cannot help but live up to it...
...Vollrath Freiherr von Maltzan is taking over...
...Before he accepted the job, five of his predecessors had either stumbled or collapsed, but Eckardt rode out the course...
...When I met him again after the war, he told me what happened to him in the interim: He wrote twenty-odd film scenarios —from thrillers to musical comedies —and with the proceeds bought an estate in Mecklenburg, where he started breeding race horses...
...Perhaps the most important new appointment involves Felix von Eckardt, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's former press chief and a thoroughgoing anti-Nazi...
...He drives his staff unmercifully...
...Nevertheless, he finally yielded to his family's strong desire and entered the diplomatic service...
...But he had no military inclinations...
...His grandfather, Julius von Eckardt, was editor-in-chief of one of the oldest German dailies, the Grenzbote, and his father directed such respected newspapers as Miinchener Neueste Nachrichten and Hamburger Fremdenblatt...
...Following the family tradition, he, too, became a newspaperman...
...In him Adenauer found a man of such consummate political and diplomatic skill that der Alte became more or less resigned to his adviser...
...With Eckardt now arriving at the East River, the West German Federal Republic will be represented at the UN by a cosmopolitan personality, a tactful negotiator whom the atmosphere of international conferences fits like a glove...
...In a sense, he resembles Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold: Eckardt, too...
...Eckardt is one of them...
...In Paris, Dr...
Vol. 38 • March 1955 • No. 10
