Famous German immigrants

He was once chosen as the most admired American in a poll, for many years he was seen as the most successful diplomat in American history. Henry A. Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred in the Mathildenstraße in Fürth, Germany. Without a doubt he is the most important and best known person in the world ever to be born in that city.

THE YEARS IN FÜRTH

Henry Kissinger was born on May 27, 1923 as the son of Louis and Paula Kissinger. His father Louis was a trade teacher, first at the private Heckmann school, than in an elementary school for girls and from 1909 in the Lyzeum (academic high school for girls) on Tannenplatz. In 1922 he married Paula Stern and they moved into a five-room apartment on Mathildenstraße 23, where their son Heinz Alfred was born. Heinz Alfred attended Jewish elementary school. After that he was not admitted into Gymnasium (academic high school), because he was Jewish. So he instead attended Israelitische Realschule (Israeli high school) on Blumenstraße 31. In 1938 the Kissinger family left Fürth and emigrated to the US, on the run from the Nazi regime. They came to New York. Until that time, the father Louis, who tended towards nationalism himself, had defied the infringements and insults of the Nazi regime of injustice.

CHAPTERS OF AN AMERICAN DREAM CAREER

HARVARD

The young Kissinger had the talent and ambition for an amazing career. His path seemed to be right out of an American dream. After arriving in the US, 15-year old Henry worked in a shaving-brush factory during the day and attended night school. Later he attended George Washington High School in New York (until 1941) and from February 1946 until May 1946 he was a US soldier, among other things for military counterintelligence, and last as a lector in the agent academy in Oberammergau. After returning to the US, the highly talented student continued his studies at Harvard University, supported by numerous scholarships. In 1950 he obtained the Bachelor's Degree, in 1952 the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Science Master's Degree. He received his PhD in 1954. From 1954 to 1971 he was a teacher at Harvard University. From 1957 to 1960 he was the deputy director of the Harvard Center for International Affairs. In 1959 he became associate professor. Furthermore, he was Harvard's director of the Defense Studies Program from 1958 to 1969.

His dissertation was awarded the Sumner Price even then and three years later it was published as a book titled A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812-1822. By now, the book that was released in a German translation in 1962 has become a classic work of historiography. He also worked on the establishment of the Harvard International Seminar that was aimed at training young executives in political sciences and published the Seminar paper "Confluence." Between 1951 and 1971 he was the director of this seminar, and with vigorous commitment and persistence he finally became a professor of the renowned Harvard University.

POLITICAL LIFE

Following his great Harvard career, Kissinger, who was a registered Democrat, also started a glamorous political career. He had already been a Study Director for the Council of Foreign Relations from 1955-1956, that was dealing with the military challenges caused by the UDSSR and the consequences for American security policies. His analysis titled Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy made him known around the world. Ever since then, he was in high demand as a military policy advisor even on the highest levels. Even if he still dedicated himself to the answering of political-historical questions, he was already at Harvard recognized as a specialist for international, especially European politics. From 1950 to 1960 Kissinger was a consultant for arms development to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from 1961 to 1968 to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He got in tough with high politics for the first time as a consultant to Nelson A. Rockefeller (Governor of New York and consultant to President Eisenhower) and from that time he was also a valued consultant to US presidents. He advised John F. Kennedy, for example, to refrain from military intervention when the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. Later he participated in the Vietnam negotiations under President Johnson. Kissinger advises the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and then, in 1968 he suddenly becomes National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State under the Republican president Nixon. Kissinger was the first immigrant to become Secretary of State. He had achieved a position in his actual field of expertise.

After years of secret negotiations between Kissinger and Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho, the peace accord on "ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam" was signed on January 27, 1973 in Paris. One of the most vital requirements of the Paris Peace Accords was that all American prisoners would be released within 60 days. However, the practical execution of the treaty proved to be difficult due to its vagueness in many points and gave a clear advantage to the Communist opponent. Also the Laos Treaty of September 14, 1973 didn't have a greater effect. Also in secret, Kissinger opened the way to better relations with China (1971). He also paved the way toward a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. His government career ended quite suddenly when Gerald Ford lost the elections in the fall of 1976.

When Nixon became president in 1968, he appointed Kissinger consultant for foreign policy and security. Kissinger created a new and expanded form of the White House Security Council, aimed at shielding the president from government-internal conflicts. "Everyone works for Kissinger, but only Kissinger works for the president," as the Spiegel wrote back then. At that time, US foreign policy was in a depressing state: the hopeless military action in Vietnam caused growing political and moral resistance in the US, and since 1967 the Soviets were pulling the strings in the Middle East. In consultation with Nixon, Kissinger reacted to this situation by refraining from the US' traditional role as world police and started a policy of détente. In the summer of 1971 he led the decisive negotiations with the People's Republic of China in Peking that led to China's admission into the UN and Nixon's groundbreaking trip to China in the March of 1972. In April of the same year he started preparing the first treaty between the UDSSR and the US for the Strategic Arms Limitation.

On September 22, 1973, Kissinger became the official successor of William Rogers as Secretary of State. While he was sworn in, Nixon pointed out the historical meaning of this assignment - Kissinger was the first immigrant to become US Secretary of State, he was the first Secretary of State who had been to Peking and Moscow before taking office, and he was the first Secretary of State after the war who didn't part his hair. The course of the 4th Middle East war (Yom Kippur War) in October of 1973 had Kissinger make the difficult decision to support Israel with arms shipments. However, when a certain stalemate had been reached, Kissinger supported the resolutions for ending the fights and afterwards worked tirelessly with the Soviets and the forces who had been participating in the war to find a political solution. With his intense and not uncontroversial shuttle diplomacy he succeeded in reaching an agreement between Israel, Egypt and Syria, and thus laying the foundation of peace between Egypt and Israel. With this successful peace initiative the US also regained a stronger position in the Middle East.

When President Nixon was brought down by the Watergate scandal in August 1974, Kissinger remained Secretary of State under Nixon's successor Gerald Ford. However, he lost a great deal of prestige due to the Communist offensive in Vietnam at the end of 1974 that ended with the collapse of the regime in South Vietnam and Cambodia, after he and Le Duc Tho had been awarded the Nobel Peace Price for their mediation in Vietnam in 1973. A decision that had been harshly criticized at the time. After the debacle in Vietnam, more and more voices demanded Kissinger's resignation. Even the success of a new mediation in the Middle East in August 1975 that led to a second interim agreement between Egypt and Israel one month later didn't silence the critics who accused him of being egomaniacal and secretive. It was also regarded as a great failure for Kissinger when Congress decided to stop financing American action in the Angolan civil war - apparently they were afraid of a second Vietnam - a decision he later described as a interference with US foreign policy carried to the extreme. When Democratic President Jimmy Carter took office in January 1977, Kissinger resigned from his government career. Despite all the criticism and failures, the brilliant crisis manager's retirement from active politics was a cause of great regret to many people.

AFTER POLITICS

Kissinger the supported the presidential candidacy of Ronald Reagan and soon became one of his consultants after he had won the elections. In July 1983 he - appointed by President Reagan - took leadership of a non-partisan Central America Commission. The suggestions (presented in January 1984), however, only seemed to confirm the Reagan administration's guidelines and didn't do much to ease the great differences between the government's and the opposition's Central America policies. A subject of intense discussion were also Kissinger's suggestions in 1984 to reform NATO to create a sensible balance of responsibilities between Europe and the US. At the beginning of 1986 Kissinger was said to want the office of Governor of New York, he refrained from running, however, due to his many responsibilities. He was remarkably skeptical concerning the reform endeavors of Soviet party leader Gorbachev, and the Soviet-American disarmament talks. As a guest speaker at a meeting of German party CSU in Wildbad Kreuth in January 1988 he criticized the recently closed Soviet-American agreement to reduce medium-range missiles as completely superfluous and as having disadvantageous effects for Germany, and he warned against further disarmament without reducing the traditional armed forces. Being as surprised as other political observers by the rapid collapse of the Socialist regime in Eastern Europe, Kissinger soon advertised a quick reunification of the two parts of Germany while maintaining NATO membership and also wanted NATO to open to a certain extent to other European countries of the former Warsaw Pact, while maintaining some security guarantees for Russia.

Also the George Bush administration (following the Reagan administration in 1989) didn't offer Kissinger a political office, but two high-ranking members of his consulting firm obtained high government offices - Brent Scowcroft became security advisor under the Bush administration and Lawrence Eagleburger deputy Secretary of State. Kissinger secured himself the attention of the politically interested public with two further publications over the next years. In The Six Columns of World Order (1992), a collection of 31 essays from the previous six years, and in "Diplomacy" (1994), a 900-pages study of the history of Western diplomacy from Richelieu over Metternich and Bismarck until our time he offered a "Realpolitik" analysis of our times including the respective political positioning and suggestions for action.

GOOD ADVICE IS HARD TO FIND

Today, he may be the most expensive strategic advisor on the planet - and a multimillionaire. The town of Fürth where he was born just made him honorary citizen. That reminds of the fact that Kissinger cultivated his heavy German accent almost like a personal trade mark. He will probably be around for a long time as a commentator, lecturer, author and advisor - whenever Washington is dealing with international issues, from Asia to the NATO expansion, Kissinger's opinion is asked for. In June 1977, Kissinger accepted a teaching assignment for international diplomacy at the Georgetown University in Washington. He also signed a five-year contract with TV station NBC as a commentator. He also became a member of the advisory committee for the newly founded Alliance to save Energy, and in 1978 advisor to the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York as well as the investment bank Goldman, Sachs & Co. He was also elected to the board of trustees of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and in 1979 he accepted a position as advisor for the British electricity corporation General Electric.

After his contract with NBC expired he founded the consulting firm "Kissinger Associates Inc." in 1982 in New York, that is offering its services to an exclusive, worldwide circle of customers. Reportedly, each contract costs $200,000. Since Kissinger also personally stayed in touch with statesmen around the world, he didn't only maintain a high level of political influence but also became the probably biggest news trader in the world and the most expensive strategic advisor (German newspaper FAZ). His high esteem as brilliant concept-maker did not decrease in any way, in the 90s his annual income was estimated at up to $8 million.