376 Formal Dress Uniform (Gala Frock Coat) from the Estate of Minister of State, Otto Meissner.

Formal dress coat features blue-black fabric and comes complete with all insignia and buttons. The collar and lapel feature wide silver oak leaf bullion embroidery. The left sleeve features the hand embroidered bullion rank insignia of an envoy (national eagle with wide oak leaf wreath without star). 

Shoulder boards compare to that of a major general with a dark blue background and gold-colored national eagles. All buttons feature national eagles and are of the design for a diplomat. 

Interior pocket features tailor label for the company of Holters / Berlin from 1938.

Left breast area features four sets of loops and one set of loops for a large medal bar.  

Otto Meissner (March 13, 1880 in Bischweiler, Alsace-Lorraine-May 27, 1953 in Munich) was a German civil servant.  Meissner was primarily known as the closest collaborator for the German Reich President Friedrich Ebert and Paul von Hindenburg as Secretary of state in the office of the Reich President in the Weimar Republic (1919-1933/1934). He also served continuously as the head of the "Presidential Chancellery of the führer" Adolf Hitler in the years 1934 to 1945.

Otto Meissner was born in Alsace, which was part of the German Empire at that time, the son of the postal official Gustav Rudolf Meissner and his wife Magdalena Albertine Meissner - née Hetzel. A distant relative of Meissner was the popular French General of the Napoleonic Wars, Jean-Baptiste Kléber. because of his Alsatian origin, Meissner was fluent in Russian and Latin as well as German, French and the so-called Alsatian dialect. During his childhood in Strasbourg, he attended the gymnasium. 

From 1898 to 1903, Meissner studied law at the University of Strasbourg. During his studies he graduated with a doctorate in law and graduated summa cum laude. Meissner became a member of the Strasbourg Fraternity Germania in 1898, to which he belonged until his death. He also met the lawyer Heinrich Doehle, who became his closest collaborator in the Office of the Reich president from 1920 to 1945. After his studies, Meissner completed his military service from 1903 to 1904 as a one-year volunteer.

In 1906, Meissner joined the Alsace-Lorraine Judicial Service as a court assistant. The marriage with Hildegard Roos in 1908 produced the son Hans-Otto Meissner (1909-1992) and the daughter Hildegard Meissner (* 1917). In 1908, Meissner transferred to administrative service as government assessor with the Imperial Directorate General of Railways in Alsace-Lorraine and Luxembourg. In the years 1915 to 1917 Meissner took part in the first World War with the 136th Infantry Regiment and completed his service as a captain of the Reserves.  During this time he met Paul von Hindenburg for the first time in 1915, who awarded him the Iron Cross for his services in the rapid construction of a railway bridge. This meeting created a lasting memory with Hindenburg. 

From 1916, Meissner worked as a traffic officer in the military railway directorates in Brest-Litovsk, Warsaw and starting in April 1917, in Bucharest and most recently, at the railway Central office in Kiev. In 1918, he became the German chargé d'affaires to the Ukrainian government in Kiev. In February and March 1919, after the complete collapse of all organizational structures in the German and occupied territories of Eastern Europe as a result of the German defeat in WWI, Meissner managed to commandeer a train with several hundred German soldiers. Although he had to travel over a distance of several thousand kilometers and traverse several areas impacted by the civil war, he managed to get everyone back safely.  Moreover, he was able to protect the money entrusted to him by the German Delegation in Kiev and return 3.4 million marks to the Reich government in Berlin. In recognition of these achievements - which Meissner achieved primarily because of his knowledge of Russian, his organizational skills and his intimate knowledge of the train engineering business - the newly elected first head of state of the German republic, Friedrich Ebert, appointed Meissner as the the deputy head of his office. Meissner rejected the French citizenship he was granted at the same time - as a native of Alsace - as well as a high position as government counselor of the newly founded French administration in Strasbourg.

After Meissner's superior, Rudolf Nadolny, 1920, departed as a German envoy to Sweden, he was appointed at the beginning of 1920 to Nadolny's Position as the Director of the office of the Reich President. He remained in this position until the end of May 1945.  

As head of the Office of the Reich president, Meissner successively served Ebert (1919-1925), Hindenburg (1925-1934) and from 1934 to 1945 Adolf Hitler.  In August 1934, Hitler renamed Meissner's office after consolidating the offices of the Reich Chancellor and the Reich president. It became known as the presidential office of the Führer and Reich Chancellor. In 1925 he also worked for the president of the Reichsgericht, Walter Simons, who between the death of Ebert and the election of Hindenburg performed the duties in the Office of President of the Reich. In May 1945, Hitler in his will again separated the offices of Chancellor and president from each other. Meissner briefly served under his old title for the new German head of State, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. Hitler met Meissner for the last time on March 13, 1945, when Hitler congratulated him on his 65th birthday and handed him a check in the amount of 100,000 Reichsmarks. 

Until 1939, Meissner's office was located in the so-called Palais des Reichspräsident at Wilhelmstraße 73 in the Berlin Regierungsbezirk. His 26-room private apartment in the right side wing (Meissner wing) was also located in the same building from 1919 to 1939. After 1939, the Reich President's Palace became the residence of the Reich foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. The building was rebuilt for this purpose according to plans by Albert Speer. Meissner himself moved to Bellevue Castle, which had previously been converted into a Imperial guest house.

Meissner assumed his post in the Reich President's Palace in 1919, as a privy councillor, he left it in 1945 with the rank of Reich Minister. In the meantime he was promoted by Ebert first to ministerial director (1920) and then to the title of Secretary of State (1923). Hindenburg appointed him as Secretary of State in 1927. Hitler finally appointed Meissner Minister of state with the rank of Reich Minister on 1 December 1937. His function as head of the Office of the Head of State remained de facto the same despite the varying titles. Only in 1934 did a certain shift in responsibility occur when Meissner had to relinquish some of his old tasks in the course of the aforementioned merger of the offices of head of state and government.  In accordance with Hitler's directives,  most of Meissner's political power functions were transferred to Hans Heinrich Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancellery, while Meissner was given additional protocol tasks. Like Hans Heinrich Lammers, Otto Meissner was one of the founding members of Hans Frank's National Socialist Academy of German law.

After the Second World War, Meissner was arrested by the allies in Flensburg on 23 May 1945 and interned at Camp Ashcan in Bad Mondorf, Luxembourg, together with other Nazi leaders.  In August 1945 he was transferred to Nuremberg and interrogated there as a witness for the Nuremberg trials. In July 1947 he appeared as a witness for the accused former state secretary Franz Schlegelberger.

The process against Meissner himself, held in the Wake of the so-called Wilhelmstrasse process, ended on 14. April 1949 with an acquittal. Immediately after his acquittal, Meissner was indicted again in May 1949, this time by the state of Bavaria in the course of a Munich trial and classified as "incriminated". The appeal was rejected and the case was closed in January 1952.

In 1950 he published his memoirs under the title state secretary under Ebert, Hindenburg and Hitler.

André François-Poncet, long - time French ambassador to Berlin, described Meissner in retrospect as follows: "an apoplectic type, round and very corpulent - all his suits were too tight for him -, with a shy look behind thick glasses, an opaque personality, entrusted with all governments on good terms and with all secrecy." It is undisputed that Meissner, who lived with his family in the Palais des Reichspräsident from 1919 to 1939, had great influence on the German head of State.

Meissner's influence on the Second Reich President Hindenburg was already assessed by his contemporaries as considerable. The Twelve O'clock paper addressed the appointment of Meissner as Reich Chancellor in 1932, but added that he basically did not need it at all, as he had "hardly less influence on political affairs in the post of State Secretary".

Although, Meissner had been an advisor on constitutional issues, Hindenburg did not want to depend on officials like Meissner. Meissner kept a low profile and did not put forward any ideas of his own. Meissner was afraid of losing the goodwill of the Reich president and thus his office, to which his wife had become accustomed because of the social position associated with it. 

Meissner's role in Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor in December 1932 and January 1933 is controversially discussed by historians in literature. As a member of the camarilla, Meissner's influence as secretary of State was certainly not small due to his close proximity to Hindenburg. Together with Oskar von Hindenburg and Franz von Papen, he organized negotiations with Hitler to depose Kurt Von Schleicher and to appoint Hitler as Reich Chancellor. In collaboration with the NSDAP, the talks were initiated by the banker Kurt Freiherr von Schröder (a former officer, head of the men's club, in which Papen also operated), Wilhelm Keppler and Ribbentrop. Neither Hitler nor Hindenburg would have approached each other directly at the end of 1932 - personal dislikes were too great.

In his memoirs, Meissner responded to the criticism that he should not have made himself available to the Nazi Regime by stating that he "did not shirk from his new duties........nor could he or wanted to". His son later stated that his father had been influenced by his conservative and liberal friends. Moreover, ecclesiastical circles had asked him to stay, since it was assumed that he could have prevented many bad things due to his position and could have provided help to those politically persecuted. Furthermore, he would have had the obligation to remain in his post, since in the event of his resignation it would have been feared that a staunch National Socialist would have been appointed his successor as head of the presidential chancellery.

In the following years of Nazi rule, Meissner took on mainly representative tasks, his influence on major politics was insignificant. The judges in the wilhelmstraßen trial of 1949 shared this view and delivered a judgment that completely exonerated the accused Meissner. First, they confirmed that he had "taken a stand against Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor until the last moment". Furthermore, he had "not belonged to the political leadership [in the Third Reich]" and had "little or no executive power". In addition, he had never been a member of the NSDAP and had "never enjoyed the favor of the party". Rather, the highest party authorities would have regarded him with"deep suspicion and reluctance." Hitler had left Meissner in office "because of his useful knowledge of protocol and ceremony" and because of Meissner's "long acquaintances with leading personalities from home and abroad". It was also" perfectly clear "that Meissner had used his position to prevent or mitigate the" harsh measures taken by the man he served, sometimes not without considerable personal danger". We have no evidence whatsoever that he initiated or carried out crimes against humanity.

During the first World War, Meissner was awarded the Iron Cross II and I class. The Abyssinian Crown Prince Ras Tafari - later Haile Selassie-awarded Meissner the title of Ras of Abyssinia in 1921, after Ebert had rejected this feudal award due to his function as chairman of a Worker's Party.  On 1 January 1937, Meissner was awarded the Golden party badge of the NSDAP and was automatically a party member from that point on (membership number 3,805,235).  In his 600-page autobiography as State secretary under Ebert and Hindenburg (May 1950), Meissner claimed that despite his affiliation with Hitler's Entourage, he was "always unattached to party politics" and "never belonged to the NSDAP" or any of its branches.

Superb specimen in the finest quality and in excellent condition. Certainly the most decorative Uniform of the 3rd Reich. Of the greatest rarity.

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