Good media relations

The German Embassy in London has always tried to have good media contacts. In that respect it was useful that some of our Ambassadors were familiar with press affairs: Karl-Günther von Hase, as a former Government spokesman in Bonn and chief of the Federal Press Office, Jürgen Ruhfus as spokesman of the Auswärtige Amt, and myself. In the fifties, I was Bonn correspondent and later Eastern Europe correspondent of the Second German Television Channel (ZDF) as well as Government spokesman and Head of the Federal Press Office. But we also had the support of some excellent Press Counsellors such as Hans Scherer, "Johnny" Haas-Heye and Bernd von Waldow. Soon after the resumption of diplomatic links, the Belgrave Square Embassy came to be in demand as a meeting place for German and British journalists. The media enjoyed our frequent hospitality.

For us in the Embassy these close contacts provided an opportunity of explaining German affairs to our guests and benefiting from the views of press people, especially in the British media. In the early years the written word still had prominence, but soon radio and television representatives came into their own. Annual dinners to which our press officers invited journalists were a popular and jolly occasion, and we also kept in touch with the London-based "Foreign Press Association". Because of the sometimes critical attitude towards Germany of some of the British media these contacts were not easy. But we always believed that it was for us to take the initiative and that we must not hide behind the diplomatic façade.

It was useful for me that I had British and German journalist friends from my own earlier career and these I went to look up first of all on my arrival in the British capital. A foreign Ambassador's visit was then a kind of novelty in British editorial offices, particularly outside London. And it was a basic lesson for us not to underestimate the influence of the provincial press. We also came to organise regular meetings with former Bonn correspondents who had returned to their London base. Occasionally a topical event required the Ambassador to be available for radio and television interviews. How useful it was for example for me to have been aware what a long time in politics three minutes on television could be!

As a one-time diplomatic correspondent of United Press, I often asked former UP colleagues to lunch and one of them, then working on the Daily Mail, greeted my arrival with a full page feature "From Panzer to Palace", alluding to my war time activities in the Africa Corps. The desert war also occasioned a meeting which I owed to one of the editors of the Hamburger Abendblatt. He had come across a biography of the legendary Col. David Stirling whose commando units were active behind the Africa Corps lines. As I myself, with my armoured patrol car unit, was sent out to catch these mobile commandos, I enjoyed the meeting we were able to arrange in the Embassy with the Colonel and some of his veterans.

To a German Ambassador in Britain mentioning Africa served as a cue and facilitated press links. One day I accompanied the Stuttgart Lord Mayor, Manfred Rommel, to some special occasion in Cardiff, twinned with his city. At a reception afterwards given by the Lord Mayor of Cardiff, I was introduced to the Bishop of Llandaff who had been a German prisoner of war in North Africa. It emerged that he had been captured by me and my men. What a scoop that might have been for the mass media. But we agreed that we would keep our discovery to ourselves.