In the Prussian Administration

Abstract

For several months after his injury, Hassell was confined to a wheelchair. Since he was both unfit for active service and ‘incapable of being deployed abroad’, a rapid return to the foreign service was out of the question. Moreover, the antagonism between the German Foreign Ministry and his father-in-law had intensified in the first months of the war. The under secretary of state in the Foreign Ministry, Alfred Zimmermann, confirmed that he ‘would therefore do better to leave the service for a period’. Transfer to temporary retirement followed on 18 September 1915. Hassell was not a man to enjoy inactivity, and quickly accepted the suggestion of the Prussian minister of the interior, Loebell, that he should enter the internal administration. From 18 November 1915, therefore, Hassell worked for the chief administrator (Regierungsprasident) of Stettin, first informally, and then on a trial basis from 1 January 1916. The ‘intermezzo’ of his professional life had begun. For four years it was to lead him away from his ‘real line’, the foreign service, but was also to open up new political perspectives which would have a profound influence on his development.