Hans von Kessel (journalist)

Friedrich Kurt Harald Hans von Kessel (born May 27, 1894 in Wiesbaden , † June 24, 1973 in Hamburg ) was a German journalist and political activist.

Live and act

Youth and First World War

Hans von Kessel was born as the son of Christian Karl August Friedrich Eugen von Kessel (born May 19, 1852 in Saarlouis; † July 5, 1907 in Zurich) and his wife Luise (born November 14, 1867 in Paris; † June 13, 1956 in Goslar), née Moeser, born. Kessel was the younger brother of the police officer Eugen von Kessel . In his youth, some of which he spent in Zurich , Kessel attended high school. Then he hit the officer career. From 1914 to 1918 von Kessel took part in the First World War as a staff officer and adjutant to Colonel Wilhelm Reinhard . After the war he retired as first lieutenant. D. off.

November Revolution and Weimar Republic

After the outbreak of the November Revolution of 1918, Kessel took part in the recruitment, organization and arming as well as in the operations of the so-called Reinhard Volunteer Regiment set up by his boss , which in the winter of 1918/1919 in favor of the provisional government of Friedrich Ebert against the socialist revolutionaries in the Berlin area went ahead.

Together with his brother Eugen, then head of Reinhard's 3rd patrol company z. b. V. with quasi police functions, in which numerous former officers of the old political police had gathered, Kessel set up a new police force, the so-called Green Police or Security Guard, on behalf of Reinhard and Gustav Noske from June 1919 . The operations of this troop, which included the later Gestapo officers Martin Kirschbaum , Konrad Nussbaum and Reinhold Heller , were directed primarily against the communists. Later that year, Kessel took over the intelligence department in the command of the security police, while his brother took over the leadership of the Charlottenburg police department. At this time Kessel established numerous connections of an intelligence service type as well as connections to conservative and anti-nationalist groups and personalities inside and outside the police, which he could use as a source of information in later years.

During the Kapp Putsch of March 1920, Kessel acted as a liaison officer of the security police with the putschists. At the time, Eugen von Kessel was in pre-trial detention in connection with a trial for being jointly responsible for the shooting of 24 People's Marines by a subordinate, freed by the putschists and later acquitted in court.

After the national elements were removed from the police following the failure of the coup, Kessel completed his legal studies while his brother went into industry. On March 21, 1922 he married in Stockholm Brita Eklund (born May 16, 1899 in Stockholm), a daughter of the director Gustav Eklund and Marinna von Utfall.

Kessel later became editor-in-chief of the conservative-monarchist Kreuzzeitung , then a correspondent and employee of various newspapers, such as the Albinsteiner Zeitung , which belongs to the Hugenberg Group, and the Leipziger Neuesten Nachrichten, as well as foreign correspondent for Swedish newspapers - mainly Nya Dagligt Allehanda - in Berlin.

time of the nationalsocialism

Following the National Socialist " seizure of power ", Kessel first tried to make himself popular with the new rulers, whom he recognized by publishing the book Handgranaten und Rote Fahnen , a reminder of the revolutionary period after the First World War - in which he played his role in the Describes the fight against the "red terror" of 1918/1919 in a very favorable light - as it were recommended as a "national man" for higher tasks. At the same time he took part in the investigations that his brother Eugen carried out in connection with the Reichstag fire of February 1933 and the murder of the DNVP politician Ernst Oberfohren , both of which relied on former comrades from the Reinhard Regiment, who were now in important positions, as sources of information with the Gestapo and the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg had advanced and provided the brothers with a lot of secret information. According to the publications of the research group led by Walther Hofer and Eduard Calic , the Kessel brothers finally came to the conclusion during their investigations that, contrary to the results of the Reichstag fire trial before the Leipzig Reichsgericht, the fire was not the work of a single perpetrator - the Dutchman van der Lubbe , but that the fire was caused by the National Socialists, who simply used Lubbe as a scapegoat.

Shortly before the Röhm affair from June 30 to July 2, 1934 - during which his brother Eugen, among others, was shot - Kessel fled to Stockholm . He later claimed that an attempt had been made to lure him back to Berlin with a forged telegram and to include it in the murderous incident of those days, which he recognized as a ruse. Instead, Kessel stayed in Sweden until after 1945.

post war period

In the 1950s, Kessel settled in West Germany, where he died in 1973. In the post-war period he wrote, among other things, a factual report about his experiences between 1933 and 1934.

Kessel's estate is now in the so-called Depositum Hofer in the Federal Archives in Bern.

Fonts

• Hand grenades and red flags. A factual report from the fight against red Berlin 1918–1920 , 1933.