Harry Graf Kessler

Harry Clemens Ulrich Graf Kessler (23 May 1868 – 30 November 1937) was an Anglo-German count, 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 Adolf Wilhelm Graf 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 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 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. Curiously, Alice Blosse-Lynch is recorded as having died unmarried in 1919 in Burke's Irish Family Records (1976).

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. Kessler was educated first in Paris and then, from 1880, in St. George's School, Ascot, an English boarding school. 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. 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.

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