Word: von
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When he was a student in the dusty stacks of world affairs, Henry Kissinger discovered Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who used power ruthlessly and successfully for peace, yet despite his immense ego, sensed his own insignificance...
...terrible to think that nobody ever asked John von Neuman--the real pioneer of computers who invented the stored program concept--'Were you interested in extending the capacity of the human brain, or just in inventing a great machine?' As a historian, I'm very interested in these questions," Cohen said...
...dramatic debut was in keeping with von Wechmar's reputation as an independent-minded maverick as well as an astute diplomat. More important, his election conveyed a special symbolic meaning: he is the first German-East or West-to hold the General Assembly presidency. The choice was an obvious confirmation of West Germany's postwar rise to political and economic power, and to what the Stuttgarter Zeitung called "full moral acceptance...
...von Wechmar, 56, the election climaxed a long and distinguished diplomatic career. The son of a Prussian army officer, he served as an officer in Rommel's famed Afrika Korps. Captured by an American unit at Tunis in 1943, he was shipped to P.O.W. camps in Virginia and Colorado, where he earned a bachelor's degree in journalism through a correspondence course. "We are a famous family of prisoners of war," says von Wechmar, whose brother, father and both grandfathers were all captured by the enemy. "We've had our share of barbed wire...
Back home after the war, von Wechmar worked as a translator and reporter, becoming Bonn bureau chief for United Press in 1954. Recruited into the diplomatic service, he was appointed chief government spokesman in 1972. As permanent representative to the U.N. since 1974, he has regularly demonstrated a Prussian passion for exactitude with an un-Teutonic irreverence and an irrepressible zest for diplomacy's social whirl. "A good man to carry this important honor for us," comments a West German foreign ministry official. "It's equally important that it won't go to his head...