Early Career and Wartime Activities
Born in Ebingen, Kingdom of Württemberg (now Baden-Württemberg), Kiesinger was educated in Berlin and became a lawyer. As a student, he joined the (non-couleur wearing) Roman Catholic corporations Alamannia Tübingen and Askania-Burgundia Berlin. He became a member of the Nazi Party in February 1933, a few weeks after Hitler became chancellor. In 1940, he was called to arms but avoided mobilization by finding a job in the foreign ministry's radio propaganda department, rising quickly to become the ministry's connection with Goebbels' propaganda ministry. After the war, he was interned and spent 18 months in the Ludwigsburg camp before being released as a case of mistaken identity.
During the controversies of 1966, the magazine Der Spiegel unearthed a Memorandum dated November 7, 1944 (five months before the war's end) by which a colleague denounced to Himmler a conspiracy including Kiesinger that was propagating defeatism and hampering anti-Jewish actions within their department and several others.
Read more about this topic: Kurt Georg Kiesinger
Famous quotes containing the words early, career, wartime and/or activities:
“Men and women are not born inconstant: they are made so by their early amorous experiences.”
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967)
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)
“The man who gets drunk in peacetime is a coward. The man who gets drunk in wartime goes on being a coward.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)
“If it is to be done well, child-rearing requires, more than most activities of life, a good deal of decentering from one’s own needs and perspectives. Such decentering is relatively easy when a society is stable and when there is an extended, supportive structure that the parent can depend upon.”
—David Elkind (20th century)