Matti (1928–2013) and Taneli (1928–1985). Matti Kekkonen served as a Centre Party member of Parliament from 1958 to 1969, and Taneli Kekkonen worked as an ambassador in Belgrade, Athens, Rome, Malta, Warsaw and Tel Aviv. Kekkonen had a reputation as a heavy-handed, violent interrogator during his years in the security police. Conversely, he described himself as taking the role of a humane "good cop" to balance out his older and more abusive colleagues. Some of the communists he interrogated confirmed the latter account, while others accused him of having been particularly violent. Later, as a minister in the 1950s, he is said to have visited and made peace with a communist he had "beaten up" in an interrogation in the 1920s. Explaining the contradiction of these statements, author Timo J. Tuikka says Kekkonen's interrogation methods evolved over time: "He learned that the fist is not always the most efficient tool, but that booze, sauna and chatting are much better means of obtaining information." These revelatory experiences would significantly influence his career and approach to politics later on. Kekkonen eventually had to resign from the EK after criticising his superiors. In 1927 Kekkonen became a lawyer and worked for the Association of Rural Municipalities until 1932. Kekkonen took a Doctor of Laws degree in 1936 at the University of Helsinki where he was active in the Pohjois-Pohjalainen Osakunta, a student nation for students from northern Ostrobothnia, and editor-in-chief of the student newspaper Ylioppilaslehti in the period 1927–1928. He was also an athlete whose greatest achievement was to become the Finnish high jump champion in 1924 with a jump of . He was best at the standing jump. Early political career A nationalist at heart, Kekkonen's ideological roots lay in the student politics of newly independent Finland and in the radicalism of the right-wing. He joined the Academic Karelia Society (Akateeminen Karjala-Seura), an organisation favouring Finland's annexation of East Karelia, but resigned from it in 1932 along with over 100 other moderate members because of the organisation's support for the 1932 far-right Mäntsälä rebellion. According to Johannes Virolainen, a longtime Agrarian and Centrist politician, some Finnish right-wingers hated and mocked Kekkonen for the decision and cast him as a power-hungry opportunist. Kekkonen chaired Suomalaisuuden Liitto, another nationalist organisation, from 1930 to 1932. Kekkonen spent long periods of time in late-Weimar-era Germany between 1931 and 1933 while working on his dissertation and there