Mavi Boncuk |
[1] Lieutenant-Colonel Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen zu Köningen (29 October 1879 – 2 May 1969) was a German nobleman, General Staff officer and politician. He served as Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and as Vice-Chancellor under Adolf Hitler in 1933–1934. He belonged to the group of close advisers to president Paul von Hindenburg in the late Weimar Republic. It was largely Papen, believing that Hitler could be controlled once he was in the government, who persuaded Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in a cabinet not under Nazi Party domination. However, Papen and his allies were quickly marginalised by Hitler and he left the government after the Night of the Long Knives, during which some of his confidantes were killed by the Nazis.
He entered diplomatic service in December 1913 as a military attaché to the German ambassador in the United States.
On 1 June 1932 he moved from relative obscurity to supreme importance when president Paul von Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor, even though this meant replacing his own party's Heinrich Brüning. Papen later served the German government as Ambassador to Turkey from 1939 to 1944.
There, he survived a Soviet assassination attempt on 24 February 1942 by agents from the NKVD[10]—a bomb prematurely exploded, killing the bomber and no one else, although Papen was slightly injured.
After Pope Pius XI died in 1939, his successor Pope Pius XII did not renew Papen's honorary title of Papal Chamberlain. As nuncio, the future Pope John XXIII, Angelo Roncalli, was acquainted with Papen in Greece and Turkey during World War II. The German government considered appointing Papen ambassador to the Holy See, but Pope Pius XII, after consulting Konrad von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin, rejected this proposal.
In August 1944, Papen had his last meeting with Hitler after arriving back in Germany from Turkey. Here, Hitler awarded Papen the Knight's Cross of the Military Merit Order