Gottfried Anton Nicolai Lessing (14 December 1914 – 11 April 1979) was a German lawyer, political activist, and diplomat.

Life and career

Lessing was born in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, Russia to Gottfried Lessing (1877 - 1950) and Tatjana Lessing (née von Schwanebach) (1878 - 1960). He fled Germany in 1938 (one of his grandfathers was Jewish, and therefore he was considered a

mischling (; " mix-ling"; plural: ) was a pejorative legal term used in Nazi Germany to denote persons of mixed "Aryan" and non-Aryan, such as Jewish, ancestry as codified in the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935. In German, the word has the general denota ...

under the

Nuremberg Laws The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of th ...

). First he sought refuge in the UK, and later he moved to

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of Wil ...

Southern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked self-governing British Crown colony in southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally kn ...

(now

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...

). He worked as a lawyer in Salisbury from 1941 to 1946 and took part in the founding of the small

Southern Rhodesia Communist Party The Southern Rhodesia Communist Party was an illegal, underground communist party established in Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) which was formed in large part due to the minority settler rule, which had an immensely repressive structur ...

, becoming a leading member.Hoff, Henning. ''Grossbritannien und die DDR 1955–1973 : Diplomatie auf Umwegen''.

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

: Oldenbourg, 2003. p. 65 He was married to author

Doris Lessing Doris May Lessing (; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remain ...

from 1943 to 1949 (winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007).Portrait: Doris Lessing Feministin wider Willen – Kultur – sueddeutsche.de
/ref> They had one son. In 1949 he returned to the UK, where he worked for the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...

. In 1950 he settled in

East Berlin East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...

, and in 1951 he became a member of the

Socialist Unity Party of Germany The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (german: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, ; SED, ), often known in English as the East German Communist Party, was the founding and ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East German ...

. From 1952 to 1957 he was the president of the Chamber of Foreign Trade. Then, in 1959–1960, he led East Germany's trade representation in Indonesia. In 1961 he was sent to

Mali Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali ...

. From 1962 to 1965 he was back in East Germany, working as the head of the Africa section at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Between 1965 and 1969, Lessing served as East Germany's Consul General in Tanzania. He again returned to East Germany, and worked in the Planning Section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Lessing went on to serve as the East German Ambassador to Uganda. He and his third wife were killed during the

Fall of Kampala The Fall of Kampala, also known as the Liberation of Kampala (Kiswahili: ''Kukombolewa kwa Kampala''), was a battle during the Uganda–Tanzania War in 1979, in which the combined forces of Tanzania and the Uganda National Liberation Front (UN ...

in 1979, as

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...

and its Ugandan rebel allies occupied Uganda's capital and overthrew dictator

Idi Amin Idi Amin Dada Oumee (, ; 16 August 2003) was a Ugandan military officer and politician who served as the third president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. He ruled as a military dictator and is considered one of the most brutal despots in modern w ...

.Doris Lessing: 'Ich mag keine Utopien' – Unterhaltung – stern.de
/ref> Lessing and his wife attempted to escape the city amid the fighting at 04:00 on 11 April, but as they drove by a golf course UNLF insurgents fired two rocket-propelled grenades at Lessing's and a following car, destroying both and killing the four occupants. Lessing was the maternal uncle of politician

Gregor Gysi Gregor Florian Gysi (; born 16 January 1948) is a German attorney, former president of the Party of the European Left and a prominent politician of The Left (''Die Linke'') political party. He belonged to the reformist wing of the governing So ...

References

Works cited

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lessing, Gottfried 1914 births 1979 deaths Ambassadors of East Germany to Uganda Assassinated German diplomats Assassinated German politicians German people of Russian descent German people of Russian-Jewish descent Members of the Southern Rhodesia Communist Party Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom Recipients of the Patriotic Order of Merit Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Germany Socialist Unity Party of Germany politicians Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United Kingdom 20th-century German diplomats