Hans-Otto Meissner (4 June 1909 – 8 September 1992) was a German lawyer and Nazi diplomat, posted in London, Tokyo, Moscow, and Milan, among other cities. He is best known as a writer and novelist publishing a series of books, which proved successful. Early life and education Meissner was the second son of prominent German diplomat Otto Meissner and his wife, Hildegard Roos, in Alsatian in Strasbourg. His sister, Hildegard Meissner, was born in 1916. In 1919, Otto Meissner became head of the office of Friedrich Ebert, the first President of the Weimar Republic and so the family moved to Berlin. Meissner attended the Mommsen-Gymnasium, the Wilhelm-Gymnasium, the Falck-Realgymnasiums and the Arndt-Gymnasium in Berlin Dahlem. After graduation in 1929 Meissner began studying law and economics. From 1929 to 1933 he attended the University of Heidelberg, Lausanne, Grenoble, Freiburg im Breisgau, Berlin and Göttingen and the Trinity College, Cambridge. In Cambridge, John Maynard Keynes was one of his tutors. Meissner began writing articles for various newspapers and magazines, including for the journal "Querschnitt". He passed the legal exam in Göttingen on 20 July 1933. Career Diplomat (1933–1945) In December 1933, Meissner passed the entrance examination for the Foreign Service. On 12 December 1933 he was admitted to the SS (membership number 241,955) in the so-called Motor-SS (after 1 May 1940 in the rank of Hauptsturmführer). According to Meissner's autobiography, Josias zu Waldeck und Pyrmont had proposed him to join. In February 1934, Meissner entered the diplomatic service as a civil servant in the rank of attaché. He first belonged to Division IV "Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, East Asia". Other young leaders who came into the service with him included Ernst vom Rath. In 1934, Meissner was in the barracks of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler in Berlin-Lichterfelde, where he had been ordered together with other members of the Berlin section of the Motor-SS to defend the institution in case of an SA rebellion. He became an eyewitness of executions in the course of the political purge known as the Röhm Putsch. From August 1935 to March 1936, Meissner was employed at the German embassy in London. He passed the diplomatic consular examination on 24 June 1936, and in September, he was sent to the German embassy in Tokyo. He worked from December 1936 to December 1938 under Eugen Ott. On 12 December 1936, Meissner became a member of the NSDAP (membership number