Josef Korbel

Josef was born on 20 September 1909 to Jewish parents Arnost and Olga Korbel, both of whom were killed in the Holocaust.[1] At the time of his daughter Madeleine's birth, Josef was serving as press-attaché at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Belgrade.[2]

Though he served as a diplomat in the government of Czechoslovakia, Korbel's politics and Judaism forced him to flee with his wife and baby Madeleine after the Nazi invasion in 1939 and move to London. Korbel served as an advisor to Edvard Beneš, in the Czech government in exile. He gave speeches for the BBC's daily broadcasts to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.[3][4] During their time in England the Korbels converted to Catholicism.[1]

Korbel returned to Czechoslovakia after the war, receiving a luxurious Prague apartment expropriated from Karl Nebrich, a Bohemian German industrialist expelled under the Beneš decrees.[5] Korbel was appointed as the Czechoslovak ambassador to Yugoslavia, where he remained until the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in May 1948. Around this time, he was named a delegate to the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan to mediate on the Kashmir dispute. He served as its chair, and subsequently wrote several articles and a book on the Kashmir problem.[2]

Following the Communist Party's rise to power in 1948, in 1949 Korbel applied for political asylum in the United States stating that he would be arrested in Czechoslovakia for his "faithful adherence to the ideals of democracy." He received asylum and also a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to teach international politics at the University of Denver. In 1964, with the benefaction of Ben Cherrington, Korbel established the Graduate School of International Studies and became its founding Dean.[2][4] One of his students was Condoleezza Rice, the first woman appointed National Security Advisor (2001) and the first African-American woman appointed Secretary of State (2005). Korbel's daughter Madeleine became the first female Secretary of State in 1997. Both of them have testified to his substantial influence on their careers in foreign policy and international relations.[3]

After his death, the University of Denver established the Josef Korbel Humanitarian Award in 2000. Since then, 28 people have received it.

The Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver was named the Josef Korbel School of International Studies on May 28, 2008.

• Tito's Communism (The Univ. of Denver Press, 1951). ISBN 978-5-88379-552-6.
• Danger in Kashmir (Princeton University Press, 1954). ISBN 1400875234.
• The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia, 1938-1948: The Failure of Co-existence (Oxford University Press, 1959), ISBN 978-1-4008-7963-2.
• Poland Between East and West: Soviet and German Diplomacy toward Poland, 1919-1933 (Princeton University Press, 1963). ISBN 978-0691624631.
• Detente in Europe: Real or Imaginary? (Princeton University Press, 1972). ISBN 978-0691644295.
• Conflict, Compromise, and Conciliation: West German-Polish Normalization 1966-1976 (with Louis Ortmayer, University of Denver, 1975).
• The Politics of Soviet Policy Formation: Khrushchev's Innovative Policies in Education and Agriculture (University of Denver, 1976).

Philipp Harmer, an Austrian citizen, filed a lawsuit claiming that Josef Korbel's family is in inappropriate possession of artwork belonging to his great-grandfather, the German entrepreneur Karl Nebrich. Like most other ethnic Germans living in Czechoslovakia, Nebrich and his family were expelled from the country under the postwar "Beneš decrees", and left behind artwork and furniture in an apartment subsequently given to Korbel's family, before they also were forced to flee the country.[5][10]

• Guide to the Josef Korbel papers at the University of Denver Retrieved 2014-09-26.