Ernst A. Hepp

Ernst Adolf Hepp (born September 1, 1906 in Entringen , † December 18, 1978 in Denver , Colorado ) was a German diplomat and journalist .

Life

Hepp was born as the son of the Württemberg chief forestry officer Theodor Hepp, a member of the Württemberg-Baden state constitutional assembly . He first attended high schools in Reutlingen and Backnang . After graduating from secondary school in Schwäbisch Hall in 1925 , he completed a commercial apprenticeship at the Hamburg import-export company, Gebr. Michahelles . From 1927 to 1930 he studied law and art history at the Sorbonne in Paris and worked as the private secretary of an industrialist.

In 1930 he moved to New York City . He worked as a foreign correspondent for Ullstein Verlag until 1933 and studied newspaper and advertising science at Columbia University . In 1935 he became a journalist at the German News Office in New York. In May 1936 he joined the NSDAP . In April 1940 he became a research assistant and then press attaché at the German Embassy in Washington, DC under Hans Thomsen . Due to the entry of the United States in World War II (December, 1941) he was detained and expelled in May 1942 in the German Reich.

He then hired Paul Karl Schmidt in the news and press department of Section IXa, responsible for the United States and Canada, of the Foreign Office on Wilhelmstrasse. In July 1942, he said he made an application to leave the party, but it was rejected. In December 1943 he was press officer, again at Thomsen, in the German legation in Stockholm . A month later he was used on the press advisory board. After the end of the Second World War he was brought to Lübeck , where he was interned by the British occupying forces.

Hepp was supposed to record the memories of the officer Gerhard Boldt , which were published by Rowohlt Verlag in 1947 under the title The Last Days of the Reich Chancellery . From 1948 to 1949 he was editor-in-chief of the conservative weekly newspaper Christ und Welt . In 1950 he emigrated to Santiago de Chile (South America). After retiring in 1975, he moved to Denver, Colorado, where he died three years later. He was married to an American from 1937 and had two children.

Publications

• with Frances Fulenwider Hepp: In Love And War The Dilemma Of An American Girl And A German Diplomat . Edited by Helen Christy and Gary Christy and with a foreword by Sigrid Hepp-Dax and Theodore Hepp. Prairie Publishing. Denver 2007, ISBN 978-0-938075-96-7 .

literature

• Foreign Office (Ed.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service . Volume 2: G-K . Edited by Gerhard Keiper and Martin Kröger, Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X , p. 280.
• Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871 - 1945. 5. T - Z, supplements. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , p. 490
• Daniel B. Roth: Hitler's bridgehead in Sweden. The German legation in Stockholm 1933–1945 (= Nordic history , volume 8). Lit, Berlin a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-643-10346-8 , p. 349. (Biographical data)

Web links

• Background to In Love And War The Dilemma Of An American Girl And A German Diplomat

Individual evidence

1. ^ Joachim G. Leithäuser: Reports on world history . Cotta, Stuttgart 1964, p. 327.
2. ↑ Klaus Grobe Kracht: "Schmissiges Christianentum". The weekly newspaper Christ und Welt in the post-war period (1948–1958) . In: Michel Grunewald, Uwe Puschner (Ed.): The Protestant intellectual milieu in Germany, its press and its networks (1871–1963) (= Convergences , Vol. 47). Lang, Bern a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-03911-519-8 , p. 509 f.