Theodor Steltzer

Conscripted into the Wehrmacht during World War II, he became active in the German resistance to Nazism by joining the Kreisau Circle. After the failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in July 1944, Steltzer was arrested and condemned to death in early 1945. Despite this, he survived the war, became a politician in the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and served as the first minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein from 1946 to 1947. After leaving office, he was active in several organizations dealing with public and international affairs. Steltzer was born in Trittau in Schleswig-Holstein. After earning his Abitur from the Johanneum in Lüneburg in 1902, he joined the Royal Prussian Army as an officer cadet in April 1904. In 1907, he took a leave of absence to study political science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, but in 1909, he resumed his military career as a battalion adjutant in Göttingen. From 1912 to 1914, he attended the Prussian War College in Berlin.