Otto Kiep

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Otto Kiep

Otto Carl Kiep (born July 7, 1886 in Saltcoats , Scotland ; † August 26, 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German diplomat and active in the resistance against National Socialism .

Life

He was a son of the timber importer Johann Nikolaus "Johannes" Kiep , who came from Hamburg, but lived in Glasgow for decades and was there temporarily honorary consul of the German Reich . His mother Charlotte Kiep (née Rottenburg) was the daughter of the businessman Franz Napoleon von Rottenburg and sister of the head of the Reich Chancellery and Bismarck confidante Franz Johannes von Rottenburg , but she grew up as a foster daughter with her Glasgow uncle, the chemicals dealer Louis Leisler . He spent his childhood in Glasgow with his three brothers and sister. The entrepreneur Louis Leisler Kiep was his older brother and the politician Walther Leisler Kiep his nephew. Although the children were British citizens from birth (and the father had also become naturalized) they were brought up in a German national spirit. According to Kiep's memoirs, they were "repeatedly reminded that we are Germans and must love our German fatherland before the English one [...] So we were all brought up to be German nationalists and have manfully asserted our Germanness through some fights in the schoolyard."

Until confirmation (Easter 1900) he attended Hillhead High School in Glasgow, then he moved to Germany to the grammar school in the monastery school Ilfeld , where he was a member of the Zechonia student association . After graduating from high school, which he passed in 1905, Otto Kiep studied law in Berlin, Munich and Kiel, after six semesters he passed the first state examination in 1908 and joined the Prussian judiciary as a trainee lawyer . Kiep was in 1909 at the University of Leipzig to Dr. jur. PhD . He did his military service as a one-year volunteer with the Oldenburg Dragoon Regiment No. 19 . Parallel to his legal clerkship, he studied English law as an external student at the University of London and graduated in 1912 with a Bachelor of Law . In 1913 he was appointed lieutenant in the reserve. He took part in the First World War as an officer in the X Reserve Corps , and while on leave at home, he passed the assessor examination in early 1915.

Otto Kiep

After the end of the war, Kiep joined the Foreign Office of the German Reich in early 1919 . As an expert on English law, he was a member of the peace delegation in Versailles under Foreign Minister Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau . From 1920 to 1921 he was legation secretary at the Embassy in The Hague and then until 1923 at the German-American War Damage Commission in Washington. From 1923 to 1926, Kiep was a ministerial advisor for economics and finance in the Reich Chancellery. On January 16, 1925, he became press chief of the Reich government Hans Luther . From 1927 to 1930 Kiep belonged to the German People's Party (DVP). Otto Kiep was a counselor at the German Embassy in Washington, DC from 1926 to 1931 and was Consul General, 1st class in New York from 1931 to 1933 .

After he had attended a banquet in honor of Albert Einstein in March 1933 , the National Socialists demanded his replacement. In August 1933, Kiep took temporary retirement, but in the following years, as envoy on behalf of the Federal Foreign Office, he led various economic negotiations in South America and East Asia. In 1937 he became a member of the NSDAP . From 1937 to 1939, Kiep was the first German representative in the London Non-Interference Committee for Spain .

In the Second World War he served as Major d. R. Adviser in the Foreign Office / Defense of the High Command of the Wehrmacht . Otto Kiep later made connections to resistance circles, to the Solf circle around Hanna Solf and the Kreisau circle around Helmuth James Graf von Moltke . Moltke warned Kiep ago infiltrated into the Solf Circle Gestapo - spies . This warning led to the simultaneous arrest of Moltke; Kiep was arrested on January 16, 1944. Kiep was sentenced to death by the People's Court under Roland Freisler on the day of the main hearing, July 1, 1944, and was hanged in Plötzensee on August 26, 1944 . Of the conspirators in the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 , Kiep was on the lists of the Beck / Goerdeler shadow cabinet as head of the Reich press in the event of a successful coup.

Street sign in Ballenstedt

Otto C. Kiep was married to the later diplomat Hanna Kiep , née Alves, who was also arrested in January 1944 and imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp for six months . The two had two daughters and a son. His daughter Hanna Clements (* 1933) and her husband, the author Bruce Clements , have published several biographical works about Kiep.

In the small town of Ballenstedt in Anhalt , where Kiep's parents lived after their return to Germany, a street is named after him.

literature

  • Bruce Clements: From Ice Set Free. The Story of Otto Kiep . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York NY 1972, ISBN 0-374-32468-9 ( A Sunburst Book ).
  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 2: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: G – K. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X .
  • OC Kiep: My way of life 1886–1944. Records while in custody. Ed .: Hildegard Rauch, Hanna Clements. Munich 1982, DNB  992040140 (improved new edition with an afterword by Johannes Tuchel ( persecution, imprisonment and death of Otto Carl Kiep , pp. 185–224), Lukas, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86732-124-2 ).
  • Christiane Scheidemann: Hanna Kiep. In: Ursula Müller, Christiane Scheidemann (Hrsg.): Skilful, sent and sent. Women in the diplomatic service. Olzog, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-7892-8041-0 .
  • Peter Steinbach, Johannes Tuchel, Ursula Adam: Lexicon of Resistance, 1933–1945 (= Beck'sche series. 1061). CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-43861-X , p. 108 ( limited preview in the Google book search).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic ”online
  2. ^ Stefan Manz: Migrants and internees. Germans in Glasgow, 1864-1918. Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden / Stuttgart 2003, pp. 70–71.
  3. ^ Stefan Manz: Migrants and internees. Germans in Glasgow, 1864-1918. Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden / Stuttgart 2003, pp. 62–63.
  4. ↑ a b Otto Carl Kiep at www.kiep-stiftung.de
  5. ^ Stefan Manz: Migrants and internees. Germans in Glasgow 1864-1918. Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden / Stuttgart 2003, pp. 224–225.
  6. ↑ Otto Carl Kiep: My way of life 1886-1944. Records while in custody. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 35.
  7. ↑ Otto Carl Kiep: My way of life 1886-1944. Records while in custody. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 37.
  8. ↑ Otto Carl Kiep; Hanna Clements, Hildegard Rauch (ed.): My way of life 1886-1944. Records while in custody. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 8.
  9. ↑ Otto Carl Kiep: My way of life 1886-1944. Records while in custody. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 68.
  10. ↑ a b Otto Kiep in the online version of the edition files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic
  11. ↑ Otto Carl Kiep (PDF; 3.6 MB), reading sample, p. 9
  12. ↑ Bengt von zur Mühlen (ed.): The defendants of July 20 before the People's Court. Chronos Film GmbH, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-931054-06-3 , p. 320.
  13. ↑ a b c Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel (eds.): Kiep, Otto Carl . In: Lexicon of Resistance 1933–1945. Beck, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-37451-4 , p. 108.
  14. ↑ Bengt von zur Mühlen (ed.): The defendants of July 20 before the People's Court. P. 318.
  15. ↑ Bengt von zur Mühlen (ed.): The defendants of July 20 before the People's Court. P. 81.
  16. ↑ DNB 1043728236
personal data
SURNAME Kiep, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kiep, Otto Carl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat, resistance to National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Saltcoats , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH August 26, 1944
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee