Christian August Ulrich von Hassell is a leading German diplomat, jurist and influential right-wing politician of the German Fatherland Party (DVLP), which he, as the son in law & close assistant of the late Alfred von Tirpitz, helped to establish in the turbulent summer of 1917. Hassell is the leading member of the young conservative, national revolutionary faction within the DVLP, which stands in the tradition of Tirpitz's foreign political vision, works towards the creation of a true "organic" corporatist state and is mostly dominated by younger rightists who are not inherently anti-semitic, anti-catholic or anti-socialist as most of the older party elites.
History[]
Early Life[]
Ulrich von Hassell was born into an old Hanoveranian noble family as the son of Ulrich von Hassell senior, a lieutenant of the Prussian military stationed in the Western Pomeranian city of Anklam at the time of his son's birth, and Margarete von Stosch, a niece of Albrecht von Stosch, the first Head of the German Imperial Admiralty (a predecessor institution to the German Imperial Admiralty Staff) between 1872 & 1883. Ulrich von Hassell senior retired from the military in 1896 at age 47 and dedicated most of time to politics; as the high-ranking functionary of several Christian conservative organisations, clubs and newspaper outlets, he would have a great influence on the political ideology of his son later on.
Education & Early Career[]
Hassell passed his Abitur at Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium in 1899 and later studied law and economics at the University of Lausanne, the University of Tübingen and in Berlin. Here, he visited the lectures of famous historian Otto Hintze, which aroused his interest in the Stein-Hardenberg Reforms, a reform movement whose core aims and values would eventually become one of the main pillars of his own political & administrative vision of Germany, built around an organic, corporatist state in which the best of the best administrators of the local governance go on to lead the country instead of irresponsible, egoistic parliamentarians. In 1905, Hassell published his first political article in one of his father's newspapers under the alias of "Christian Augustin", in which he thoroughly discussed the importance of the social question, claiming that a "healthy and honest entrepreneurship" which recognizes the needs and interests of their employees as their own interest, has to become the backbone of Germany's economic life, and that entrepeneurs should act like constitutional monarchs instead of ruthless autocrats. These notions were still quite controversial in conservative circles in the early 1900s.
In 1903, Hassell finished his studies and enrolled in the Prussian civil service with the aim to become a jurist in the future. At the court in Berlin, he attended the trial of Wilhelm Voigt, the famous impostor widely known by the name The Captain of Köpenick, as a court reporter. During this case, probably one of the most famous in German history, Voigt was sentenced to multiple years in prison for "confiscating" more than 4,000 marks from the municipal treasury in Köpenick while dressed as a Prussian army captain, but was later pardoned by Kaiser Wilhelm II himself after the story had caused much amusement in international media as it balatantly revealed the structural flaws of Germany's militarist society. The story was later turned into a satirical play, first performed at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1931, and multiple movie adaptions.
Hassell passed his assessor examination in December 1908 and entered into the German Foreign Office. Between 1905 and 1906, he had been sent to the Imperial Court in the German colony of Kiautschou as a legal trainee - here, he became interested in foreign politics, visiting multiple Chinese cities as well as Japan. This activity abroad was certainly one of the main reasons for his decision to join the diplomatic service instead of the civil service three years later. Throughout 1909, he spent several months in London to improve his English skills, later worked in the "culture & law" & "overseas trade" departments of the Foreign Office headquarters at Wilhelmstraße 76 in Berlin, and eventually was sent to the German Consulate in Genoa, Italy, as a Vice-Consul. There, he would remain until the outbreak of the Weltkrieg.
Probably one of the most crucial events in Hassell's life occured in January 1911: His marriage with Ilse "Ilseken" von Tirpitz, a daughter of the famous Grand Admiral & State Secretary of the Naval Office Alfred von Tirpitz. Tirpitz was without a doubt one of the most powerful & infamous German statesmen at the time; as one of the main instigators of the Anglo-German naval arms race,
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During the Weltkrieg[]
Badly wounded in the first year of the war, he retired from military service and and instead became advisor and secretary of his father in law, Alfred von Tirpitz, who served as Secretary of State of the German Imperial Naval Office at that time.
In 1917, Tirpitz was one of the founders of the archconservative Deutsche Vaterlandspartei (DVLP), and von Hassell decided to join the party as well. The party soon rose to prominence.