Education
After completing high school with an Abitur in 1923, he studied jurisprudence at the University of Tübingen, earning a Doctor of Law in 1928.
After completing high school with an Abitur in 1923, he studied jurisprudence at the University of Tübingen, earning a Doctor of Law in 1928.
He was the first after the Second World War (from 1945 until his death in 1974) and has been the Lord mayor with the longest period in office of that city. From 1930, he worked as a lawyer in Stuttgart. Having been at the least critical towards the Nazi regime and not belonging to any party, he was installed as by the French military administration after the war.
In 1948, in the first free mayoral elections, he was confirmed in that office by a significant majority of the Stuttgart electorate.
In 1961, he was the initiator of a city partnership between Stuttgart and Strasbourg, as part of the improvement of the post-war Franco-German friendship. Klett also initiated the re-building and major extension of public transport in post-war Stuttgart, most of the Stuttgart Stadtbahn system - one of the most extensive of such networks in Europe - was built up during his term.
His role in dealing with the reconstruction of the large portions of the city destroyed by the Allied bombing of Stuttgart in World World War II was controversial, as in most cases he preferred and succeeded to completely demolish buildings that weren"t completely damaged and to not rebuild them in the original style, so that not much of pre-war Stuttgart is left in the city"s current architecture. The most prominent example of this was the demolition of the old Gothic Revival style town hall, that was replaced by a modern building, built 1953-1956.