Background
Otto Meissner was born in Bischweiler, Alsace, on 13 March 1880.
Otto Meissner was born in Bischweiler, Alsace, on 13 March 1880.
After attending secondary school in Strasbourg, he studied law and in 1908 joined the civil service with the German State railways.
After serving with the infantry in 1915, he was attached to the military administration in the Ukraine under the Skoropadsky régime and briefly served as German chargé d'affaires to the Ukraine. He entered the Foreign Office in 1918 and from 1920 to 1945 served as Chief of the Reich Chancellery under the socialist Ebert, the conservative von Hindenburg and the National Socialist régime of Adolf Hitler. One of President von Hindenburg’s most influential advisers and a power behind the scenes, Meissner interceded on Hitler's behalf in his campaign to secure the Chancellorship of Germany. For his services in persuading the ageing von Hindenburg to appoint him. Hitler kept Meissner as his State Secretary at the Presidential Chancellery. From 1937 Meissner was also appointed Minister of State. After the end of the war, three de-Nazification courts failed to establish that Meissner had committed any offences, after he had already been acquitted of war crimes by an American military tribunal at Nuremberg on 2 April 1949. All proceedings against him were finally dropped in January 1952. Meissner wrote his memoirs under the title, Staatssekretär unter Ebert, Hindenburg und Hitler ( 1950).
He died at the age of seventy-four in Munich on 28 April 1953.