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August Friedrich Kellner (February 1, 1885 – November 4, 1970) was a justice official in Mainz and Laubach, Germany. He was a political organizer for the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and he campaigned against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. During World War II, Kellner risked his life to write a secret diary to record Nazi crimes. He titled his work Mein Widerstand, meaning “My Opposition.” He explained his purpose for writing the diary:

  • "I could not fight the Nazis in the present, as they had the power to still my voice, so I decided to fight them in the future. I would give the coming generations a weapon against any resurgence of such evil. My eyewitness account would record the barbarous acts, and also show the way to stop them."

Biography

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Family and education

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Kellner was born in Vaihingen an der Enz, in southern Germany. He was the only child of Georg Friedrich Kellner, a baker from Arnstadt (Thuringia), and Barbara Wilhelmine Vaigle from Bietigheim-Bissingen. The Kellners were Evangelical Lutherans.

Kellner attended Volksschule and Oberrealschule in Mainz. In 1903, he became a law clerk in the Mainz courthouse. In 1920, he was promoted to justice inspector. He remained in the courthouse until 1933.

Military service and marriage

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Kellner married Pauline Preuss (January 19, 1888 - February 8, 1970) in 1913. Their only child, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm (a.k.a. Fred William), was born in Mainz on February 29, 1916.

Kellner was in the military reserves in 1908. When the First World War began in 1914, he was called up for active duty. He fought in Belgium and France, in the First Battle of the Marne. He was wounded near Reims, France, and spent the remainder of the war at 13th Army Corps in Frankfurt am Main.

Political activism

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Kellner became a political organizer in Mainz for the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the (SPD). Throughout the 1920’s, he campaigned against the Communist Party and the Nazi Party. During his speeches, Kellner would hold above his head Adolf Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, and yell out to the crowd: "Gutenberg, your printing press has been violated by this evil book." Men from the Nazi militia, the Storm Troopers, would often try to break up his rallies.

In January 1933, just before Hitler's purge of his political opponents, Kellner moved his family to the village of Laubach in Hesse, where he worked as the administrator of the district court. In 1935, he sent his son to the United States to keep him from serving in Hitler’s army.

When Kristallnacht occurred in November 1938, Kellner tried to press charges against the local Storm Troopers of Laubach who led the riot against the Jews. An investigation was opened instead against Kellner and his wife, to check their heritage, to see if they were Jewish. Despite this harassment, Kellner continued to express his views aloud. In 1940, the mayor of Laubach and the local Nazi Party leader threatened to send Kellner to a concentration camp if he continued to be a "bad influence" on the people of the town. A report written by the district Nazi leader, Hermann Engst, shows that the authorities planned to punish him when they could get enough evidence.

The Diary

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Friedrich began to write his diary on September 1, 1939, the day Hitler ordered the German armed forces to invade Poland. He gave it the title, Mein Widerstand, which can mean either My Opposition or My Resistance. He rarely wrote about his personal situation in his diary. He wrote about Nazi policies and propaganda, and about Hitler’s unprovoked aggression against other nations.

He wrote one of the most important historical entries in the diary on October 28, 1941. This entry clearly shows that, even in the smallest towns in Germany, the German people were well aware of the genocide against the Jews:

  • A soldier on vacation here said he was an eyewitness to terrible atrocities in the occupied parts of Poland. He watched as naked Jewish men and women were placed in front of a long deep trench and upon the order of the SS were shot by Ukrainians in the back of their heads and they fell into the ditch. Then the ditch was filled with dirt even as he could hear screams coming from people still alive in the ditch. These inhuman atrocities were so terrible that some of the Ukrainians, who were used as tools, suffered nervous breakdowns. All the soldiers who had knowledge of these bestial actions of these Nazi sub-humans were of the opinion that the German people should be shaking in their shoes because of the coming retribution. There is no punishment that would be hard enough to be applied to these Nazi beasts. Of course, when the retribution comes, the innocent will have to suffer along with them. But because ninety-nine percent of the German population is guilty, directly or indirectly, for the present situation, we can only say that those who travel together will hang together.

Before the war, Friedrich could not understand why the leaders of the democracies did not stop the dictator Hitler from building up Germany’s armaments. Now, he wondered why they were taking so long to land their armies on the European continent to confront the German army. On June 25, 1941, he wrote:

Up until now, the statesmen, through unbelievable shortsightedness, have neglected or failed their duty. Mankind awake! Attack together with all your might against the destroyers of peace! No reflections, no resolutions, no speeches, no ‘neutrality.’ Advance against the enemy of mankind!

By war’s end, Friedrich Kellner had filled 10 notebooks, a total of 861 pages, handwritten in an Old German script called Sütterlin. Kellner also pasted more than 500 newspaper clippings onto the pages of his diary.

After the war

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Friedrich Kellner became the deputy mayor of Laubach after the war, and he helped to remove former Nazis from positions of power. He reestablished the Social Democratic Party in Laubach and became the regional party chairman.

He was chief justice inspector and administrator of the Laubach courthouse until 1948, and then he was appointed district auditor in Giessen until his retirement in 1950. From 1956 - 1960, he again served as First Town Councilor and Deputy Mayor of Laubach.

Kellner received compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany in 1966 because of the injustices committed against him by the Nazis. “Kellner's political opposition was recognized by the ruling powers and they took measures against him. It was Kellner's open opposition to National Socialism which prevented possible promotions and damaged him in his service.”

On February 8, 1970, after fifty-seven years of marriage, his wife, Pauline, died. On November 4, 1970, Friedrich Kellner died. He and his wife are buried together in the Main Cemetery (Hauptfriedhof) in Mainz.

Reception of the diary

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Friedrich Kellner believed his observations during WWII could have an influence in mitigating the continuing hostilities in the world. He gave his diary to his American grandson, Dr. Robert Scott Kellner, in 1968, to translate and bring to the attention of the public.

Friedrich Kellner’s diary is most significant in countering historical revisionists who deny the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities, and Dr. Kellner has called upon the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has referred to the Holocaust as a myth, to read the diary.

Exhibits

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2005 April - May: George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, College Station, Texas, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of VE-Day (Victory in Europe).

2005 September: Heimatmuseum Fridericianum, Laubach, Germany. In 2007, this was made a permanent exhibit of diary facsimiles and historical photographs.

2006 May - August: Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston, Texas.

2007 October: Stora Synagogue of Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden.

2008 November 10: Dag Hammarskjöld Library, United Nations Headquarters in New York

2009 December: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Berlin, Germany

2010 February: Gegen Vergessen für Demokratie, Bonn, Germany

2010 May - December: Dwight Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, Abilene, Kansas

Publishing the diary

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The Holocaust Literature Research Unit (Arbeitsstelle Holocaustliteratur) of the Justus Liebig University of Giessen has established the Kellner Project and is preparing for publication in 2010.

Documentary film

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“My Opposition: The Diaries of Friedrich Kellner,” was produced in 2007 by CCI Entertainment of Toronto, Canada. The documentary was filmed in Germany, Canada, and the United States. Using reenactments, archival footage, and interviews, the film interweaves the lives of Friedrich Kellner and his grandson, Robert Scott Kellner.

The film was first shown on Canadian television in 2007, and it was screened in November 2008 at the United Nations to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

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