Page "Kurt Georg Kiesinger" Paragraph 7
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One of his low points as Chancellor was in 1968 when Nazi-hunter Beate Klarsfeld, who campaigned with her husband Serge Klarsfeld against Nazi criminals, publicly slapped him in the face during the 1968 Christian Democrat convention, while calling him a Nazi.
She did so in French and-whilst being dragged out of the room by two ushers-repeated her words in German saying " Kiesinger!
Nazi!
Abtreten!
" (" Kiesinger!
Nazi!
Step down!
") Kiesinger, holding his left cheek, did not respond.
Up to his death he refused to comment on the incident and in other opportunities he denied explicitly that he had been opportunistic by joining the NSDAP in 1933 ( albeit he conceded joining the Nazi Foreign Ministry to dodge his 1940 draft by the Wehrmacht ).
During his period as Chancellor, he made Carl Schmitt his regular intellectual companion ( also a 1933 NSDAP late joiner, Francisco Franco apologist, and hyperactive anti-Jewish Nazi intellectual until falling out of Nazi grace in 1936 ).
Other prominent critics included the writers Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass ( in 1966, Grass had written an open letter urging Kiesinger not to accept the chancellorship ).
Philosopher Karl Jaspers, who had taken up residency in Switzerland, surrendered his German passport in protest.
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