Albert Hopman

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Albert Hopman

Albert Julius Emil Hopman (born April 30, 1865 in Olpe , † March 14, 1942 in Berlin-Schmargendorf ) was a German vice admiral . His diaries, edited by the military historian Michael Epkenhans , are an important source for understanding the political and military structure of the empire .

Life

origin

Albert Hopman was the son of Emil Hopman (1820-1893), who later became president of the regional court in Wiesbaden, and his wife Theodore, née Sternenberg (1833-1890). His older brother Eduard entered the diplomatic service and from 1888 worked at the German consulates in Russia, Algeria, Egypt, India, Italy, France, Turkey and Austria-Hungary. When the First World War broke out in August 1914, he was at the German embassy in Cairo.

Military career

After graduating from high school , Albert Hopman joined the Imperial Navy as a cadet on April 21, 1884 . After various on-board commands from 1895-1897, he became assistant to Department A 2 - responsible for the North and Baltic Seas - in the Navy High Command. This was followed by a 2-year visit to the Naval Academy in Kiel. In the controversy around the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 he was involved as a navigational officer. From 1901 to 1905 Hopman was active in the admiralty staff and in 1904 was assigned as a military attaché to the Russian fleet in East Asia. From 1905 to 1908 he worked for the fleet command. On October 15, 1907, he was promoted to frigate captain .

As commander of the small cruiser SMS Bremen , he was deployed in the Atlantic in the area of ​​the South American coast and in the Caribbean in 1907/09; u. a. in a revolution in Haiti . In March 1908 the Bremen transported a group of Haitian refugees from Port-au-Prince to Kingston / Jamaica . During this time of his stay he recruited groups of informants on behalf of the naval intelligence service in Argentina and Brazil to gather information about enemy ship movements, shipyards, ports and shipbuilding in these regions. One of his closest helpers was ensign Wilhelm Canaris (1887–1945) on board the SMS Bremen . On December 12, 1908, he was promoted to captain at sea . From 1909 to 1911 Hopman commanded the Nassau-class liner SMS Rheinland , one of the first German dreadnoughts . From 1911 to 1915 he worked in the Reichsmarineamt under Alfred von Tirpitz (1849-1930) as head of the operations department, where he was promoted to rear admiral in 1915 . Until the end of the First World War , he was employed in various functions, such as first admiral of the reconnaissance forces of the Baltic Sea from April 20, 1915 to January 11, 1916, then until May 1916 as an advisor in the Ottoman Navy Ministry and from August to December 1916 as chief the operations department in the admiralty staff. Here he was considered a specialist in Russia. In this position he was valued as a capable junior naval officer and was discussed several times as the successor to Tirpitz, who was dismissed in March 1916.

On October 14, 1917, Albert Hopmann was promoted to Vice Admiral. He had a large share in the successful Albion company in October 1917. It was about a close cooperation between forces of the imperial army and the navy in the occupation of the Russian islands of Ösel, Dagö and Moon, which are off the Baltic, as important strategic points were valid. In December 1917 he became chairman of a nautical-technical commission (Nateko) based in Odessa and later in Sevastopol, to regulate traffic conditions on the Black Sea. During his command, he managed to steer the highly confusing situation of port and shipping conditions in the Black Sea area into a somewhat more orderly direction. In his situation reports, he criticized Erich Ludendorff's (1865–1937) strategic plans for Russia several times . In November 1918, Albert Hopman became the armistice commissioner for the Black Sea and Mediterranean. From July 1919 he headed the German delegation to the Inter-Allied Baltic Commission in Tilsit .

Albert Hopman retired from active service in the Navy on March 9, 1920. After that he was u. a. from 1924 President of the German Motor Yacht Association and around 1931 on the board of the German High Seas Sports Association HANSA . He died of a stroke on March 14, 1942 while leaving his house in Berlin and was buried in the Dahlem forest cemetery. The grave is no longer preserved.

family

Albert Hopman married Irmgard Stubenrauch on February 6, 1900 in Kiel. She was the daughter of the later Rear Admiral and Commandant of Helgoland Felix Stubenrauch and his wife Auguste Caroline Mathilde, née Hensen (1855-1941). The marriage described as happy resulted in two sons and a daughter.

Fonts

In 1924/25 his memoirs, The Logbook of a German Naval Officer (Berlin 1924) and The War Diary of a German Naval Officer (Berlin 1925) appeared in two volumes . In the logbook, Albert Hopman gave some very detailed comments on the problems of naval officers on duty abroad.

Hopman recognized early on that the German naval armor posed a threat to the strength of the army and thus to the security of the German Reich in a future war. Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, he considered domestic political reforms in Germany to be absolutely necessary in order to modernize the political system.

Awards

literature

  • Wilfried Baumgart: From Brest-Litovsk to the German November Revolution: from the diaries, letters and notes of Alfons Paquet, Wilhelm Groener and Albert Hopman; March 1918 to November 1918. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1971.
  • Winfried Baumgart :  Hopman, Albert. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 613 ( digitized version ).
  • The war at sea 1914–1918. Publisher: Marine-Archiv: The War in the Baltic Sea Volume II, 1929 and Volume III, 1964
  • Michael Epkenhans (Ed.): The eventful life of a ›Wilhelminer‹. Albert Hopman's diaries, letters and records 1901-1920. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56840-X .
  • Vice Admiral Albert Hopman. in: Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. Ratingen without year, (One-volume reprint of the seven-volume original edition, Herford 1979ff.,) Volume V., p. 67.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Death register of the Berlin-Wilmersdorf registry office No. 471/1942
  2. ↑ Michael Epkenhans (ed.): The eventful life of a ›Wilhelminer‹. Albert Hopman's diaries, letters and records 1901-1920. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56840-X , p. 18f.
  3. ^ Karl-Heinz Abshagen, Canaris: Patriot and Weltbürger, Union Verlag Stuttgart, 1954
  4. ↑ Winfried Baumgart, biography about Albert Hopman, Neue Deutsche Biografie, Volume 9, 1972, p. 613, in: http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/.html
  5. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 582.
  6. ↑ Michael Epkenhans (ed.): The eventful life of a ›Wilhelminer‹. Albert Hopman's diaries, letters and records 1901-1920. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56840-X , p. 36ff.
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Marine-Kabinett (ed.): Ranking list of the Imperial German Navy for the year 1918. ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1918, p. 7.
personal data
SURNAME Hopman, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hopman, Albert Julius Emil (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Vice Admiral in the First World War
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Olpe
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1942
Place of death Berlin-Schmargendorf