1. August Friedrich Kellner was a German mid-level official and diarist who worked as a justice inspector in Laubach from 1933 to 1945.
33 Facts About Friedrich Kellner
1. 2.
Friedrich Kellner titled his work Mein Widerstand, meaning "My Opposition".
3.
In 1968, he gave his diary to his American grandson, Robert Scott Friedrich Kellner, to translate into English and to bring it to the attention of the public.
4.
Friedrich Kellner was born in Vaihingen an der Enz, a town on the Enz River in southern Germany.
5.
When Friedrich Kellner was four years old, his family moved to Mainz where his father became the master baker at Goebel's Confectionery.
6.
Friedrich Kellner spent the remainder of the war as a quartermaster secretary for the 13th Army Corps in Frankfurt am Main.
7.
In 1913, a few months prior to being called up for service in the war, Friedrich Kellner married Pauline Preuss, who was from Mainz.
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Adolf Hitler 8.
Friedrich Kellner welcomed the birth of German democracy after the war.
9.
From his reading of Mein Kampf, Friedrich Kellner believed the election of Adolf Hitler would mean another war in Europe, and events soon were to support his view.
10.
Friedrich Kellner wanted the coming generations to know how easily young democracies could turn into dictatorships, and how people were too willing to believe propaganda rather than resist tyranny and terrorism.
11.
Friedrich Kellner continued to express his views, and in February 1940 he was summoned to the district court in Giessen where he was warned by the president of the court, Hermann Colnot, to moderate his views.
12.
Friedrich Kellner wrote primarily about Nazi policies and propaganda, and about the war.
13.
Friedrich Kellner noted the injustices in the court system, and recorded the inhumane deeds and genocidal intentions of the Nazis.
14.
Friedrich Kellner aided in the denazification process, which primarily meant removing former Nazis from positions of power in the region.
15.
Friedrich Kellner helped to resurrect the Social Democratic Party in Laubach, and he became the regional party chairman.
16.
Friedrich Kellner wrote only a few more entries in the diary.
17.
Friedrich Kellner served as chief justice inspector and administrator of the Laubach courthouse until 1948.
18.
Friedrich Kellner was appointed district auditor in the regional court in Giessen until his retirement in 1950.
19.
On 19 July 1966, Friedrich Kellner received compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany because of the injustices committed against him during the time of National Socialism.
20.
Friedrich Kellner was unable to cope with the devastation he witnessed, and in 1953 he took his own life.
21.
Friedrich Kellner is buried in the American Legion Tomb in Neuilly, France, on the outskirts of Paris.
22.
Fred's son, Robert Scott Friedrich Kellner, grew up in a children's home in Connecticut.
23.
In 1968, Friedrich Kellner gave his diary to his American grandson to translate and bring to the attention of the public.
24.
Friedrich Kellner believed his observations during World War II could have meaning in the increasing hostilities in the world brought about by the Cold War with Communism, and the proliferation of neo-Nazi cults.
25.
Friedrich and Pauline Kellner spent their last few years in Mainz, where Kellner had first begun his service as a law administrator and a political activist.
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Adolf Hitler 26.
Friedrich Kellner served as a volunteer legal advisor in Mainz from 1962 until 1969.
27.
Friedrich Kellner died on 4 November 1970, in the regional hospital in Lich, not far from Laubach.
28.
Friedrich Kellner was buried at the side of his wife at the Hauptfriedhof Mainz.
29.
Friedrich Kellner meant for his observations to detail the events of those years, and to offer a prescription for future generations to prevent what occurred in Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power, when a fledgling democracy willingly embraced dictatorship to solve political disputes.
30.
Friedrich Kellner foresaw Germany's defeat, and warned against a recurrence of totalitarianism.
31.
Friedrich Kellner prescribed unrelenting resistance against any ideology that threatened personal liberty and ignored the sanctity of human life.
32.
Coincidentally, this museum is located on the same street as the courthouse where Friedrich Kellner wrote the diary.
33.
In Giessen, where Friedrich Kellner worked as district auditor from 1948 to 1950, the Holocaust Literature Research Unit of the Justus Liebig University of Giessen has established the Friedrich Kellner Project.