Otto Lebrecht Eduard Daniel Meissner (13 March 1880 – 27 May 1953) was head of the Office of the President of Germany from 1920 to 1945 during nearly the entire period of the Weimar Republic under Friedrich Ebert and Paul von Hindenburg and, finally, under the Nazi government under Adolf Hitler.

Together with Kurt von Schleicher and a few others, Meissner, in 1929 and 1930, furthered the dissolution of the parliamentary system by means of a civil presidential cabinet.

[citation needed] When Hitler merged the functions of head of state (the president) and head of government (the chancellor) in August 1934, Meissner's office was renamed the "Presidential Chancellery" and restricted in its responsibilities to representative and formal matters of protocol, while all more political matters were assigned to the Reich Chancellery under the direction of Hans Lammers.

[1] To mark the fourth anniversary of the Nazi regime on 30 January 1937, Hitler personally conferred the Golden Party Badge upon several non-Nazi members of the Reich government, including Meissner (membership number 3,805,235).

[2] On 1 December 1937, Meissner was promoted to Minister of State (Staatsminister) and Chief of the, now again renamed, "Presidential Chancellery of the Führer and Chancellor".

In 1950, Meissner published a memoir covering his unusual bureaucrat's career in a book, State Secretary under Ebert, Hindenburg and Hitler.