Oskar Hippe

Oskar Hippe (born April 1, 1900 in Lützkendorf ; † March 13, 1990 in Berlin ) was a German metal worker, a leading German Trotskyist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Oskar Hippe was born on April 1st, 1900 as the youngest of eleven children of a family of railway workers. After attending elementary school, he completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter. During this time, on July 28, 1914, Hippe took part in his first anti-war demonstration. Characterized by the contrasts with his monarchist father, he joined the working class youth movement at the age of 16 . Meanwhile moved to Berlin and worked as a pipe fitter, after Karl Liebknecht's arrest on May 1, 1916 , Hippe joined the Spartakusbund . Moved in shortly before the end of the war, Hippe returned to Berlin and was one of the founding members of the KPD. After taking part in fighting in Berlin in January and March 1919, Hippe then fled to Central Germany. He did not return to Berlin until 1924. He was arrested in 1926 for resisting state power and sentenced to 6 months in prison in October of the same year. Even before that, he belonged to the left opposition in the KPD, and in 1927 he participated in the establishment of the Lenin League . He was then expelled from the KPD in 1928. In 1930 he left the Lenin League together with its Trotskyist wing and took part in the founding of the United Left Opposition of the KPD , to whose Reich leadership he belonged from 1931. In early 1933, Hippe was elected to the International Secretariat of the Trotskyists. In 1933 he was initially taken into " protective custody " for a short time . Because of the continuation of his political resistance, he was arrested again in January 1934. In November of the same year he was sentenced to two years in prison in a trial against him and 10 other accused. He served this sentence first in Plötzensee prison and then in Luckau . In 1938/39 he was employed on the large construction site for the Reich Air Defense School on the Heckeshorn .

After his release, Hippe continued his resistance, among other things by working with French and Soviet prisoners of war in northern Germany. From 1944 he was back in Berlin and got in touch with communist resistance groups. After the liberation in 1945 he became a member of the KPD again. Through contacts with American Trotskyists among the occupation troops in Berlin, however, he also got back in touch with the Fourth International and again organized a group of International Communists in Germany under the name “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Neues Beginnen”.

At times he also belonged to the group of International Socialists (GIS) around Alfred Weiland , but separated from it again because of its collaboration with organizations controlled by the US military intelligence service CIC .

Hippe became the publisher of the IKD magazine Der Marxist and began building IKD groups in the Soviet Zone , especially in the Halle-Merseburg area. From 1946 he worked full-time as FDGB secretary in Berlin. Because of his membership in Trotskyist groups, he was expelled from the SED . In September 1948 he was arrested by the NKVD in Halle and sentenced in 1949 by a Soviet military tribunal to a prison term of 25 years in a labor camp. Until 1956 he spent his imprisonment in the SMT prison in Bautzen . Then he was pardoned and he moved to West Berlin , became a member of the ÖTV and the Marxist working group in the SPD , which he left again in 1968. At times he was also active in the SDS .

Hippe died in West Berlin in the spring of 1990.

Publications (selection)

• And our flag is red. Junius-Verlag: Hamburg 1979
• About strikes on May 1, 1927 in: Der brüchige Friede. Sound documents, published by the Bavarian State Center for Political Education

literature

• Hip, Oskar . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
• Michael Kubina: About Utopia, Resistance and Cold War. The untimely life of the Berlin councilor communist Alfred Weiland (1906-1978). Münster 2001 ISBN 3-8258-5361-6 ; P. 98f.
• (anon.): Honor Oskar Hippe 1900-1990 , in: Spartakist - Arbeiterpressekorrespondenz , No. 28 of March 20, 1990, p. 2 (obituary)

Web links

• Literature by and about Oskar Hippe in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from September 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated June 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.