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From Ice Set Free: The Story of Otto Kiep
Otto Kiep was a German born and raised in Scotland, where his father had a timber business and was Imperial German Consul for Western Scotland. Otto became an international lawyer and diplomat, serving during the early thirties as Consul General in New York. He died by hanging in Berlin in 1944 as a resister to the Nazi regime. 'He is a mirror of the first half of this century,' says the author, 'showing the best of its hopes, the clearest of its thinking, the brightest and darkest of its days.'A fascinating look at a little known hero.
215 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
9 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Clements
19 books5 followersBruce Clements is a children's author, particularly admired for his historical fiction. He lives in Windham, Connecticut.
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November 25, 2011
This book was based, I believe, on a memoir that Otto Kiep, a prosperous German government official, wrote while imprisoned at Ravensbruck before being sentenced in Roland Freisler's Nazi "People's Court" for having made "defeatest" remarks about the inevitable outcome of the war at a small social gathering in 1943.
Otto Kiep's story is not necessarily one that would appeal to filmmakers yet it is fascinating on many levels, largely for how it illuminates a (somewhat) average but patriotic German's response to both world wars.
Kiep was born in 1896 when the myriad German states had been united only a few decades and he grew into a patriot, serving in WWI and working in various respectable and influential government positions all the way through the Nazi regime. He was pro-German and anti-Nazi and had no qualms about expressing his views honestly but politely in mixed company.
The book illuminates some key items. First, if there was any misunderstanding on the subject, Kiep's biography makes clear that German anti-Semitism was not the brainchild of one maniac or even one party and that it stood apart from the anti-Semitism of other European countries. While a teenaged student, Kiep took a course in German history, taught by a respectable professor, utilizing a 1898 text that blithley asserted the superiority of the German male, a superman whose collective destiny was to conquer the world and to oppose the Jew, a race the text relegated to a sub-human status.
Kiep's view on the first world war is very interesting as he didn't see Germany's role as more deserving of punishment than any of the other countries involved (apparently he didn't think the German invasion of France put any extra guilt in the German camp). However, his firsthand account of the Versailles proceedings is fascinating and correctly places the responsibiltiy for the destructively punitive treaty squarely on French shoulders: he witnessed how French Premier Clemenceau "dominated the whole scene" and observed French bystanders daily taunting German delegates as they walked from their hotel to their work.
His reponse to the Nazi regime is fascinating as well. As an important German diplomat living in the U.S., Kiep was invited to a New York dinner honoring Albert Einstein. The year was 1933, Hitler was in power, and it was dangerous to even accept the invitation. Kiep not only accepted but gave a few words honoring the German Jew which were afterwards published on the front page of the New York Times. A few days later, a Nazi-run Berlin newspaper reported that Kiep had "insulted his own country in front of a room full of American Jews." This garnered him two threatening "consultations" back in Germany, one with a ranting Nazi official who seemed possessed and who told Kiep that "Adolf Hitler is our only law and our only morality" and one with the Fuhrer himself whose eyes Kiep noticed were "the eyes of a thief." Kiep didn't get into any serious trouble for another decade but survived long enough to clearly observe (and later write about) the success of the Nazi state as it went to war with the rest of Europe.
Although some early sections of the book describing Kiep's personal life seem to have been recorded more for his immediate family than for a general readership (his son-in-law wrote the book in 1972) and although his Resistance activity was not necessarily the stuff of drama, Kiep's biography proves without a doubt that there were decent, patriotic Germans who did what they could to resist the Nazi regime.
Otto Kiep's story is not necessarily one that would appeal to filmmakers yet it is fascinating on many levels, largely for how it illuminates a (somewhat) average but patriotic German's response to both world wars.
Kiep was born in 1896 when the myriad German states had been united only a few decades and he grew into a patriot, serving in WWI and working in various respectable and influential government positions all the way through the Nazi regime. He was pro-German and anti-Nazi and had no qualms about expressing his views honestly but politely in mixed company.
The book illuminates some key items. First, if there was any misunderstanding on the subject, Kiep's biography makes clear that German anti-Semitism was not the brainchild of one maniac or even one party and that it stood apart from the anti-Semitism of other European countries. While a teenaged student, Kiep took a course in German history, taught by a respectable professor, utilizing a 1898 text that blithley asserted the superiority of the German male, a superman whose collective destiny was to conquer the world and to oppose the Jew, a race the text relegated to a sub-human status.
Kiep's view on the first world war is very interesting as he didn't see Germany's role as more deserving of punishment than any of the other countries involved (apparently he didn't think the German invasion of France put any extra guilt in the German camp). However, his firsthand account of the Versailles proceedings is fascinating and correctly places the responsibiltiy for the destructively punitive treaty squarely on French shoulders: he witnessed how French Premier Clemenceau "dominated the whole scene" and observed French bystanders daily taunting German delegates as they walked from their hotel to their work.
His reponse to the Nazi regime is fascinating as well. As an important German diplomat living in the U.S., Kiep was invited to a New York dinner honoring Albert Einstein. The year was 1933, Hitler was in power, and it was dangerous to even accept the invitation. Kiep not only accepted but gave a few words honoring the German Jew which were afterwards published on the front page of the New York Times. A few days later, a Nazi-run Berlin newspaper reported that Kiep had "insulted his own country in front of a room full of American Jews." This garnered him two threatening "consultations" back in Germany, one with a ranting Nazi official who seemed possessed and who told Kiep that "Adolf Hitler is our only law and our only morality" and one with the Fuhrer himself whose eyes Kiep noticed were "the eyes of a thief." Kiep didn't get into any serious trouble for another decade but survived long enough to clearly observe (and later write about) the success of the Nazi state as it went to war with the rest of Europe.
Although some early sections of the book describing Kiep's personal life seem to have been recorded more for his immediate family than for a general readership (his son-in-law wrote the book in 1972) and although his Resistance activity was not necessarily the stuff of drama, Kiep's biography proves without a doubt that there were decent, patriotic Germans who did what they could to resist the Nazi regime.
Displaying 1 of 1 review