Schulenburg, Friedrich-Werner Erdmann Matthias Johann Bernhard Erich Graf von der, born 20-11-1875, in Kemberg, 
Germany, in the Prussian Province of Saxony, son to Count Bernhard Friedrich Wilhelm von der Schulenburg, he was from the Brandenburgish Schulenburg family, which was part of the Uradel (or old nobility). Friedrich-Werner was distantly related to the 17th-Century Saxon Generalfeldmarschall Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg 
and was a cousin to Friedrich Graf von der Schulenburg. After one year serving in the army, he studied law in Lausanne, Munich, and Berlin, and in 1901 joined the Foreign Office’s consular service as a junior civil servant (Assessor). By 1903, he had been appointed as vice-consul at Germany’s consulate general in Barcelona, and in the years that followed he found himself working at consulates in Lemberg, Prague, Warsaw, and Tbilisi.
Friedrich-Werner was married from 1908 to 1910 with Elisabeth von Sobbe (Burg bei Magdeburg, 1875–1955), and had a daughter: Christa-Wernfriedes Hanna Margarete Engelberta Gräfin von der Schulenburg (1908-1993), married to Max Wolfgang, Freiherr von Lindenfels ( 1908-1982)
With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Schulenburg returned to the military, and after the First Battle of the Marne
was promoted to Hauptmann in October 1914 and put in charge of an artillery battery. In 1915, he was posted as German liaison officer to the Ottoman Army 
on the Armenian Front. In October 1915, he arrived in Erzurum and succeed Max Erwin Scheubner-Richter 
a Baltic German political activist and an influential early member of the Nazi Party, as the German Vice Consul.
Scheubner-Richter was a participant in the Beer Hall Putsch, marching on the Feldherrnhalle 
in Munich along with two thousand NSDAP 
members. On 09-11-1923, Scheubner-Richter, walking arm-in-arm with Hitler, was shot in the lungs and died instantly as he and others marched toward armed guards during the Putsch. Hitler was brought down and his right shoulder was dislocated as Scheubner-Richter’s body fell after being shot dead. Scheubner-Richter was the only “first-tier” Nazi leader to die during the Beer Hall Putsch, and of all the early party members who died in the Putsch, Hitler claimed Scheubner-Richter to be the only “irreplaceable loss”. In 1933, the establishment of Nazi Germany led to Scheubner-Richter being venerated as a national hero. Scheubner-Richter was one of the most prominent Blutzeuge, 
a term for Nazis killed before the NSDAP’s rise to power who were considered martyrs of the Nazi movement. Scheubner-Richter’s name was featured on a panel attached to the Feldherrnhalle with the names of the Nazis who died in the Beer Hall Putsch. The panel was guarded by an honor guard of the SS, 
and every passer-by was expected to perform the Hitler salute. Numerous streets in towns across Germany were renamed after Scheubner-Richter. In 1935, the Ehrentempel (“Honor Temples”) 
were erected at Königsplatz in Munich to house the sarcophagi of Scheubner-Richter and the other Blutzeuge that died in the Beer Hall Putsch.
Blutzeuge (German for “blood witness”) was a term used in Nazi Germany during the early 20th century for members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) and associated organizations considered to be martyrs. Blutzeuge was used in Nazi propaganda in the 1930s and 1940s to depict a hero cult of “fallen” Nazis who had been murdered by opponents in the political violence in Germany during the Weimar Republic and after the Nazi seizure of control in January 1933. Adolf Hitler dedicated his book Mein Kampf 
to the sixteen NSDAP members killed in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. 
Other victims were Andreas Bauriedl, hatter, 
born 04-05-1879 in Aschaffenburg. Bauriedl was hit in the abdomen, killing him and causing him to fall on the Nazi flag, which had fallen to the ground when its flagbearer, Heinrich Wilhelm Trambauer, 
was severely wounded. Bauriedl’s blood-soaked flag later became the Nazi relic known as the Blutfahne. As a standard bearer during the Hitler putsch in 1923, after the exchange of fire at Munich’s Feldherrnhalle, he took the flag of his SA unit, which was soaked in the blood of a killed fellow putschist. This flag became one of the strongest symbols of National Socialist propaganda as the “blood flag”. Trambauer himself was so badly mistreated by an SS superior during a dispute in 1932 that he suffered permanent brain damage and died mentally deranged in a psychiatric institution, on 16-10-1942, age 43..
The new Blutfahne 
carrier became Jakob Grimminger 
and another participant in in the Putz.was Theodor von der Pfordten, 
In 1916, Schulenberg took over the command of the Georgian Legion in the struggle against the Russian Empire, until its collapse in 1917. The World War I-era Georgian Legion was formed in 1915 by Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, a former German vice-consul in Tiflis, who then served as a German liaison officer with the Ottoman 3rd Army. 
The acting commander Hafiz Hakki Pasha 
(January 12 – February 1915) died of typhus in Erzerum in 1915. Mahmut Kamil Paşa 
(February 1915 – February 1916) took the command.
Schulenberg was supported by the German Empire-based Committee of Independent Georgia. The reinforcements were raised largely from refugees from the Muslim Georgian areas and Lazistan, as well as from Prisoners of War.
During his time in the military, he received the Iron Cross 
and some high Ottoman honours. After the German Empire’s collapse, he was captured by the British and interned on the Mediterranean island of Prinkipo (now called Büyükada), returning to Germany in 1919. Schulenburg was then reinstated in the Foreign Office Service and became German consul in Beirut.
Schulenburg served as the German ambassador to Iran from 1922 until 1931, when his visit to the ancient monuments at Persepolis resulted in his name being engraved at the Gate of All Nations. From 1931 until 1934 he served as the German ambassador to Romania, before being posted to Moscow as the last German envoy to the Soviet Union before the invasion of that country by Germany in 1941.
In the 1930s, Schulenburg acquired the Burg Falkenberg, 
a castle in the Upper Palatinate. He had it converted and renovated to serve as a home for his retirement. This monumental work was undertaken between 1936 and 1939.
After the First World War, Schulenburg got his diplomatic career going again, becoming, among other things, an envoy to Tehran and Bucharest. In 1934, he was appointed German ambassador to the Soviet Union. Schulenburg favoured an agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union, and was instrumental in bringing about the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939.
After the Soviet invasion of Poland, despite the state of war between Germany and Poland, he used his position as the most senior ambassador in Moscow to allow Polish diplomats (including ambassador Wacław Grzybowski) 
to leave the Soviet Union, when the Soviets tried to arrest them.
Schulenburg was kept in the dark about Germany’s planned invasion of the Soviet Union. He only knew for certain that the invasion was taking place a few hours before it was launched, when Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop 
cabled him a message to read to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov 
justifying the invasion. He did, however, get suspicions of what his government was planning to do in the spring of 1941. To the last, he tried to thwart any talk of invasion by such means as hinting at the Soviet Union’s military strength and the unassailability of its industrial reserves. He is quoted as having said to Molotov on the morning of the attack: “For the last six years I’ve personally tried to do everything I could to encourage friendship between the Soviet Union and Germany. But you can’t stand in the way of destiny.” A few weeks before the invasion, Schulenberg tried to warn the Soviet Ambassador to Germany Vladimir Dekanozov 
of his suspicions, but Dekanozov dismissed the evidence of military preparations as false British propaganda.
Death and burial ground of Schulenburg, Friedrich-Werner Erdmann Matthias Johann Bernhard Erich Graf von der.
After the German invasion began on 22-06-1941, Schulenburg was interned by the Soviets for a few weeks, then was transferred to the Soviet-Turkish border for repatriation. Thereafter, Schulenburg was assigned as leader of the Russia Committee, a Foreign Office post with no political influence that neutralized him.
He later joined the conspiracy to overthrow Hitler in the hope of reaching a quick peace agreement in the east. He was ready and willing to negotiate even with Joseph Stalin
on behalf of the plotters. Had they been successful in overthrowing Adolf Hitler, Schulenburg would have been a high-ranking official in the Foreign Office; some sources had him listed as foreign minister. After the failure of the attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944, Schulenburg was arrested and charged with high treason. On 23-10-1944, the Volksgerichtshof (“People’s Court”) under jurist Roland Freisler 
sentenced him to death,
and he was hanged on 
10-11-1944 at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. Schulenburg, Friedrich-Werner Erdmann Matthias Johann Bernhard Erich Graf von der.is buried At the Plötzensee prison, Berlin, cemetery, in an anonymous grave like all Plötzensee Nazi victims.
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