Axel Ripke

Axel Herbert Ewald Ripke (28 March 1880 Mitau – 5 December 1937) was a German journalist and politician (Fatherland Party, DVP, NSDAP). Among other things, he was one of the first Gauleiters of the NSDAP and an early mentor of Joseph Goebbels.

Curriculum vitae

After leaving school Ripke studied history and philology. During that time the theories of his teacher Heinrich Rickert exerted a dominating influence on him. After completing his studies he worked as a journalist.

Before World War I Ripke held close ties to the imperialist and nationalist Pan-German League. In 1912 he became a more widely known figure when he took over the position of publisher of the newly founded national-liberal periodical Der Panther (The Panther), which was distinguishing itself for its viciously imperialist positions: Even the name of the new organ was an invocation of one of the most notorious gestures of aggression in the area of foreign politics made by the German Government in the years preceding World War I, namely the so-called Panthersprung nach Agadir (Panther's leap to Agadir), which referred to the demonstrative deployment of the German gunboat Panther to the Moroccan city of Agadir during the Agadir Crisis of 1911, which was generally interpreted (and intended to be) as a statement of willingness on the part of the Imperial German Government to resort to force, to assert its goals. An aspect of particular significance pertaining to the tendency of Der Panther was the belligerent Anglophobia it was propagating:

The saying that 'the world is rapidly becoming English' has so far proved true; and it is up to the Germans alone to put a stop to this prophecy.

After the outbreak of World War I Ripke had his newspaper, in accordance with their positions in foregone years, immediately joined the chorus of enthusiastically pro-war voices among the German press. Der Panther was vastly more annexationist than most other publications. After Ripke himself was drafted into the Prussian army in the Winter of 1914/1915 as a lieutenant of the reserve he handed the control of his newspaper over to his wife. During the ensuing two years of the war Ripke worked in the press department of the German military administration.

In 1917 Ripke joined the German Fatherland Party, a far-right party, which represented the most right-wing and pro-war elements in the political spectrum of Imperial Germany during the last years of World War I. In November 1917 Ripke was discharged from the Prussian Army in order to become chief of the press department of the Fatherland Party. In this capacity he published a plethora of brochures and books that were intended to flare up the waning war morale. Among those publications was the anthology Zehn deutsche Rede (Ten German speeches) which Ripke edited, while his future colleague among the higher echelons of the NSDAP Ernst von Reventlow was among the contributors.

Post-World War I career

After the end of World War I and the collapse of Imperial Germany Ripke served as Secretary General of the new DVP, a moderate right-wing party which was propped up in 1918 and 1919, for a brief period of time. He was swiftly dismissed from that position on account of his inept handling of the party's finances - creating a debt of 40.000 Reichsmark.

In the following years Ripke worked as executive director of the Hansa Association's branch in the city of Elberfeld and as contributor of the right-wing newspaper Bürgervorwärts (Ahead!, Bourgeoisie), whose name was an allusion to the social-democrat newspaper Vorwärts, whose right-wing/bourgeois counterpart the Bürgervorwärts was supposed to be.

In the early 1920s Ripke started to move closer and closer to the völkisch movement among the German right. As a result, he became one of the first members of the NSDAP after its re-foundation in early 1925. Adolf Hitler appointed Ripke as the first Gauleiter of the Gau (district) Rheinland-Nord (Northern Rhinelands). His appointment was officially dated March 27, 1925. Ripke set up the headquarters of his administrative organization in the city of Elberfeld. Among his staff members as Gauleiter were Karl Kaufmann, Hellmuth Elbrechter and Joseph Goebbels. After a short period of time Ripke's more radical aides grew at odds with their chief whom they considered to be inadequately activist. After bemoaning his lack of revolutionary spirit for a couple of weeks the trio of Goebbels, Elbrechter and Kaufmann set out to stage a coup against Ripke: In June 1925 Goebbels published an essay entitled Verkalkte Intelligenz (Fossil intelligentsia) which represented a frontal attack against Ripke, who was clear to everyone to be the target of Goebbels polemics, even though his name was not mentioned. Goebbels' diaries from that time also included a number of sharp criticisms of Ripke:

He hates my radicalism as if it was the plague. Alas he is a bourgeois man in disguise. That kind is unusable if one wants to make a revolution.

In their aspiration to overthrow Ripke the clique of Goebbels, Kaufmann and Elbrechter initiated an intrigue against Ripke: By accusing him of embezzling party funds they sought to make him unacceptable as Gauleiter for the leadership of the NSDAP in Munich. Following the charges brought forward by Ripke's subordinates the party leadership started an investigation of his handling of his Gau's funds in July 1925. On July 7 Ripke put himself on leave and shortly thereafter stepped down from his post as Gauleiter, exhausted by the continuous barrage of attacks of his staffers against him. As a consequence Kaufmann was appointed as the new Gauleiter. Goebbels, despite his machinations against Ripke conceded in his diary that the latter had taught him "infinitely much" as a propagandist and that Ripke had been "an event in my life".

After 1925 Ripke mostly retreated from public life. For a period of time he worked as editor for the nationalist Bergisch-Märkische Zeitung. In 1929 he became a member of the municipal parliament of the city of Wuppertal for the NSDAP. His hope to be put on the list of Nazi candidates for the General Election of 1930 was thwarted by Goebbels who had him ruled out from the list of suggested candidates.

Following severe conflicts with Florian the Gauleiter of Düsseldorf Ripke was excluded from the NSDAP on November 9, 1932. After being re-admitted to the NSDAP for a short time in May 1934 Ripke was once again relegated at the insistence of Florian. On a regional level he was however, allowed to re-enter politics as a municipal deputy of the Municipal Assembly of Wuppertal.

Publications
  • Neue Weltkultur, 1915.
  • Zehn deutsche Reden, 1915. (editor)
  • Wie ehrt ein Volk seine großen Männer?, 1915.
  • Der Koloss auf tönernen Füssen, 1916.

Literatur
  • Fritz Fischer: War of Illusions. German policies from 1911 to 1914, 1975.
  • Karl Höffkes: Hitlers politische Generale, 1986.
  • Matthew Stibbe: German Anglophobia and the Great War, 1914-1918, 2006.
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