The Nazi past of Germany's Foreign Ministry will undergo a critical examination by an independent panel of historians to be set up within the next two months, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said. Fischer told foreign journalists late on Wednesday he would not be distracted by criticism from retired diplomats or political opponents now assailing him for changing the way the ministry honours deceased staff who were Nazi party members.
"We need a thorough investigation of the ministry's past to come to terms with the Nazi era," Fischer said. "No one will be served by anything less. We'll move forward carefully and have the panel of expert historians set up before the summer recess."
The overdue probe of the Foreign Ministry's own history - both during Nazi rule in 1933-45 and attitudes to former Nazis thereafter - was sparked by a recent book about a mid-level diplomat named Fritz Kolbe.
He was denied his job at the ministry after the war and branded a traitor because he had been a spy for the Allies.
Fischer, who read the book by French journalist Lucas Delattre in two sleepless nights, dedicated a ministry conference room to Kolbe.
He also banned obituaries in the ministry's internal newsletter for former Nazis after it published a warm tribute to a retired foreign service officer, Franz Nuesslein, who had been a Nazi prosecutor and signed death warrants in German-occupied Czechoslovakia before rising through the ranks after the war.
More than 100 retired and current diplomats were outraged when the ministry newsletter refused to publish an obituary for another former postwar diplomat with a Nazi past, Franz Krapf.
They paid for a death notice for him in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper and have harshly criticised Fischer since.
"My position on not publishing obituaries in the newsletter won't be changed," Fischer told the foreign press association. "The historian commission will be balanced and completely independent. It's something that's very important for me."
The attacks by current and retired diplomats, which received widespread coverage in conservative newspapers, has added to Fischer's woes.
Once Germany's most popular politician, his standing has plunged due to a scandal over lax management of visas given to Ukrainian tourists and the row with diplomats.
Awkward questions have also been raised about how the ministry will handle any obituary for Hans Dietrich Genscher when the former foreign minister, who was briefly a member of the Nazi party, dies.
Even though the country's Nazi past has in general gone through intensive scrutiny at different stages since 1945, the Foreign Ministry largely avoided a tough probe. The ministry officials who denied Kolbe a job were former Nazis.
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