A Noble Life in Art and Politics

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Byline: Stephen Goode, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Harry Kessler began his diary, now a classic of German literature, in June 1880. He had just turned 12 and for the next nearly 60 years, until his death in 1937, he kept at it, turning it into a work of several volumes. The diaries have been best-sellers in Germany for many years, unusual for a book of epic proportions. A shortened version, covering the period between 1918 and 1937, appeared in English nearly a half-century ago. Now the diaries from 1880 to the end of World War I, long feared lost, have come out in a truncated version ably edited and translated by Laird M. Easton, who published a well-received biography of Kessler in 2002.

Kessler's father, Adolph, was an enormously successful businessman who was made a count for his service …