Otto Meissner (born March 13, 1880 in Bischweile (today:
Bischwiller) in Alsace - died May 27, 1953 in Munich) was head of the
Office of the Reich President during the entire period of the Weimar
Republic under Friedrich Ebert and Paul
von Hindenburg and, finally,
at the beginning of the Nazi era under Adolf Hitler.
The son of a postal official, Meissner studied law
in Strasbourg from 1898 to 1903, where he also became a member of the
Straßburg Student Youth Fraternity (Burschenschaft) Germania.
Later he also studied in Berlin and earned his Doctor of Laws in 1908, at the age of 28, in Erlangen,
Bavaria. Afterwards, be became a bureacrat for the national railroad,
the Reichsbahn, in Strasbourg. Between 1915 and 1917 he participated
in the First World War in an infantry regiment. Up to 1919 he was more active behind the front,
first in Bucharest, Rumania, then in Kiev, and finally as a German business
agent for the Ukrainian government.
Thanks to his good contacts, in 1919 Meissner became “Acting
Advisor in the Bureau of the Reich President” (who at that time
was the socialist Friedrich Ebert), and by 1920 rose to the position
of “Ministerial Director and Head of the Bureau of the Reich President.”
Ebert named Meissner to the post of State Secretary in 1923.
When Hitler fused the functions of Head of State (here, the Reich President)
and the Head of Government (the Chancellery) in 1934, Meissner's
office was renamed the “Presidential Chancellery” and restricted
in its responsibilities to representative and formal matters. In 1937,
Meissner was appointed to the newly-created position of “State
Minister of the Rank of a Reich Minister and Chief of the Presidential
Chancellery of the Führer and Reich Chancellor.”
After the Second
World War, Meissner was arrested by
the Allies and interrogated as a witness
in the Nuremberg
Trials. In July 1947, he appeared as
a character witness for the accused former
State Secretary Dr. Schlegelberger. In 1949,
he was finally prosecuted himself in the
“Wilhelmstrasse
trial,” but the court acquitted
him on April 14. Two years later, in May
of 1949, he was accused again, in Munich,
and adjudged a fellow traveler. His appeal
was turned down, but the proceedings called
to a halt in January 1952.
In 1950, Meissner published a memoir covering his unusual bureaucrat's
career in a book entitled State
Secretary under Ebert, Hindenburg and Hitler.
Meissner, who lived with his family in the Palace of the Reich President
between 1929 and 1939, undoubtedly enjoyed major influence upon the
Reich presidents, especially Hindenburg. Together with Kurt
von Schleicher and a few others, Meissner, in the years 1929 and 1939, furthered the
dissolution of the parliamentary system by means of a civil presidential
cabinet.
His role in the appointment of Hitler to Reich Chanceller
in December 1932-January 1933 remains a controversy among historians.
As member of the “Camarilla,” Meissner was certainly no small
influence as State Secretary, due to his close relations with Reich
President von Hindenburg. Together with Oskar von Hindenburg and Franz
von Papen, Meissner organized the negotiations with Hitler to depose
von Schleicher and appoint Hitler to the post of Reich Chancellor. For
the Nazis' part, the talks were facilitated through Wilhelm Keppler, Joachim
von Ribbentrop and the banker Kurt Freiherr von Schröder,
a former officer and head of the old-guard conservative “Herrenklub”
(Gentlemen's club) in Berlin, in which von Papen was also active. Neither Hitler nor Hindenburg,
as of the end of 1932, would have initiated contact to one another,
so great was their mutual distaste for each other.
Meissner submitted his resignation
in 1933, but was turned down, whereupon
he assumed responsibilty primarily for delegational
duties. In 1937, the Nazi regime raised
him to the rank of Reich Minister, with
the title, “Chief of the Presidential Chancellery
of the Führer
and the Reich Chancellor. But politically,
his influence in the Hitler regime was distinctly
minor.