Background
Otto Kiep was born in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, Scotland (while his parents were on holiday there), to Imperial Consul Johann Nikolaus Kiep and his wife Charlotte (née Rottenburg).
Otto Kiep was born in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, Scotland (while his parents were on holiday there), to Imperial Consul Johann Nikolaus Kiep and his wife Charlotte (née Rottenburg).
Ilfeld College, Hannover. University of Berlin, Kiel, Muenchen, Leipzig, Doctor of Laws. London, Bachelor of Laws.
He became involved with the resistance against the Nazis and was executed in 1944. One of Otto"s cousins, Walter, stayed in Glasgow and went on to serve as a doctor in the British army. In 1909, when Otto was aged 24, the family moved to Ballenstedt, Anhalt, Germany.
After going to the Gymnasium at the Ilfeld monastery school, Otto Kiep studied law in Germany and London, and graduated from the University of Leipzig with a Doctor Juris degree, while also earning a Bachelor of Law degree in London.
Already at this time, his thinking and influence leant towards peace and international understanding, which his biographer Bruce Clements attributes to his liberal upbringing in Scotland. Otto Kiep was with the German Embassy in Washington, District of Columbia from 1927 to 1931 as an embassy adviser, and from 1931 to 1933, he was Consul General in New New York
He later established ties with resistance circles, with Hanna Solf (see "Frau Solf Tea Party"), and with the Kreisau Circle about Helmuth James Graf von Moltke. As Chief of the Reich Press Office, the name Otto Kiep showed up on the list of the group around the men of the failed July 20 Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf"s Lair in East Prussia.
After his arrest in 1944, he was sentenced at the Volksgerichtshof by Roland Freisler to death, and one month after the plot"s failure, on 23 August 1944, Otto Kiep was hanged at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.
The defection enraged Hitler, who ordered Abwehr dissolved.
Nazi Party, German People"s Party.
Member: International Law Association. American Society International Law. German Law Socs. Club: Racquet.
Spouse Hanna Alves, December 14, 1925, Berlin.