Vollrath von Maltzan

Vollrath von Maltzan belonged to a long line of German nobility from Western Pomerania and Mecklenburg.

His father left the Imperial German Army with the rank of captain, to manage his property in Odratzheim in Lower Alsace.

He served as an army officer in the First World War and then studied law at Heidelberg University He was granted a doctorate in 1922 and became an Assessor in Berlin.

In 1925 he joined the German Foreign Office, where his second cousin Adolf Georg Baron von Maltzan, a former ambassador, was head of the Oriental Department.

He attained the rank of consul in 1927 and was immediately appointed Secretary to the minister, Gustav Stresemann, the joint architect of the Franco-German rapprochement together with Aristide Briand.