Jürgen Chrobog
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Jürgen Chrobog (born February 28, 1940) is a German jurist and diplomat.
Born in Berlin, Chrobog studied law in the 1960s in Freiburg im Breisgau, Göttingen and Aix-en-Provence before going on to work as an attorney in Hannover. In 1972, he joined the diplomatic service of the Federal Republic of Germany, which he served in United Nations in New York. Chrobog, a member of the Freie Demokratische Partei, was a colleague of the former German foreign minister Walter Scheel and Hans-Dietrich Genscher from 1973 until 1977 in the Foreign Office, responsible for European issues as well as the Third World. In 1977, he was dispatched to Singapore, and in 1980, to Brussels.
From 1984 until 1991, Jürgen Chrobog was the head of the press division as well as the spokesperson for the Foreign office, and beginning in 1988, directed Hans-Dietrich Genscher's ministerial office. From 1995 until 2001, Chrobog was the German ambassador to the United States. After carrying out this function, he returned to Berlin to work in the Foreign Office, which the new foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, had taken over in the mean time. Additionally, before his retirement in 2005, Chrobog -- then an undersecretary of state -- was responsible for dealing with the crisis provoked by the kidnapping of German tourists in Algeria.
On December 28, 2005, it was announced that Jürgen Chrobog had been abducted in eastern Yemen during a cross-country vacation, along with his wife, three grown sons (one of whom, Felix Chrobog, is a successful long distance runner in Washington DC). The family was in Yemen on invitation from the Yemeni vice foreign-minister.
According to the German Foreign Office, the kidnapped family had traveled to Yemen on Christmas Eve with a travel group traveling in an auto convoy. The family's car had, according to the foreign office, initially lagged behind the Convoy before finally getting lost. Chrobog, along with his family, was released on December 31, 2005.
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(This article was translated from an article of the same name in the German wikipedia)
