Harry von Kessler

Count Harry Clemens Ulrich von Kessler (Harry Clemens Ulrich Graf von Kessler in German; 23 May 1868 – 30 November 1937), also known as Harry Graf Kessler, was an Anglo-German diplomat, writer, and patron of modern art. English translations of his diaries Journey to the Abyss (2011) and Berlin in Lights (1971) reveal anecdotes and details of artistic, theatrical, and political life in Europe, mostly in Germany, from the late 19th century through the collapse of Germany at the end of World War I until his death in Lyon in 1937.

Harry Kessler's parents were the Hamburg banker Count Adolf Wilhelm von Kessler (24 November 1838 – 22 January 1895) and Alice Harriet Blosse-Lynch (born 17 July 1844 in Bombay; died 19 September 1919 in Normandy), the daughter of Anglo-Irish Henry Blosse Lynch, C.B., of Partry House, County Mayo. Kessler's parents married in Paris on 10 August 1867; Kessler was born, also in Paris, in 1868. Kessler's younger sister was born in 1877, and was named Wilhelmina after Kaiser Wilhelm I, who became the child's godfather. After marriage, her name would become Wilma de Brion.

There were many rumours about a supposed affair between Kaiser Wilhelm I and Countess Alice Kessler. The swift rise of the Kessler family led to a legend that either Harry or his sister were the illegitimate offspring of the Emperor and Countess Alice Kessler, but Harry was born two years before his mother met the Emperor, and the Emperor was eighty years old when his sister Wilhelmina was born.

Adolf Wilhelm Kessler was ennobled in 1879 and again in 1881, Harry inheriting the titles on his father's death.

Kessler grew up in France, England and Germany. He was educated first in Paris and then, from 1880, in St. George's School, Ascot, an English boarding school where one of his classmates was Winston Churchill. His education at St. George’s made him into an Anglophile, and for a time he fancied himself to be an "English gentleman". Following his father's wishes he enrolled in 1882 at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg, where he completed his Abitur (high-school education). Afterwards he joined the 3rd Garde-Ulanen regiment in Potsdam and earned the rank of an army officer. He studied law and art history in Bonn and Leipzig respectively. As a university student, Kessler was among a group of students invited in 1891 to see the former chancellor Otto von Bismarck at his residence in Kissingen. After spending an afternoon drinking coffee with Bismarck, Kessler wrote that Bismarck still had an impressive voice, but "the longer and apparently the [more] freely the prince spoke, the more the feeling of numbed helplessness grew stronger...His conversation had something ghost-like, as if we hauled him from the company of dead contemporaries out of the grave". Kessler was acutely conscious that as the 20th century approached that he was living in an "übergangszeit" ("age of transition"), but a transition to what both fascinated and appalled him as he wondered if the new century would bring advancement to a better civilization or a retrogression into barbarism. Kessler was a great believer in the concept of Bildung, an untranslatable German word that refers to a process of artistic and moral self-cultivation designed to make people into better human beings. The concept of bildung holds that if a person listens to beautiful music; reads great books and poems; admires beautiful paintings, architecture, and sculpture; and so forth that eventually it will make a person into spiritually a better human being. Thus, Kessler's work in promoting the artistic avant-garde in regards to painting, sculpture, music, plays, operas and books was central to his political commitment to work for the betterment of humanity. In 1892, he visited New York, where he socialized with the richest families of New York, the so-called Four Hundred who were seen fit to be received by Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, the socialite who dominated the social life of New York. In a sign that his family was considered important, Astor invited Kessler to attend one of her parties. Astor raved about Kessler "he is a good dancer and a count!"

Kessler was familiar with many cultures, travelled widely, was active as a German diplomat, and came to be known as a man of the world and patron of the arts. He considered himself part of European society. His homosexuality, which inevitably made him an outsider, undoubtedly influenced his insight and critique of Wilhelmian culture. Kessler regarded himself as a "secret outsider", someone who was a member of the aristocratic elite of the German Empire, but at the same time did not share the heteronormative values of that elite. Like all other German homosexuals at the time, Kessler lived in fear of being convicted under Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code that banned homosexual acts in the Reich. A key element in Kessler's politics was a call for "a version of sexual liberation, of uninhibited sensuality" to create a society free of the "hypertrophy of shame" around human sexuality. Kessler was greatly heartbroken when one of his lovers, the handsome Bavarian aristocrat and officer cadet, Otto von Dungern, chose to marry in order to improve his prospects of promotion, which ended their relationship.

After moving to Berlin in 1893, he worked on the Art Nouveau journal PAN, which published literary work by, among others, Richard Dehmel, Theodor Fontane, Friedrich Nietzsche, Detlev von Liliencron, Julius Hart, Novalis, Paul Verlaine and Alfred Lichtwark. The short-lived journal also published graphic works by numerous artists including Henry van de Velde, Max Liebermann, Otto Eckmann and Ludwig von Hofmann. Kessler had become bored with European culture and in 1896 visited Mexico with the aim of broadening his cultural horizons and of finding something that would inspire him. Kessler was overwhelmed by the heat and crowds in Mexico City, but a visit to the Yucatan provided him with the inspiration he was seeking. The ruins of the lost Maya civilization fascinated him, especially the pyramids with their elaborate ornamentation and the sculptured cascades of humans, gods, snakes, jaguars and demons. Kessler was especially impressed with the ruins of an ancient civilization that was clearly not European in either origins or inspiration, which he credited with broadening his horizons. During his Mexican trip, Kessler was shocked by the violence of the regime of Mexico's dictator, President Porfirio Díaz, whose police force, the Rurales routinely engaged in extreme violence against people of Mexico. Kessler was also disturbed by the uniforms of the Porfiriato-era Mexico, which were clearly modelled after those of Imperial Germany right down to the Pickelhaube spiked helmets wore by high officials of Diaz's regime. Kessler drew a contrast between the colorful street life of Mexico full of vibrancy and generally friendly people vs. the "depravity" of the Porfiriato state. Kessler was troubled by the sight of the Rurales dragging down the streets the mutilated bodies of those who were "shot while trying to escape" (the standard euphemism for an extrajudicial execution).

On 24 March 1903, Kessler assumed control of the "Museum für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe" in Weimar. There he worked with new exhibition concepts and the establishment of a permanent arts and crafts exhibit. In 1904, during his work in Weimar, Kessler began to publish a group of bibliophilic books containing artistic compositions of typography and illustrations. In the beginning he cooperated with the German Insel Verlag.