Foreign Minister
In the spring of 1921 the German chancellor, Joseph Wirth, appointed Rosen as Foreign Minister. On the issue of war reparations, the Centre Party's Wirth considered an anglophilic and also independent foreign minister to be advantageous. In the five months Rosen's tenure lasted, he acquired a peace treaty with the United States as a permanent result.
Rosen retired in protest against the London ultimatum, in which the Entente powers combined demands of high reparations from Germany with threats of sanctions. He considered the policy of the victorious powers as an application of double standards: On the one hand, they would proclaim the self-determination of peoples, but on the other hand showed no respect to the referendum in Upper Silesia, where a 60 percent majority voted in favour of retaining the area as a part of Germany.
Thus, Friedrich Rosen retired in October 1921 from civil service. Following the same policy, Wirth named Walther Rathenau as his successor, who was committed to similar principles.
Read more about this topic: Friedrich Rosen
Famous quotes related to foreign minister:
“We are apt to say that a foreign policy is successful only when the country, or at any rate the governing class, is united behind it. In reality, every line of policy is repudiated by a section, often by an influential section, of the country concerned. A foreign minister who waited until everyone agreed with him would have no foreign policy at all.”
—A.J.P. (Alan John Percivale)