Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (1918-1937)

"These are the diaries of, I would argue, one of the most interesting characters in Weimar Germany. There are lots of interesting characters in the Weimar Republic, but he stands out, not just for biographical reasons, but because he is one of the main chroniclers of what is going on in those years. The diaries cover the years 1918 to 1937. Kessler himself was born in Paris in 1868. He was the son of a wealthy Hamburg banker and an Anglo-Irish noblewoman, who was famous at the time for being one of the most beautiful women of her era. She was pursued by many powerful men including, allegedly, Kaiser Wilhelm I himself. In any case, he grew up in an extremely privileged setting and enjoyed an elite education in various countries. He studied law and became a very multicultural, multilingual, cosmopolitan figure, who embarked, as a young man, on journeys around the world from Japan to China , India , Egypt and elsewhere. His father died in the mid-1890s, leaving Kessler an enormous amount of money, so he was in the fortunate position of never having to work too hard to finance his fairly extravagant lifestyle. He spent his days as a dandy figure and collector of art. He met many artists as well, from Rodin to Maillol. Edvard Munch painted his portrait in 1906. In the context of Weimar, from 1918, he chronicled not just political events, but also his meetings with lots of interesting characters. He became friends with people like Igor Stravinsky, George Grosz, John Heartfield, had Einstein over for supper and met up with leading politicians such as Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau. “He became friends with people like Igor Stravinsky, George Grosz, John Heartfield, had Einstein over for supper and met up with leading politicians such as Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau” He was an interesting intellectual. He had a very brief stint as a diplomat, as ambassador to Warsaw in the winter of 1918, and remained involved in liberal politics. He was also very involved in the arts both before the Great War and after. In 1902 he temporarily moved to Weimar which was, of course, the spiritual home of Goethe and Schiller, but also a symbolically important city after 1918 because the German National Assembly met there in the spring of 1919 to draft Germany’s new constitution. Subsequently, it also become very closely connected with the Bauhaus and also has an important fine arts museum, which Kessler helped to put on the international map through his vast connections to the art scene in Paris, and elsewhere. So he’s really interesting as a curator, as a patron of the arts, but also as a socialite and political observer who engages with lots of different figures. No, they did not. He travelled to Paris in March 1933 and never returned. Because of the speed of the Nazi takeover, he left quite a lot of his artwork and fortune behind, so he actually died with little money left. But it’s interesting that he captured the four years after the Nazi seizure of power as well, because he shared the fate of lots of Germans who were either forced to leave the country in 1933 or, like Kessler, left voluntarily. Having said that, the fate of these people differed quite profoundly. There were people like Albert Einstein, who immediately found employment in the United States because he was already a famous Nobel laureate. Thomas Mann also found it quite easy to transition to life in the United States because, in his case, he was already a celebrated author. But for others, who didn’t have the language skills, or were not quite as famous, which is the majority of people who went into exile, it was much harder to adjust to their new lives. Kessler briefly lived in Majorca because of his declining health, but left again in 1936 because of the start of the Spanish Civil War , and then moved to France. He died there, in Lyon, in 1937. He does a little bit, and had previously warned against the Nazis. But he is also unsure what the future holds for him personally and that dominates his immediate reaction. Up until March 1933, he was busy negotiating the advance for his memoirs, then he left Germany with an uncertain future. Shortly after the burning of the Reichstag building, he realises that this is the essence of Nazi rule. But, of course, he is unsure about what exactly the future is going to hold. On the night that Hitler seized power in Berlin and the torch-lit SA parades through the Brandenburg Gate are taking place, Kessler drowns his sorrows in a pub nearby with a friend and two blond prostitutes. In a way, I think it shows the defeatism of many republicans in 1933. There was a realisation that the situation in January 1933 was fundamentally different from that in 1920, when the Communists and the Social Democrats briefly joined hands in a general strike to frustrate the Kapp Putsch. But in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis, it was quite unclear whether people would adhere to such a call, whether there wouldn’t be hundreds of thousands of strike breakers, much more concerned about their own livelihood than about working-class solidarity. But also there was, at this point, a very deep schism between the Social Democrats and the Communists. The Comintern, in Moscow, essentially dictated the policy line that the Social Democrats were just as bad as the Nazis and that the Communists should not collaborate with them. So there wasn’t an opportunity for a united front against the Nazis at this point, even though the majority of the electorate voted against Hitler in November 1932. He was leader of the largest political party in parliament but, nonetheless, not voted in by the overall majority of the population. Instead he was appointed as Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg."