Friedrich Kellner
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August Friedrich Kellner (listen ) (February 1, 1885 – November 4, 1970) was a German social democrat and justice inspector. After the outbreak of World War II, he began writing My Opposition, a diary about life during the time of Nazi Germany. After the war ended he explained his purpose in secretly writing the diary:
- "I could not fight the Nazis in the present, as they had the power to still my voice, so I decided to fight them in the future. I would give the coming generations a weapon against any resurgence of such evil. My eyewitness account would record the barbarous acts, and also show the way to stop them."[1]
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Family and education
Kellner was born in 1885 in Vaihingen an der Enz, a town on the Enz River in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. He was the only child of Georg Friedrich Kellner, a baker from the town of Arnstadt in Thuringia, and Barbara Wilhelmine Vaigle from Bietigheim-Bissingen near Ludwigsburg. His parents belonged to the Evangelical Lutheran faith. When Friedrich Kellner was four years old, his family moved to Mainz where his father became the master baker at "Goebels Zuckerwerk".
In December 1902, at the age of 17, Kellner graduated from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Gymnasium (high school). He started work as a junior clerk in the Mainz courthouse, remaining there until 1933, advancing to justice secretary, then court accountant, and finally to justice inspector.
[edit] Military service and marriage
In 1908 Kellner fulfilled his military reserve duty in the 6th Infantry Company of the Leibregiments Großherzogin (3. Großherzoglich Hessisches) Nr. 117 in Mainz.
When the First World War began in 1914, Kellner was called back to active duty as an officer substitute in the Prinz Carl Infantry Regiment (4. Großherzoglich Hessisches Regiment) Nr. 118, in Worms. Fighting in France at the First Battle of the Marne, he was wounded near Reims and was sent to St. Rochus Hospital in Mainz to recover.
Prior to the war, in 1913 Kellner married Pauline Preuss, who was from Mainz. Their only child, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm (a.k.a. Fred William), was born three years later.
[edit] Political activism
Kellner welcomed the birth of German democracy after the war. He became a political organizer for the leading political party, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). From those first days of the Weimar Republic, he spoke out against the danger of extremists, such as the Communists and the National Socialists. He would show his opposition at rallies by holding above his head Adolf Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, and yell out to the crowd: "Gutenberg, your printing press has been violated by this evil book".[2] This led to threats against his life by the Nazis.
Two weeks before Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor in 1933, and before the beginning of Hitler's murderous purge of his political opponents, Kellner and his family moved to the village of Laubach in Hesse. There he worked as the chief justice inspector in the district court. In 1935 his son immigrated to the United States in order to avoid service in Hitler’s army.
During the November pogrom of 1938, known as Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), Friedrich and Pauline Kellner tried to stop the rioting. When he tried to bring charges against the leaders of the riot, Kellner was told he and his wife would be sent to a concentration camp if he continued to be a "bad influence" on the population of Laubach.[3] A report written by the district Nazi leader, Hermann Engst, shows that authorities were planning to punish Kellner at the conclusion of the war.
[edit] The war years
Because he could not continue to be openly politically active, Kellner entrusted his thoughts to a secret diary, starting from September 1939. He wanted his son and the coming generations to know that democracy must ever oppose dictatorships. He wanted to warn everyone to resist tyranny and terrorism, and to not place any belief in its propaganda.
One of the most important historical entries in the diary was written on October 28, 1941. Most Germans after the war would insist they knew nothing at all about the state-sponsored genocide of the Jews, yet very early in the war Kellner recorded this in his diary, showing that even in the small towns, the average citizen knew what was occurring:
- "A soldier on vacation here said he witnessed a terrible atrocity in the occupied parts of Poland. He watched as naked Jewish men and women were placed in front of a long deep ditch and upon the order of the SS were shot by Ukrainians in the back of their heads and they fell into the ditch. Then the ditch was filled with dirt even as he could hear screams coming from people still alive in the ditch.
- These inhuman atrocities were so terrible that some of the Ukrainians, who were used as tools, suffered nervous breakdowns. All the soldiers who had knowledge of these bestial actions of these Nazi sub-humans were of the opinion that the German people should be shaking in their shoes because of the coming retribution.
- There is no punishment that would be hard enough to be applied to these Nazi beasts. Of course, when the retribution comes, the innocent will have to suffer along with them. But because ninety-nine percent of the German population is guilty, directly or indirectly, for the present situation, we can only say that those who travel together will hang together."[4]
[edit] After the war
At war’s end, Kellner helped to resurrect the SPD in Laubach, and he became the regional party chairman. In 1945 and 1946 he was the deputy mayor of Laubach.
Kellner continued to serve as chief justice inspector and administrator of the courthouse in Laubach from until 1947. He served as the district auditor in the regional court in Giessen from 1948 to 1950. After his professional retirement at age 65 in 1950, he continued as legal advisor in Laubach for three years. From 1956 to 1960 he was First Town Councilor and again deputy mayor, retiring from offices at age 75.
Kellner’s son, Fred William Kellner, who had emigrated from Germany to the United States, died in 1953. Kellner's grandson, Robert Scott Kellner, stopped to visit his grandparents in West Germany while traveling to Saudi Arabia as a member of the United States Navy in 1960.[2] Friedrich Kellner gave his ten-volume diary to his American grandchild to translate and bring to the attention of the public.
Kellner died in November 1970 at Lich. He was buried at the side of his wife in the main cemetery in Mainz.
[edit] Works
[edit] Diary statistics
My Opposition consists of 10 volumes with a total of 861 pages. There are 676 individually dated entries written in the old German handwriting script called Sütterlin. The entries date from September 1939 to May 1945. More than 500 newspaper clippings are pasted on the pages of the diary.
Kellner intended his observations not only to detail the events of those years, but to offer a prescription for future generations to prevent a recurrence of totalitarianism, for them to offer an unrelenting resistance against any ideology that threatened personal liberty and ignored the sanctity of human life.
[edit] Reception of the diary
- In the spring of 2005, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, the diary was on exhibit at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas.
- The Holocaust Literature Research Unit of the Justus Liebig University of Giessen has established the Kellner Project. The deputy director of the group, Dr. Sascha Feuchert, considers Kellner's work one of the most extensive diaries of the Nazi period.[5]
- The Gießener Anzeiger newspaper and the Heimatkundliche Group in Laubach presented a Friedrich Kellner exhibit in September 2005 in the Laubach Heimat Museum.
- In the summer of 2006 the diary was exhibited at the Holocaust Museum Houston in Texas.
- In 2007 CCI Entertainment, a Canadian film company, produced a documentary film about Friedrich Kellner and his grandson Robert Scott Kellner, entitled My Opposition: the Diaries of Friedrich Kellner.
- Major universities, such as Purdue, Columbia, and Stanford, have requested the diary for their archives. The directors of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., have asked to have the diary for their collections. A new museum being built in Canada, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, plans to install a permanent Kellner exhibit.
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] References
- Kellner, Friedrich; Robert Scott Kellner (2005). Friedrich Kellner Diary, 861.
- Pritchard, Marietta. "A Promise To Keep", UMassMag.com, Fall 2005. Retrieved on 2007-02-25.
- Private Writings of Texan’s Grandfather Detail Holocaust Atrocities, but also Warn Future Generations to Put Aside Differences. Holocaust Museum Houston (2006-05-04). Retrieved on 2007-02-25.
- "Will Ahmadinejad ever read Nazi diary?", WorldNetDaily.com, 2006-09-22. Retrieved on 2007-02-25.
- Magers, Phil. "German's war diary goes public", The Washington Times, 2005-03-28. Retrieved on 2007-02-25.
- Arbeitsstelle Holocaustliteratur will Kellner-Tagebücher veröffentlichen. Arbeitsstelle Holocaustliteratur am Institut für Germanistik der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Retrieved on 2007-02-25. (German)
[edit] External links
