Rudolph Carl von Ripper

Rudolph Carl von Ripper , since 1919 Rudolph Carl Ripper, (born January 29, 1905 in Cluj-Napoca , Austria-Hungary ; died July 9, 1960 in Pollença , Spain ) was a surrealist painter and illustrator.

Life

Baron von Ripper was born in Austria-Hungary and was temporarily married to Mopsa Sternheim .

He had gone to England before Hitler came to power. In autumn 1933 he returned to Berlin and was arrested because copies of the Brown Book about the Reichstag fire and Nazi terror disguised as Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea had been found on him. After interrogation by the former Gestapo boss Rudolf Diels Ripper was initially in the SS prison Columbia concentration camp detained and in January 1934 in the Oranienburg concentration camp transferred. At the beginning of May 1934, following intervention by the Austrian embassy, ​​he was released from the concentration camp and expelled from Germany. In 1941 he and his wife Dorothea von Ripper (ie Mopsa Sternheim) were expatriated from the German Reich.

Laden with the boot of many country ', the Africa-Corps is brought into captivity. (1943)

After his imprisonment, he served in the French Foreign Legion and fought in the Spanish Civil War . He emigrated to the USA in 1938 . In 1941 he signed up for service in the American Army , where he was promoted to a highly decorated officer of the OSS ( Office of Strategic Services ). In 1946 he returned to Austria as an American citizen and taught at the Vienna Art Academy. He later lived in Connecticut . In the 1950s, Ripper and his second wife bought a property in Pollença on Mallorca , where he died of a heart attack in 1960 after a busy period. He was buried in the Pollença cemetery.

In exile, Ripper processed his experiences in prison in a series of drawings that were exhibited in London in 1935 under the title Kaleidoscope and were then lost. In the following two years Ripper reconstructed the drawings as etchings, the title Ècraser l'infăme! Borrowed from a portfolio in Paris in 1938 under the Voltaire ! published.

Ripper created oil paintings, drawings, etchings, jewelry and templates for tapestries. His portrayal of Hitler as an unholy organist playing the hymn of hatred appeared on the cover of Time magazine and caught public attention in the late 1930s.

His works were u. a. Exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum .

literature

• Dietmar Horst: The dancer on the waves - The strange life of Rudolf Charles von Ripper . Berenkamp Verlag, Hall / Vienna, 2010
• Dietmar Horst: The last great romantic . In: Salzburger Nachrichten , October 2, 2010, p. VII (supplement)
• CL Sulzberger: Unconquered Souls. The Resistentialists . Woodstock, Overlook Press, 1973
• S. Koja, C. Tinzl: Rudolf Charles von Ripper - Work and Resistance. Exhibition cat. Linz, Salzburg 1989
• Jörg Deuter, Gert Schiff: From Füssli to Picasso. Biography of a generation of art historians . Weimar, 2013. pp. 160–165.
• Sian Mackay: From Ripper's Odyssey: War, Resistance, Art and Love . Thistle Publishing, London. 2016
• Klaus Mann : Écrasez l'infâme . In: Klaus Mann: The miracle of Madrid . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek b. Hamburg 1993, pp. 232-236.
• Jutta Schneider: The Bear of Berlin: Yearbook of the Association for the History of Berlin 1997 . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 11, 1998, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 112–115 ( luise-berlin.de - review of Winfried Meyer's presentation).

Web links

• Wieland Schmied: A cellar bar and its consequences: An exceptionally good show for the “Mythos Art Club”. In: derStandard.at . June 5, 2003 (via Ripper as financier of the Art Club; reproduced on basis-wien.at). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Hepp (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . Volume 1, Saur, Munich 1985, p. 458 (list 217)