Axel Ripke

Axel Herbert Ewald Ripke (28 March 1880, in Mitau – 5 December 1937, in Halensee) was a German journalist and politician of the German Fatherland Party and the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Among other things, he was one of the first Gauleiters of the NSDAP and an early mentor of Joseph Goebbels. Early life After leaving school Ripke studied history and philology at university. 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. World War I and immediate post-war period 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 Leutnant 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 Army Press Office and in German military administration.