History: GDR and China: The Diplomats

Nine photographs on a wall. Not a coincidence. In Chinese number mythology, nine represents long-lasting, earthly happiness. Also for the emperor, the messenger from heaven. Eight pictures show German chancellors shaking hands with China’s leading politicians, the ninth motif on the far right in the bottom row looks inconspicuous and inconspicuous next to all these “emperors”. Only the accompanying text deciphers the content of the group photo in front of the Chinese flag: »John King and the diplomatic mission of the GDR to Chairman Mao Zedong, which he led. The German head of mission officially began his service in China on June 24, 1950.

I remembered a request two years ago. I was asked to say something about the establishment of diplomatic relations between Germany and China 50 years ago. I rejected this, pointing out that these relationships were much older. For me, the GDR was and is Germany. And immediately after its constitution on October 7, 1949, the GDR recognized the People’s Republic of China, which had been founded a week earlier. Well, the inquiring editor’s view only reached as far as the Harz Mountains and the year 1972, which is why the topic was over for me.

Johannes König came from Arnstadt, and when the GDR made him head of the diplomatic mission, he was 47 and editor-in-chief of the “Sächsische Zeitung” in Dresden. A stay of several years in Shanghai, where he emigrated with his Jewish wife at the beginning of 1939, qualified him for the task in China. There he worked as a correspondent for the Soviet news agency TASS and also as the political leader of the KPD in the southern Chinese port city.

For Mao, the GDR was Germany.

The Chinese side repeatedly expressed internal displeasure that Soviet officials were interfering in this and other ways in their relations with the GDR. In April 1950, the Soviet ambassador in Beijing informed the GDR foreign minister “on behalf of the Central People’s Government of the Chinese People’s Republic” that it was ready “to receive Mr. Johannes König as diplomatic representative of the government of the German Democratic Republic in the Chinese People’s Republic.” . Moscow also decided this cadre question in the landlord style. However, the Chinese leadership was interested in direct relations with Berlin, without going through Moscow. 180 guests came to the reception at the mission on October 7, 1951, the second anniversary of the GDR, including Zhou Enlai and many other government members as well as Pablo Neruda with his wife and Julius Fucik’s widow, who had survived the Ravensbrück concentration camp; her husband, a famous Czech writer, was murdered in Berlin-Plötzensee in 1943. Song Quingling, the widow of President Sun Yat-sen, the “Father of the Nation,” who died in 1925, also appeared. Ten years later, when the GDR’s relations with China deteriorated due to the Sino-Soviet conflict, the embassy considered it a great success when a deputy foreign minister came to a reception at the GDR representation.

In 1950, the GDR still seemed to be an interregnum; the People’s Chamber and government used the adjective “provisional.” Three years later, Moscow put the GDR at risk in order to prevent the Federal Republic from being integrated into the Western alliance system. The Chinese leadership demonstratively declared its support for the GDR. In October 1953, Mao wrote to his “dear and great friend” Wilhelm Pieck, the President of the GDR, that he wanted to “maintain, strengthen and strengthen the friendly relations that so happily exist between the People’s Republic of China and the German Democratic Republic “I intend to create”. Finally, Mao expressed his wish “for Germany to prosper.” Germany meant the GDR. From the Chinese perspective, the East German Republic was the representative of all of Germany, as the Federal Republic would not diplomatically recognize the People’s Republic until 20 years later.

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The report to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin about the accreditation highlighted that King and the other GDR diplomats “were picked up from the embassy in three cars belonging to Chairman Mao Zedong.” And further: “In front of the entrance to the chairman’s official residence, the orchestra was lined up on the right and an honorary company on the left.” This may all sound a little silly and banal today, but back then – a few years after the world war (next door in Korea, the next one was already raging). ) and in view of the fact that the GDR had diplomatic relations with at most half a dozen states – this was of eminent importance for the young second German republic. Ambassador King gave Mao his credentials and later had an hour and a half conversation with Mao in the presence of Premier Zhou Enlai.

König, who also represented the GDR’s interests in Korea and Vietnam, was to become ambassador to Moscow in 1955 and had been accredited to Mongolia since 1958. After his return from the Soviet Union in 1959, he became deputy foreign minister and was sent to Prague as ambassador in April 1965. He died there in January 1966.

Of course, the log image mentioned at the beginning doesn’t tell all of this. However, it offers an opportunity to reflect on the beginning of German-Chinese relations, for whose creation and development the GDR did a lot. This is often forgotten these days.

I discovered this and other photos and documents in John Rabe’s house in Nanjing. Rabe was a Siemens representative in China in the 1930s. In China he is considered the Oskar Schindler of Asia because he saved the lives of several hundred Chinese people. They fled to his, i.e. Siemens’, property from the Japanese, who occupied what was then the capital on December 13, 1937. Within six weeks they massacred around 300,000 people in the city. The NSDAP member Rabe reported to Hitler about this barbarism and asked him to have a moderating influence on Tokyo. After all, both states had concluded an anti-Comintern pact at the end of 1936 and were therefore linked to one another under international law. Rabe received no response from Berlin, but was immediately banned from performing after his return to Germany in 1938. He was no longer allowed to report publicly on the crimes committed by the Japanese that he had witnessed in Nanjing. So he turned to writing, turning six diaries into one and still hoping to persuade Hitler to change his mind.

Then Hitler’s Germany collapsed. Rabe was denazified in 1946 – also because the Chinese authorities demonstrated his deeply humane actions in Nanjing. The following year, Siemens sent the 65-year-old into retirement. On January 5, 1950, Rabe died as a result of a stroke in Berlin and was buried in Luisenkirchhof III on Fürstenbrunner Weg in Westend. The grave would probably have been leveled and the stone disappeared long ago if the Chinese had not prevented this. As I discovered, the tombstone has been in the Nanjing Massacre Memorial since 1997. There is a stone in the Berlin cemetery that the Chinese donated for what is now Berlin’s honorary grave. People don’t just meet there on anniversaries.

The house in Nanjing where Rabe lived from 1932 to 1938 is now part of the university and is a museum. It was restored with German funds after the turn of the millennium and now operates as a “Research Center for Peace and Reconciliation”. There is a lot of interesting things to see and read there. »The exhibition tries to avoid the political pitfalls. Little is reported about the Japanese invasion and much is reported about the international security zone. And the only reminder of Rabe’s Nazi past is a copy of a ‘denazification document,'” wrote the “FAZ” about the opening on November 1, 2006. What were the “political pitfalls”? That the Chinese called the Japanese invaders what they were: murderers.

During their rule, the colonizers called the city of over a million people Nanking. Nowadays, the 2,500-year-old metropolis once again has its original name Nanjing (as Beijing is also called Beijing). Needless to say, the city twinning with Leipzig agreed on May 21, 1988 correctly identifies “Nanjing”.

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