Eduard Brücklmeier

Eduard Robert Wolfgang Brücklmeier (8 June 1903 – 20 October 1944) was a German diplomat and resistance fighter against the Nazi régime, who was executed as a result of his association with the 20 July Plot.

Brücklmeier was born in Munich, where in 1923 he began his study of law before moving to Leipzig, Würzburg and Lausanne. In 1927, he passed the first state examination in Würzburg and in May entered the Foreign Office's three-year preparatory programme. On completing it in 1930, he was posted abroad as a diplomat.

In 1933, the year the Nazi Party seized power in Germany, Brücklmeier found himself dealing with minority issues while working at the Consulate General in Katowice. This led to his first conflict with Nazi authorities. In 1936, he was appointed diplomatic secretary at the German Embassy in London, headed by German dictator Adolf Hitler's future Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

In 1937, Brücklmeier married Klothilda von Obermayer-Marnach. They would have one daughter, Monika, who would later marry Friedrich Mandl. Brücklmeier also joined the Nazi Party, having originally submitted his application to join in 1934.

The following year, 1938, Brücklmeier and Ribbentrop returned to Berlin. By that time both Brücklmeier and Foreign Office State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker were hoping that German dissenters, working with the British government, could thwart Hitler's ever more evident plans for war. In 1939, however, he was denounced for making "defeatist" statements and was very nearly sent to a concentration camp. Instead, however – apparently at the instigation of the chief of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA), Reinhard Heydrich – he was given early retirement from the Foreign Office.

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