Hans Kippenberger (15 January 1898 – 3 October 1937) was a German communist politician who led the Antimilitärischer Apparat, the intelligence arm of the Communist Party of Germany, for most of the Weimar era. He also served as a member of the Reichstag from 1928 and 1933.
Like many other party members at the time, he also operated under "party names" by which he may be identified in sources. They included "A. Neuberg", "Leo Wolf" and "Ernst Wolf".
Early life Hans Kippenberger was born in Leipzig. His father was a lay preacher. He attended school up to the middle level and then became an intern at a printing machine factory, also in Leipzig, shortly afterwards embarking on a traineeship for bank work.
In 1915, Kippenberger volunteered for military service and spent the rest of the First World War in the Imperial German Army. He served on the Western Front, was wounded several times and was decorated with the Iron Cross First Class.John Koehler (1999), The Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, page 36. When Kippenberger was discharged in January 1919, he had reached the rank of Oberleutnant.
Early in 1919, he embarked on a commercial traineeship. which led to a clerical job in Leipzig. From June 1921, he was based in Hamburg, employed as a foreign languages correspondent for various firms and working with the English, French, Italian and Spanish languages.
Radicalization Kippenberger had already in Leipzig joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, and when that broke apart, he was part of the pro-Soviet faction that joined with the newly-formed Communist Party of Germany. By 1922, he was employed full-time by the party as part of what one source identifies as the party's "secret apparatus" (AM Apparat).
Meanwhile, he attended lectures at the University of Hamburg on socioeconomics although it is not clear that he was formally enrolled as a student at the university.
He became a leader in the Communist Party student group and played a leading role in the Hamburg Uprising, which erupted in October 1923. In the city's politically-left-wing Barmbek quarter, Kippenberger led a fighting group of workers and also managed to plant communist moles into Hamburg police and Reichswehr units.
It was thanks to his careful oversight and military training that the communist fighter groups retreated in good order. Although Kippenberger was elected to the regional Hamburg Parliament in 1924, the Hamburg Uprising made the public prosecutor of Hamburg issue a warrant for his arrest. Badly wounded, Kippenberger lived for several months illegally (unregistered with the local city hall) in Leipzig until March 1924, when he fled to the Soviet Union.
While living in Moscow, Kippenberger was personally recruited by General Yan Karlovich Berzin into the Soviet military intelligence service, the GRU. After the Weimar Republic amnestied those who had taken part in the Hamburg Uprising, Kippenberger returned to Germany, where he became, according to John O. Koehler, "the most important link between the Soviet secret service and Germany's Communist Party, functioning at various times under the code names Alex, Adam, and Wolf".Koehler (1999), pages 36-37.
Sources differ over whether he returned from the Soviet Union at the end of 1924 and then lived illegally (unregistered) in Germany or stayed in the Soviet Union until 1926 (or beyond). There is also a suggestion that in Moscow, as well attending a military academy, he studied at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West. During 1924 and 1925, he had still been sought, apparently without success, by the Hamburg police in connection with the part that he had played in the Hamburg Uprising.
Red Stormtroopers Towards the end of the 1920s, Kippenberger was ordered by the Comintern to create a secret paramilitary wing for the Communist Party. In response, Kippenberger created the , or "Party Self Defense Unit".
According to Koehler, "World War I veterans taught the novices how to handle pistols, rifles, machine guns, and hand grenades. This clandestine training was conducted in the sparsely populated, pastoral countryside surrounding Berlin".Koehler (1999), page 38. Members of the Parteiselbstschutz "served as bouncers at Party meetings and specialized in cracking heads during street battles with political enemies". Besides the ruling Social Democratic Party and its paramilitary Reichsbanner units, the arch-enemies of the Parteiselbstschutz were the Stahlhelm, which was the armed wing of the monarchist German National People's Party (DVNP), Trotskyites, and "radical nationalist parties". The Communist Party's Parteiselbstschutz men "always carried a Stahlrute, two steel springs that telescoped into a tube seven inches long, which when extended became a deadly, fourteen-inch weapon. Not to be outdone by the Nazis, these street-fighters were often armed with pistols as well".The Stasi, p. 38.
Representative
In May 1928, he stood for membership of the Reichstag in the general election. He was successful, despite being arrested during the election campaign. As an elected member of the Reichstag he enjoyed certain immunities, and once the election result became known, he had to be released. He sat as a Communist Party member for Electoral District 29 (Leipzig).
At the twelfth party conference, held in 1929 in the central Wedding district of Berlin, Kippenberg was accepted as a candidate for the party's Central Committee membership. In the Reichstag, his focus was on defence matters, and he was a member of the parliamentary military commission. He continued to sit in the Reichstag till 1933. Outside the chamber, he built up the so-called Betriebsberichterstattung (BB-Ressort), which originated in 1927 within the party's illegal military apparatus but from 1932 was consciously separated from it. It was a quasi-military body comprising approximately 300 members, who undertook economic-espionage tasks on behalf of the Soviet Union and also reported more generally on social, political and economic developments during what was a period of rising tension inside Germany. Seen from the perspective of the Nazi Party, the BB-Ressort was "the German Communist Party's most dangerous structure".
Bülowplatz Murders
Planning
During the last days of the Weimar Republic, the KPD had a policy of assassinating two Berlin police officers in retaliation for every KPD member killed by the police.Koehler (1999), page 33. On 2 August 1931, KPD Members of the Reichstag Kippenberger and Heinz Neumann received a dressing down from Walter Ulbricht, the party's leader in the Berlin-Brandenburg region. Enraged by police interference and by Neumann and Kippenberger's failure to follow the policy, Ulbricht snarled, "At home in Saxony we would have done something about the police a long time ago. Here in Berlin we will not fool around much longer. Soon we will hit the police in the head".John Koehler, The Stasi, p. 36.
Enraged by Ulbricht's words, Kippenberger and Neumann decided to assassinate Paul Anlauf, the 42-year-old captain of the Berlin Police's Seventh Precinct. Anlauf, a widower with three daughters, had been nicknamed Schweinebacke by the KPD (the insult literally means "pork cheek" but is closer to "fat bastard").
According to Koehler, "Of all the policemen in strife-torn Berlin, the reds hated Anlauf the most. His precinct included the area around KPD headquarters, which made it the most dangerous in the city. The captain almost always led the riot squads that broke up illegal rallies of the Communist Party".The Stasi, p. 36.
On the morning of Sunday 9 August 1931, Kippenberger and Neumann gave a last briefing to the hit team in a room at the Lassant beer hall. The Parteiselbstschutz members Erich Mielke and Erich Ziemer were selected as the shooters. During the meeting, Max Matern gave a Luger pistol to fellow lookout Max Thunert and said, "Now we're getting serious... We're going to give Schweinebacke something to remember us by".The Stasi, pp. 38–39.
Kippenberger then asked Mielke and Ziemer, "Are you sure that you are ready to shoot Schweinebacke?"John Koehler, The Stasi, p. 39. Mielke responded that he had seen Captain Anlauf many times during police searches of Party Headquarters. Kippenberger then instructed them to wait at a nearby beer hall which would permit them to overlook the entire Bülow-Platz. He further reminded them that Captain Anlauf was accompanied everywhere by Senior Sergeant Max Willig, whom the KPD had nicknamed Hussar.
Kippenberger concluded, "When you spot Schweinebacke and Hussar, you take care of them".The Stasi, p. 39. Mielke and Ziemer were informed that after the assassinations had been completed, a diversion would assist in their escape. They were then to return to their homes and await further instructions.
That evening, Anlauf was lured to Bülow-Platz by a violent rally demanding the dissolution of the Prussian Parliament.
According to Koehler, "As was often the case when it came to battling the dominant SPD, the KPD and the Nazis had combined forces during the pre-plebiscite campaign. At one point in this particular campaign, Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels even shared a speaker's platform with KPD agitator Walter Ulbricht. Both parties wanted the parliament dissolved because they were hoping that new elections would oust the SPD, the sworn enemy of all radicals. That fact explained why the atmosphere was particularly volatile this Sunday".The Stasi, pp. 39–40.
Murder at the Babylon Cinema
At eight o'clock that evening, Mielke and Ziemer waited in a doorway as Captain Anlauf, Sergeant Willig and Captain Franz Lenck walked toward the Babylon Cinema, which was located in Berlin at the corner of Bülowplatz and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße. As they reached the door of the movie house, the policemen heard someone scream, "Schweinebacke!"The Stasi, p. 41.
As Anlauf turned toward the sound, Mielke and Ziemer opened fire at point blank range. Willig was wounded in the left arm and the stomach but managed to draw his Luger pistol and fired a full magazine at the assailants. Lenck was shot in the chest and fell dead in front of the entrance. Willig crawled over and cradled the head of Captain Anlauf, who had taken two bullets in the neck. As his life drained away, the Captain gasped, "Wiedersehen... Gruss..." ("So Long... Goodbye...").
Meanwhile, Mielke and Ziemer made their escape by running into the cinema and out an emergency exit. They tossed their pistols over a fence, where they were later found by homicide detectives from the elite Mordkommission (Homicide Squad). Mielke and Ziemer then returned to their homes.Koehler (1999), pages 41–42.
According to Koehler, "Back at Bülowplatz, the killings had triggered a major police action. At least a thousand officers poured into the square, and a bloody street battle ensued. Rocks and bricks were hurled from the rooftops. Communist gunmen fired indiscriminately from the roofs of surrounding apartment houses. As darkness fell, police searchlights illuminated the buildings. Using megaphones, officers shouted, 'Clear the streets! Move away from the windows! We are returning fire!' By now the rabble had fled the square, but shooting continued as riot squads combed the tenements, arresting hundreds of residents suspected of having fired weapons. The battle lasted until one o'clock the next morning. In addition to the two police officers, the casualties included one Communist who died of a gunshot wound and seventeen others who were seriously wounded".Koehler (1999), page 42.