Hans Kippenberger

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Wanted poster of the Berlin police from September 1933 (Kippenberger above, second from left).

Hans Kippenberger (born January 15, 1898 in Leipzig , † October 3, 1937 in Moscow ), code names A. Neuberg , Leo and Ernst Wolf was a German politician and member of the Reichstag ( KPD ). He was a member of the Reichstag between 1928 (4th electoral term) and 1933 (8th electoral term). In 1937 he was murdered as part of the Great Terror in the Soviet Union .

Life

Kippenberger was born as the son of a lay preacher in Leipzig and attended elementary and secondary school there. After an apprenticeship in a bank and completing his military service, he then worked as a correspondent for English, French, Italian and Spanish newspapers. He took as a lieutenant in the reserve on the Western Front at the First World War in part and was wounded several times.

After the war, he joined the USPD in 1918 . He belonged to the left wing, which merged with the KPD in late 1920 . During this time he worked as a bank clerk and foreign language correspondent and began studying economics at the University of Hamburg . From 1922 he worked full-time for the KPD and was initially active in the management of KPD student groups. He then played a leading role in the establishment of the "Red Hundreds" in the Hamburg-Barmbek district , in the infiltration of the police and the Reichswehr by KPD members and in the organization of the 1923 uprising in Hamburg . In the Barmbek district he was in charge of the fighting workers. The militarily experienced Kippenberger succeeded in bringing about a fairly orderly withdrawal of the KPD combat groups after the defeat.

After the Hamburg uprising he was wanted by the senior Reich attorney . Although he had been a member of the Hamburg Parliament since 1924 , he had to continue to live in illegality and fled to the Soviet Union , where he attended the Comintern Military School and the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West (KUNMS) from 1924 to 1927 .

From 1927 he reorganized the party's military apparatus (" AM apparatus ") and was arrested in 1928 during the Reichstag election campaign. After his election, however, he had to be released as a member of parliament due to his immunity. He was a member of the Reichstag until 1933 and was still head of the "M apparatus" and, from 1929, a candidate for the Central Committee of the KPD. In the Reichstag, he mainly dealt with military policy issues and was a member of the parliament's military commission. In addition to the M-Apparat, from 1932 Kippenberger also built up an independent network for operational reporting, the so-called BB-Ressort, with around 300 members, which carried out industrial espionage for the Soviet Union and reported on developments in the German Reich relevant to armament. For the National Socialists, the network was the "most dangerous apparatus of the KPD".

In August 1931, along with Heinz Neumann, he was the main commissioner of the police murders on Berlin's Bülowplatz , and from September 1933 he was wanted in a wanted list.

After the seizure of the Nazi Party in January 1933, Kippenberger took the 7 February 1933 meeting of the illegal Central Committee of the Communist Party in the sports store Ziegenhals part in Berlin.

He went underground and played an important role in the reorganization of the party structures that had been destroyed by the repression of the Nazi state. In 1935 Kippenberger lost his party functions because he supported Hermann Schubert and Fritz Schulte in the fight for the KPD leadership against Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm Pieck . The M apparatus he was in charge of was disbanded. He first emigrated to Paris and from there was ordered to Moscow. Here he was arrested as part of the Stalin purges in November 1936 and sentenced to death as an alleged "Reichswehr agent" after a secret trial and shot on October 3, 1937. His wife Thea , who was divorced from him in 1930, was also arrested in the spring of 1938 and died in custody in 1939. In 1957 the CPSU rehabilitated Hans and Thea Kippenberger. The daughters of the Kippenberger who were deported to Siberia were only able to leave for the GDR in 1958 .

After his rehabilitation in the Soviet Union, his name was allowed to be mentioned again in the GDR, but the circumstances of his death were to be kept secret. You are e.g. B. in the Biographical Lexicon of the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED , which was published in 1970, is only given in a veiled form.

Fonts

  • together with Adolf Franck : Monistic youth movement “Sun”. Paul Hartung Publishing House, Hamburg 1922
  • A. Neuberg : The armed uprising. Attempt a theoretical representation . allegedly “Otto Meyer, Zurich” 1928. Reprinted with an introduction by Erich Wollenberg, EVA, Frankfurt am Main 1971. Authors: O. Piatnitzki, Michael N. Tuchatschewski, Ho Chi Minh and others. A. Neuberg is a cover name. The fourth chapter, Der Aufstand in Hamburg , pp. 66–94, is by Hans Kippenberger .

literature

  • Hermann Weber : The change in German communism. The Stalinization of the KPD in the Weimar Republic. Volume 2. Frankfurt / Main 1969, pp. 181-182.
  • Frank Müller: Members of the Citizenship. Victim of totalitarian persecution. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Published by the citizens of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Hamburg 1995, DNB 944894100 , pp. 51-53.
  • Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst : German communists . Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Dietz, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-320-02044-7 , pp. 370-371 ( online [accessed December 28, 2012]).
  • Short biography Kippenberger, Hans (Ernst Wolf) In: Institute for the history of the workers' movement (ed.): In the fangs of the NKVD: German victims of the Stalinist terror in the USSR . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-320-01632-6 , p. 113
  • Hermann Weber:  Kippenberger, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 633 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Hans Kippenberger  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Prussian loss lists show a wound ("lv" = slightly wounded) for 1918, Loss list Prussia 1181, 1991 edition, page 24847 of May 7, 1918.
  2. ↑ Thomas Eipeldauer: On the barricades 90 years ago: The armed uprising in Hamburg in Junge Welt online (accessed on October 19, 2013)
  3. ↑ List of participants
  4. ↑ See letter from the head of the cadre department of the Central Committee of the SED, Fritz Müller, of October 20, 1970 to the Institute for Marxism-Leninism, quoted by Hermann Weber : The foundation of the KPD, protocol and materials of the founding party conference of the KPD 1918/1919 . Introduction page 9, Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-320-01818-3
  5. ^ K. Haferkorn: Kippenberger, Karl Hans . In: Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED , History of the German Workers' Movement , Biographical Lexicon. Dietz Verlag , Berlin 1970. Quote: “gest. 1937 in the USSR [...] In 1937, K. was arrested on false accusations. "
personal data
SURNAME Kippenberger, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Neuberg, A. (pseudonym); Leo (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD), MdHB, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH October 3, 1937
Place of death Moscow