Peter Kleist

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Bruno Peter Kleist (born January 29, 1904 in Marienwerder ; † November 6, 1971 in Munich ) was a German political writer and diplomat. He was particularly interested in Ostpolitik . During the time of National Socialism , Kleist worked in a leading position in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO), which was headed by the Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg . After 1945 he made a name for himself in the still young Federal Republic of Germany as a right-wing extremist journalist and book author on topics related to German Ostpolitik.

biography

Born the son of a government councilor, Kleist attended high schools in Gdansk and Berlin . He received his Abitur in 1923 at the Askanisches Gymnasium . From the winter semester 1923 to the summer semester 1925 he studied chemistry at the Technical University of Danzig. In addition, he devoted himself to language studies. Kleist mastered several foreign languages ​​(English, French, Scandinavian languages, Polish and Russian). In 1924 he became a member of the Corps Baltica Danzig . Kleist then studied law from the winter semester 1925 to the summer semester 1929 and from the summer semester 1931 to the winter semester 1931 in Berlin and from the winter semester 1929 to the winter semester 1930 in Halle / Saale . After at the Higher Regional Court Naumburg / Saale Kleist end 1931 with a thesis on the international recognition of Soviet Russia to Dr. jur. (graded magna cum laude ). From the beginning of 1932 to the summer of 1936, Kleist worked in the Berlin representation of the Prussian provinces of East Prussia and Grenzmark Posen-West Prussia . In 1931 he joined the NSDAP . Thus he belonged to the preferred group of the "old party comrades".

At the same time, in early 1932, Kleist became a lecturer in foreign policy and commercial law at the German School of Politics in Berlin. From 1934 to mid-1936 Kleist was managing director of the German University of Politics in Berlin. He then worked until the end of 1942 as a consultant for Ostpolitik in Joachim von Ribbentrop's office . At the same time as his position as advisor for Ostpolitik, Kleist was chairman of the German-Polish Society. On August 31, 1939, Kleist formulated his written request in the main section East of the Ribbentrop office that he should have access to the telegrams from the Foreign Office for his area of ​​work (Baltic States, Poland, Soviet Union).

According to Kleist's own statement later, he headed the “Poland Department” of the Ribbentrop office from 1936 . In the 1930s he was also promoted to SS- Obersturmbannführer.

At the beginning of August 1940, Peter Kleist, in his function as Ribbentrop's "East Expert " and member of the Security Service (SD), held talks with Kazys Schkirpa , the former Lithuanian general staff member and military attaché and his country's ambassador in Berlin. This was preceded by a conversation between Shkirpa and Georg Leibbrandt in the Eden Hotel in Berlin on June 20, 1940, four days after the Red Army marched into Lithuania . As a result of this conversation with Leibbrandt and Kleist, Shkirpa formed the paramilitary , anti-Semitic Lithuanian Activists' Front (LAF) from Lithuanian emigrants , whose task it was to prepare acts of sabotage and demoralization in the Soviet hinterland as "Special Group A". The political goal of Shkirpa was an uprising in Lithuania, which was to break out after the invasion of the German troops.

From the end of 1942 and mid-1945 Kleist was in the position of ministerial director of the " Ostland " department in the East Ministry and as a liaison officer of the ministry to Army Group North . He also worked on the staff of the Deputy Leader as a representative of the NSDAP in matters of foreign policy.

Kleist was interned from mid-1945 to mid-1947. In the post-war period, Kleist became editor and chief editor of various neo-fascist newspapers and magazines. As editor-in-chief he published the soldier newspaper ; he also worked for Nation Europa magazine . The historian of contemporary history Hans Buchheim judged his publications after 1945 in 1954: "It is out of the question to even mention the myriad of distortions, glossing over and untruths, let alone to analyze them and thus to drain the swamp of insincerity."

In his memoirs Between Hitler and Stalin , published in 1950 , Kleist claimed that during his diplomatic explorations in Stockholm in 1943 the initiative for talks about a separate peace came from the Soviet Union. Some historians initially followed Kleist in his presentation until his claim turned out to be incorrect in the late 1980s.

In 1958 Kleist was one of the founders of the Deutsche Wochen-Zeitung based in Hanover, where he was responsible for foreign policy issues.

In 1960 he founded the " Society for Free Journalism " (GfP) together with other former members of the NSDAP and the SS . In 1973 his book Wer ist Willy Brandt ? in the 12th edition by then. No further publications of his books followed.

On November 6, 1971, he left a Munich clinic with an untreatable tumor disease and died of suicide on the same day.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Kleist, Bruno Peter . In: Hans Nehlep (Ed.): Album Academicum des Corps Baltica-Borussia Danzig 1860-1970. Berlin 1973; revised and supplemented by Degenhardt Müller, Hans-Wolfgang Nehlep and Jürgen Protz, Essen 2000, p. 201
  2. ↑ Peter Kleist: Final Solution for the Free World? The decline of western politics . Edited by Waldemar Schütz , Hannover 1972, pp. 9-10.
  3. ↑ a b c d Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is driving a catastrophe ..." . The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Vögel, Munich 2006, p. 74. (Source: Kleist: You were there too ; Otto Bräutigam's war diary , p. 171.)
  4. ^ Peter Kleist: Hammer, sickle and swastika . In: Die Zeit , No. 41/1949
  5. ^ Institute for Contemporary History (ed.): Files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP. Part 1. Oldenbourg 1983, p. 527, ISBN 3-486-50181-X .
  6. ↑ Carsten Roschke: The courted "Urfeind" . Poland in National Socialist propaganda 1934–1939. Tectum Verlag , Marburg 2000, p. 75, ISBN 3-8288-8180-7 . (Source: Peter Kleist: Between Hitler and Stalin . Bonn 1950, p. 14.).
  7. ↑ a b c d Alexander Slavinas: The staged uprising . In: Die Zeit , No. 26/1993.
  8. ↑ a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945, 2nd edition, Frankfurt a. M. 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 315.
  9. ↑ Hans Buchheim: On Kleist's “You were there too” In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 1954 (2), page 182 (PDF, sheet 64–79; 5.1 MB).
  10. ↑ ZEIT stories . In: Die Zeit , No. 23/1989
  11. ^ Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel : Bridge with Madame Kollontaj . In: Die Zeit , No. 40/1983.
  12. ^ Horst W. Schmollinger: The German Reich Party . In: Richard Stöss (Ed.): Party Handbook . Vol. 2, pp. 1130-1131 (footnote 63).
personal data
SURNAME Kleist, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kleist, Bruno Peter (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political writer and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Marienwerder, West Prussia
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 1971
Place of death Munich