Axel Ripke

Axel Herbert Ewald Ripke (born April 28, 1880 in Mitau ; † December 5, 1937 ) was a German journalist and politician ( German Fatherland Party , DVP , NSDAP ).

Live and act

Youth, early career, and World War I

Ripke studied history and philology after completing his school career. After graduating, he first worked as a journalist. In 1908 he married the writer Dr. Lenore Kühn, who was known as Lenore Ripke-Kühn during her marriage and later, after her divorce (1920) and second marriage - to the artist Hermann Frobenius - in 1922 as Lenore Frobenius-Kühn.

Politically, Ripke was close to the imperialist - nationalist Pan-German Association in the period before the First World War . He maintained close ties in particular to the historian Friedrich Meinecke , an intellectual leader in the camp of the right. Since 1912 Ripke has also distinguished himself as the publisher of the national-liberal magazine Der Panther . This magazine, which in the Erich Ernst Schwabach in Leipzig appeared founded Panther Publishers and their editors took Ripkes wife took again mostly imperialist positions: Even her name on an aggressive gesture of imperial foreign policy in 1911 - the so-called Panthersprung to Agadir - alluded to, represented a commitment to the course of an expansive nationalism. After the beginning of the First World War, the magazine consequently agreed immediately to a patriotic line that supported the war. Ripke himself was drafted as a lieutenant in the reserve in the winter of 1914/15. In the following years he worked primarily in the press offices of the army and the military administration. His wife took over his representation in the editorial office of the Panther .

Later in the war, in November 1917, Ripke returned to civilian life as press chief of the then newly founded German Fatherland Party . In addition, Ripke continued to appear in public with a number of publications that fueled war morale, such as the anthology Ten German Speeches , in which the later NSDAP leader Ernst Graf zu Reventlow was also involved.

Post-war period and career as a Gauleiter

After the end of the First World War and the collapse of the German Empire , Ripke Karl Höffkes is said to have been general secretary of the German People's Party (DVP) for a short time, as is the case with a document in his file at the NSDAP's Supreme Court . He ostensibly had to leave it after, as General Secretary, he had caused a large debt burden of allegedly 40,000 Reichsmarks in a short time. In 1919 he also held the office of managing director of the Hansa Association . He later worked for the newspaper Bürgerervorwärts .

In the early 1920s, Ripke found connections to the völkisch right: in early 1925 he became one of the first members of the newly founded NSDAP. Soon afterwards, on March 27, 1925, Ripke was appointed Gauleiter of the Rhineland-North Gau by Adolf Hitler , whose organizational center was located in Elberfeld. Karl Kaufmann , Hellmuth Elbrechter and Joseph Goebbels were among his closest employees in the Gau . Within a short time there were serious differences between Ripke and his employees, who rejected the political course of their boss as too moderate. The “young radicals” particularly denounced Ripke's lack of revolutionary impetus. At the height of the trio's dispute with Elbrecht, Goebbels finally published the essay Calcified Intelligence in June 1925 , which contained hardly any hidden, sharp attacks on Ripke. In Goebbels' diaries there are also numerous polemics against Ripke at this time, such as:

“He hates my radicalism like the plague. He's just a bourgeois in disguise. You don't make a revolution with these. "

In an effort to overthrow Ripke, the Kaufmann-Goebbels-Elbrecht clique finally arranged an intrigue against him by accusing him of embezzling party funds at the party leadership in Munich. In July 1925, a party honorary court procedure was then set up to investigate the allegation, chaired by Gregor Strasser . Ripke took a leave of absence on July 7, 1925, before the investigation was completed and, tired of the intrigues of his subordinates, resigned from his post. The new Gauleiter became a businessman. Goebbels cheered about the change at the top of the district:

“Now the youth are taking the helm! And then it goes with all winds. This winter they will learn to fear us! "

After the separation, however, the later Propaganda Minister conceded that he had "learned an infinite amount from him [Ripke]" and that this was "an event in my life".

Late life

In the second half of the 1920s, Ripke was an editor at the German national Bergisch-Märkische Zeitung . At times he is also said to have been entertained by his second wife, doctor Greta Ripke-Lück.

In 1929 he became a member of the city council of Wuppertal for the NSDAP , where he stood out as an effective speaker. At that time he took over the administration of local politics in the district administration of Düsseldorf . His hope of being put on the electoral list by the party in the 1930 Reichstag elections, however, was not fulfilled.

While Ripke still had good relations with Gregor Strasser and Walther Buch within the party leadership, he soon fell out with the Düsseldorf Gauleiter Florian, which led to persistent conflicts. Alfred Rosenberg appointed him in February 1932 as head of the Combat League for Culture for Rhineland and Westphalia, but revoked the appointment in April at Florian's insistence. The climax of the dispute with Florian was marked by an opinion from the court doctor Schütt from the summer of 1932, which Ripke declared to be mentally ill. The group around Florian and his adlatus cousin characterized Ripke from then on as an intolerable "pathologist" [sic!] For the party and referred to rumors that Ripke's condition was the result of syphilis he had acquired in his youth. In addition, Ripke's alleged lack of character were criticized and accused of being "an economic politician of the worst kind".

In the autumn of 1932, Florian applied for Ripke's expulsion from the NSDAP. As a reason for this, he cited an appearance by Ripke as a speaker at a meeting of the Pan-German Association, which was rejected by the NSDAP . After Ripke had lodged an objection to the decision of the Düsseldorf Gauleitung to be excluded, the decision of the case was transferred to the Supreme Party Court of the NSDAP, which ruled Ripke's final exclusion on November 9, 1932.

In May 1934, Ripke briefly achieved his rehabilitation and resumption of membership in the party, which, however, was withdrawn soon afterwards as a result of Florian’s objection (decision of the Düsseldorf district court of May 9, 1934). At the local level, he was able to return to politics once again when he was re-elected as a city councilor in the city council of Wuppertal .

Fonts

• Germany and England in Morocco and Tripoli. Our politics now and in the future , 1911.
• New World Culture , 1915.
• Ten German speeches , Leipzig 1915.
• The colossus on feet of clay. Collected essays on Russia , Munich 1916.
• The road to power in the Reich and in Prussia , 1932. (Memorandum)

literature

• Karl Höffkes : Hitler's Political Generals. The Gauleiter of the 3rd Reich. A biographical reference work (= publications of the Institute for German Post-War History, Vol. 13). Grabert-Verlag, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-87847-163-7 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Axel Ripke in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ralf Georg Reuth : Goebbels. A biography. Piper, Munich 2000, ISBN 3492120237 , p. 89.