Kurt Georg Kiesinger

Legal career during the Weimar Republic

Kiesinger, who desired to live in a major city, went to study law at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin in 1926. In Berlin, he entered into the (couleur wearing) Roman Catholic corporation KStV Askania-Burgundia Berlin, after having already been a member of the (also Catholic) KStV Alamannia Tübingen during his time in Tübingen from 1925 onward. Although the Askania wore couleur, they did not engage in the traditional fencing, were positive towards democracy and supported the Weimar Republic. The corporation regularly held lecture events, during which political, social and literary topics were discussed. These were organised by newly-engaged Kiesinger. He was a good orator and held several of these lectures. Already in the summer of 1927, he was elected the corporation's Senior (leader).^[9]

Throughout the many social events the Askania organised, Kiesinger met many prominent Catholic and democratic politicians, which were primarily members of the Centre Party and former active members of the corporation. Among these were the former presidential candidate and chancellor Wilhelm Marx, the mayor of Cologne Konrad Adenauer, the former minister of justice Erich Emminger, the former Prussian secretary of state Aloys Lammers, his brother Clemens Lammers and the politician Hermann Pünder. Several of the former active members were, however, opponents of the Weimar Republic and sympathised with Nazism. One of the major influences on the younger members of the corporation was the devout, conservative Catholic and professor of history Martin Spahn, who was a member of the Centre Party until 1921, switching to the anti-democratic German National People's Party (DNVP) and later tentatively supporting Nazism towards the end of the Weimar Republic. Spahn is considered an important link between political Catholicism and Nazism in Germany.^[10]

In 1931, Kiesinger passed his first state examination with very good results. Thus, in 1931, he became an Alter Herr (i.e. non-active member) of his corporation. Afterwards, he began his preparatory service (Referendariat) at the Amtsgericht Köpenick. Since Friedrich Haux had died by this time, he had to search for a new source of income, since the preparatory service of legal trainees at this time was unpaid. Since he was very knowledgeable about the law, he began working as a private law teacher (Repetitor), preparing law students for the first state examination. He held his classes either before his service at the Amtsgericht in the morning or in the afterwards in the evening.

Due to Spahn's influence, by the end of the 1920s, the member corporations of the Kartellverband (KV) and the member students increasingly turned hostile towards the Weimar Republic. At the same time, the principle of belonging the Roman Catholic church became less stringently enforced.^[11] Kiesinger had visited the Politisches Kolleg, a conservative think tank closely tied to the DNVP, already before his first state examination, in which Spahn attempted to propagate his right-wing conservative viewpoints.^[12] During the increasing conflicts between the former active members that rejected such views and active members who were more supportive, Kiesinger defended this shift to the right.^[13] Through the mediation of an aristocratic friend, with whom he worked together at the Amtsgericht Köpenick, he met several far-right nobles that had organised in the Deutscher Herrenklub, of which he became a member.^[14] From 1931, the active members of the Askania increasingly adopted Nazi ideology.^[15] In the KV as a whole, however, entering the Nazi Party (NSDAP) was still considered unacceptable as late as the summer of 1932.

Legal career under the Nazi regime

After Hitler was appointed chancellor and the Machtergreifung began, the ban of corporation members joining the Nazi Party was lifted on 23 April 1933. Kiesinger belonged to those young academics who "infected by Nazi ideology, by a strong sense of German national pride, entered the Nazi movement".^[16] Kiesinger joined the party on 1 May 1933, holding the membership number 2,633,930.^[17][18][19] He also entered the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK). As to his motives for joining, Kiesinger later posited several different reasons. In his memoirs, he states that he desired to limited excesses of the regime, and had entered the party to change its ideology. He further writes that his motive at the beginning was to counter antisemitic racial propaganda.^[20] Kiesinger remained a fully inactive member until June 1934, when his Zellenleiter mentioned his membership and demanded that he pay his membership fees, which he did from that month onward. Additionally, between 1939 and 1940, he acted as a Blockleiter.

By Kiesinger's own account, the murders during the Night of the Long Knives on 30 June 1934 made him realise the criminal character of the Nazi regime. He passed his second state examination with very good grades in October 1934 and was offered a position as a judge at the Kammergericht, combined with being able to continue working as a law teacher. Kiesinger rejected this offer since, by his own account, he refused to voluntarily enter into the services of a criminal regime. Instead, he settled down to work as a lawyer at the Kammergericht and expanded his private law teaching services. Unlike the vast majority of lawyers and other legal practitioners at the time, Kiesinger did not enter the National Socialist Association of Legal Professionals (NSRB), which regulated the coordination of clients to different lawyers.^[21]

Little is known about Kiesinger's activities as a defence lawyer. In two documented cases he aided persons wanted by the Gestapo. He was able to help them because he had a certain form of influence as a Nazi Party member which protected his clients.^[22]

Student functionary

On 8 July 1933, the Nazi-dominated German Student Union, which claimed to have authority over all German students, passed a decree which was supposed to enforce Gleichschaltung on all student corporations. Three new guidelines were to be followed by all corporations: Firstly, every corporation would need a leader in line with the Führerprinzip. Although not explicitly mentioned, every one of these leaders was expected to be a national socialist.^[23] Secondly, the Aryan ancestry of new members was to be controlled up to three generations back. Thirdly, the stipulations of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service were to be applied to current members.^[24] This led to the expulsion of members the Nazis considered Jewish.

Kiesinger was made leader (Korporationsführer) of the Askania on 28 July 1933. With a Nazi Party member at the helm, the process of Gleichschaltung began for the corporation. The historian Gassert is of the opinion that Kiesinger was named leader because he was a compromise candidate between the more democratically minded older, former members and the more national socialist younger, active members.^[25] Kiesinger surrounded himself with a staff to which Franz-Josef Spahn, son of Martin Spahn, also belonged, and which published a newly founded magazine, called the Askanenblätter. In the first print of the magazine, published on 22 September 1933, an article authored by Kiesinger was published, in which he welcomed the development of Germany toward a dictatorship. He described the establishment of the German people's unity as the "sense of the current historical event", referring to the possible annexation of the German territories lost following World War I, as well as Austria. Kiesinger further mentioned that the continued existence of the Catholic corporations was up to the decision of Adolf Hitler alone.^[26]

This article and several other texts written by Kiesinger were kept secret by both him and the Askania for many decades because they risked embarrassment for Kiesinger and the corporation. They were uncovered by the Berlin historian Michael F. Feldkamp, who searched through archives of the corporation. During this research, a form was uncovered which was added as an appendix to the Askanenblätter issue of September 1933: It was a questionnaire about the Aryan ancestry of all active and former members of the Askania, with additional questions about activities within the corporation, military service, war decorations, whether or not members had seen frontline service, membership in the Nazi Party, the SA, SS and the Stahlhelm. The questionnaire also inferred about the religious affiliation of the members and their ancestors three generations back. Within three weeks, this questionnaire was to be answered and sent back to Kiesinger.^[27] Later, in February 1934, he apologised for the questionnaire and stated that it was appended to the Askanenblätter issue without his knowledge or approval.^[28]

Kiesinger energetically continued the Gleichschaltung. The Askania had to give up some of their real estate to the Nazi-backed Kameradschaften, which were intended as a substitute for all previous student corporations. On 31 January 1934, the principle of belonging to the Roman Catholic church was abandoned by the KV, leading to several Catholic corporations leaving the KV. Kiesinger enforced religious freedom within the Askania and prevented the corporation's dissolution. The restrictions on the corporations became heavier the more the Nazis consolidated their power. In 1935, 105 corporations of the KV were bannned. Members had to endure professional disadvantages. On 15 January 1937, the active members of the Askania ceased all activities. The group of former members had to be dissolved in 1938.^[29]

Civil servant in the Foreign Office

Kiesinger received his conscription order in 1940. However, to escape military service in the Wehrmacht, he took a position in the Foreign Office under foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop which he obtained through the mediation of his former student Karl-Heinz Gerstner.^[30] There, he became the deputy leader of the office's broadcasting department (Rundfunkpolitische Abteilung), which responsible for the monitoring and influencing of foreign broadcasting.^[31] In this position, he was, among other tasks, responsible to keep connections with the Ministry of Propaganda, led by Joseph Goebbels, with whom his department frequently clashed.

Despite his statement to the contrary in 1947, Kiesinger was mentioned as the deputy leader of the broadcasting department in the distribution plan of the ministry. He was the only scientific advisor (Wissenschaftlicher Hilfsarbeiter, WHA) who attained such a high position, equal to a ministerial director (Ministerialdirigent), directly beneath those of the secretaries of state and thus directly beneath the political leadership.^[32] In a 1943 report of the Foreign Office, Kiesinger was mentioned as responsible for coordinating international broadcasting relations including the legal-technical aspects of broadcasting, as well as responsible for "general propaganda", coordination between the different departments for specific foreign nations and coordination between the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Propaganda.^[33]

In a document which resurfaced in 1966 in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and found its way into the hands of the magazine Der Spiegel, dated to 7 November 1944, Kiesinger was denounced by his colleagues Ernst Otto Dörries and Hanns Dietrich Ahrens at the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) of the SS:

In the broadcasting department of the Foreign Office [...], the former liaison to the Ministry of Propaganda and now deputy leader Kiesinger is provably inhibiting the anti-Jewish action.^[34]

Later, especially upon his becoming chancellor, Kiesinger's early approval of Nazi rule as well as his career in the state apparatus after 1940 were criticised. He himself described his early support of the Nazi regime as "neither conviction nor opportunism", important goals of the movement did not appear wrong to him. While he never shared the antisemitism of the Nazi movement, he did not view it as "a serious danger".^[35]

Denazification and entry into the CDU

On 30 April 1945, Kiesinger was arrested in Benediktbeuern by the American occupation authorities because he was a Nazi Party member and suspected to have been a high-ranking official, without concrete evidence of involvement of a particular crime. Initially, he had not given the American authorities information about himself, giving them the false impression that he had been a spy for the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). For 18 months, Kiesinger was interned in several different internment camps, ultimately ending up interned in Ludwigsburg.^[36] On 17 September 1946, Kiesinger was released and moved to Scheinfeld, where his parents-in-law resided, and where his wife and children had already moved. There, he underwent denazification. He was initially categorised into Category IV (Followers, Mitläufer in German) because he had been a member of the Nazi Party. In 1948, he was reclassified into Category V (Exonerated, Entlasteter in Germany) and began practising law again, this time in Tübingen and Würzburg.^[37]

In 1946, he took up privately teaching law again. That same year, he joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). A year later, he became the general secretary of the CDU branch in Württemberg-Hohenzollern.

Bundestag deputy (1949–1958)

From the 1949 federal election until 19 February 1959, and again from the 1969 federal election until the 1980 federal election, Kiesinger was a member of the German Bundestag. He initially represented the electoral district of Ravensburg, in which he attained record election results, often totalling over 70% of the vote. From 1969 onward, he represented the electoral district of Waldshut. For the 1976 federal election, Kiesinger declined to run in a constituency and was instead elected on the state list of the CDU Baden-Württemberg. During his first two terms in the Bundestag (1949–1957), Kiesinger was chairman of the mediation committee between Bundestag and Bundesrat. On 19 October 1950, he obtained 55 votes for the office of President of the Bundestag against his party colleague Hermann Ehlers (who obtained 201 votes), despite not having been nominated. From 17 December 1954 until 29 January 1959, he served as chairman of the committee for foreign affairs, to which he belonged since 1949.

Kiesinger was considered to be an excellent orator, earning him the nickname "King Silver Tongue".^[38] In the 1950s, Kiesinger supported the foreign policy of chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Most famous were his debates with Bundestag deputy Fritz Erler, who was also considered rhetorically gifted.

Kiesinger looked for programmatic overlap with the Social Democratic Party (SPD). During the debate surrounding the election of the first post-war President of Germany, Theodor Heuss, upon whom Adenauer and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) had agreed as a candidate, Kiesinger advocated for a compromise with the SPD instead.^[39] On his initiative, an inter-factional committee was founded in 1950, with the task of finding a consensus between government and opposition in the questions surrounding the creation of the Federal Constitutional Court.^[40]

From 1954 until 1957, Kiesinger served as chairman of the German Parliamentary Society (DPG). From 1 July 1956 until 19 March 1958, he also belonged to the European Parliament, and served as vice president of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe from 1955 until 1959. There, he concurrently served as chairman of the European People's Party (EPP) parliamentary group from 1957 to 1958 and as the chairman of the parliamentary group Christian democrats and British conservatives in the parliamentary assembly of the Western European Union from 1956 to 1958.

In 1949, Kiesinger was elected as a non-judicial member of the State Constitutional Court of Württemberg-Hohenzollern, however, due to his activities as a Bundestag deputy, he could not attend the court's sessions.^[41]

Foreign policy

Kiesinger reduced tensions with the Soviet bloc nations, establishing diplomatic relations with Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, but he opposed any major conciliatory moves. In October 1968, he visited Salazarist Portugal and Francoist Spain, which were both dictatorships at the time. In Portugal, he agreed to closer military cooperation with the local regime,^[45] while he later said about his visit to Spain: "Franco's precise analyses and the clarity of his thoughts impressed me".^[46]

Domestic policy

Kiesinger was considered a "walking mediation committee" within the coalition.^[47] On several occasions, ministers would meet with the chancellor at his holiday residence in Kressbronn am Bodensee to mediate inter-party disputes.

Despite some internal frictions, the coalition persisted until 1969 and accomplished nearly all its goals. Controversial projects, such as the heavily debated German Emergency Acts and a large reform of the German penal code (StGB) were introduced. Pension coverage was extended in 1967 via the abolition of the income-ceiling for compulsory membership. In education, student grants were introduced, together with a university building programme, while a constitutional reform of 1969 empowered the federal government to be involved with the Länder in educational planning through joint planning commission. Vocational training legislation was also introduced, while a reorganisation of unemployment insurance promoted retraining schemes, counselling and advice services, and job creation places. In addition, under the Lohnfortzahlunggesetz of 1969, employers had to pay all employees' wages for the first six weeks of sickness.^[48] In August 1969,^[49] the Landabgaberente (a higher special pension for farmers willing to cede farms that were unprofitable according to certain criteria) was introduced.^[50] One reform the coalition failed to achieve was a change to the electoral system, which would have introduced a first-past-the-post system, upon which the parties had agreed in 1966. Opposition at the SPD party base led to no compromise being found.

While in office, Kiesinger's government adhered to economic policy principles referred to as a kind of "modern dirigism" by some media outlets.^[51] His style has been described as keynesian;^[52][53] with certain decisions made by his coalition in the field of economics retrospectively garnering outstanding praise by some commentators.^[54]

Debate about Kiesinger's activities during the Nazi era

The historian Tony Judt has observed that Kiesinger's chancellorship, like the presidency of Heinrich Lübke, showed the "a glaring contradiction in the Bonn Republic's self-image" in view of their previous Nazi allegiances.^[55] Particularly the student movement viewed Kiesinger as a politician who showed the inadequacies of Germany's coming to terms with the past. The writer Günter Grass (who would later be revealed to have been a member of the Waffen-SS^[56]) appealed through an open letter, together with Heinrich Böll, against Kiesinger becoming chancellor.^[57]

Shortly before Kiesinger was nominated for the office of chancellor by the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, journalist Conrad Ahlers, who had been on good terms with Kiesinger ever since the latter had advocated in favour of the journalists arrested during the Spiegel affair, gave him in November 1966 the denunciation document written in November 1944 by Dörries and Ahrens (see #Civil servant in the Foreign Office). During the nomination process, Kiesinger had the document copied and sent to all members of the parliamentary group, however obscuring Dörries' name and giving it a cover which gave the impression that it was not a denunciatory document but rather a protocol of the RSHA.^[58]

The debate surrounding Kiesinger's activity during Nazi rule gained further attention when Franco-German journalist Beate Klarsfeld slapped him in the face at the CDU party congress in Berlin on 7 November 1968. Klarsfeld, who was married to the French Jewish lawyer Serge Klarsfeld, who had lost several family members in the Holocaust, wanted draw public attention to Kiesinger's past. She was sentenced to a year in prison without the possibility of parole on the same day, a decision which she successfully appealed, leading to a delay of the trial^[59] and ultimately a reduced sentence of four months on parole in August 1969.^[60]

Although newer biographies reject the notion that Kiesinger was a convinced national socialist,^[61] critical voices, especially in the German political left, still view him as an example of an incomplete coming to terms with German history under Nazi rule. For instance, when the Bundestag deputies of CDU/CSU and FDP voted against the Left Party politician Lothar Bisky for Vice President of the Bundestag in 2005, party leader Gregor Gysi accused them of dishonesty with reference to Kiesinger.^[62]

1969 federal election

With the approach of the 1969 federal election, relations between the coalition parties soured. The main point of contention proved to be a possible appreciation of the Deutsche Mark, which economics minister Schiller demanded but Kiesinger categorically rejected. During the election campaign, he warned of imminent communist danger. One of his campaign speeches became famous for one such warnings: "I only say this: China, China, China!"^[63]

Although the CDU/CSU again became the largest party by votes, despite smaller losses, and achieved 46.1% of the vote, it barely missed an absolute elected majority. The SPD, which attained 42.7% and the FDP, which attained 5.8%, together formed the first social-liberal coalition on the federal level and elected Willy Brandt as chancellor, inaugurating the first Brandt cabinet. Kiesinger's attempts to form a coalition with the FDP failed beforehand.