Jürgen Chrobog (born February 28, 1940) is a German

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Un ...

and former

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or internati ...

. He worked in the

Foreign Office Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * United S ...

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

and the reunified Germany and among other diplomatic postings, was

Ambassador to the United States The following table lists ambassador An ambassador is an official envoy, especially a high-ranking diplomat who represents a state and is usually accredited to another sovereign state or to an international organization as the resident repre ...

from 1995 to 2001.

Life and career

Chrobog was born in Berlin. He studied law in the 1960s in

Freiburg im Breisgau Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population of about 230,000 (as o ...

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

, and

Aix-en-Provence Aix-en-Provence (, , ; oc, label=Provençal, Ais de Provença in classical norm, or in Mistralian norm, ; la, Aquae Sextiae), or simply Aix ( medieval Occitan: ''Aics''), is a city and commune in southern France, about north of Marseille. ...

and then worked as an attorney in

Hannover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

. In 1972, he joined the diplomatic service of the

Federal Republic of Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south ...

, which he served in the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizi ...

in New York. A member of the Freie Demokratische Partei, from 1973 to 1977 he worked in the German

under foreign ministers Walter Scheel and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, where he was responsible for European issues as well as the

Third World The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the Nor ...

. In 1977, he was dispatched to Singapore, and in 1980, to the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...

headquarters in Brussels. From 1984 to 1991, Chrobog was the head of the press division as well as the spokesperson for the Foreign Office, and beginning in 1988, directed Genscher's ministerial office. From 1995 to 2001, he was the German ambassador to the United States. After this posting, he returned to Berlin as State Secretary of the German Federal Foreign Office, under foreign minister

Joschka Fischer Joseph Martin "Joschka" Fischer (born 12 April 1948) is a German retired politician of the Alliance 90/The Greens. He served as the foreign minister and as the vice-chancellor of Germany in the cabinet of Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005. F ...

. Chrobog represented West Germany at the 2+4 negotiations with

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

and the four victorious powers of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

(the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France) concerning the

reunification of Germany German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...

and its future as a

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

member, and in March 1991 referred to those negotiations in a meeting of the directors of the US, UK, French, and German foreign ministries in Bonn. In 2003, as undersecretary of state, Chrobog was responsible for dealing with the crisis provoked by the kidnapping of German tourists in Algeria. Chrobog retired in 2005 and became chairman of the supervisory board at the . In late December that year, he and his family were abducted while traveling on vacation in eastern Yemen; they were released on December 31.

Personal life

Chrobog and his wife, Magda Gohar-Chrobog, have three sons.

Sources

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chrobog, Jurgen 1940 births 2000s missing person cases Ambassadors of Germany to the United States Formerly missing people German diplomats German people taken hostage Living people Kidnapped German people Missing person cases in Yemen Paul Cézanne University alumni People from Berlin

Life and career

Personal life

See also

Sources

External links