Rudolph von Ripper

Rudolph von Ripper was born in 1905, son of an Austrian baron and general who was the last aide de camp to Charles I of Austria.[1][2] After his father's death and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire, he ran away from home and worked in various jobs including as a coal miner and a circus clown,[3] before studying at art the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.[4]

Mopsa von Ripper in 1933

He then moved to Paris, where in 1925, aged 19, he joined the French Foreign Legion. He served in the Legion for two years, being deployed against the Great Syrian Revolt, where he was wounded in action.[4][3] He then deserted the legion, and moved to Berlin, before travelling to Shanghai in 1928 as a filmmaker.[3][4]

On his return to Berlin in 1929, he married stage designer Dorothea "Mopsa" Sternheim, with whom he participated in the decadent Weimar culture of early 1930s Berlin.[4]

Around 1933 he travelled to Mallorca, where he produced anti-fascist drawings to the commission of the German resistance.[5]

In October 1933, he returned via Paris to Berlin, now under Nazi rule, bringing with him copies of the 'Braunbuch',[5] an anti-Nazi publication written by German left-wing groups in exile and published in Paris.[6] He was taken to the office of Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels, and accused of high treason, for his production of anti-Nazi cartoons and possession of anti-Nazi pamphlets.[4]

He was imprisoned and tortured for some months in Oranienburg concentration camp,[1] until in 1934 he managed to get a message to Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, who intervened to have him released, with a requirement to leave all Nazi-held territories.[5][4][2][3]

He returned, via Amsterdam and Paris, to Mallorca, where he created a series of pieces entitled Ecrasez l'infame (To Crush Tyranny), a reference to Voltaire.[5]

In October 1935, fourteen of his pieces under the title "Kaleidoscope" were exhibited at the Tooth Gallery in London,[7][8] and according to the New York Times "created a sensation in the art world".[1] The German ambassador asked that the show be censored, but British authorities refused.[4]

After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, in which General Francisco Franco's coup was supported by troops from Nazi Germany, von Ripper joined the Republican Army, with the specific aim of fighting the Germans.[4] In 1937, he was serving as an aerial gunner in the Spanish Republican Air Force when his plane was shot down and his left leg riddled with metal from a shell.[1] He was told by doctors that his leg would have to be amputated, but left before they could do so.[4]

In 1938, his health too damaged to fight further, he travelled to New York City,[5][3] where he settled for a while in Greenwich Village and he held exhibitions at the A.C.A and Bignou galleries.[8]

He then earned a residency at the Yaddo artists' community,[9] before moving to New Canaan, Connecticut where he established an art studio in a century-old barn.[8][1][4]

In January 1939, Time used von Ripper's picture captioned 'From the unholy organist, a hymn of hate', from Ecrasez l'infame, on the front cover of the issue which named Adolf Hitler as 1938's Man of the Year.[10][11]

TIME'S cover, showing Organist Adolf Hitler playing his hymn of hate in a desecrated cathedral while victims dangle on a St. Catherine's wheel and the Nazi hierarchy looks on, was drawn by Baron Rudolph Charles von Ripper, a Catholic who found Germany intolerable.

— Time magazine, Jan 2 1939[10]

The issue also contained a profile of von Ripper and his art, under the heading 'Art: Enemy of the State'.[12]

In 1941, Rudolph and Mopsa were officially expelled from the German Empire.[13]

1943 drawing by von Ripper of Afrika Corps prisoners, captioned "laden with the loot of many country's, the Africa-Corps is brought into captivity."

When the United States joined World War II, in 1941, von Ripper attempted to join the army as a soldier, but was initially rejected due to his health.[4] Meanwhile, he painted propaganda posters intended for distribution abroad for the Office of War Information. Eventually, on September 5, 1942, he was admitted to the United States Army[2] for 'limited service only' due to his wounds,[4] and initially served as a hospital laboratory technician.[1] On the formation of the Corps of Engineers War Art Unit, he transferred to that unit and in 1943 sent to North Africa as an Artist Correspondent alongside Mitchell Siporin.[2][4]

In 1943, he became a United States citizen.[1]

He worked alongside Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ernie Pyle, who in his 1944 book Brave Men wrote:

One of the most fabulous characters in that war theater was Lieutenant Rudolf Charles von Ripper. He was so fabulous, a man might have been justified in thinking him a phony until he got to know him. ... He was no phony. Von Ripper was the kind they write books about.

— Brave Men, by Ernie Pyle, 1944[3]

The Army Artist Unit was dissolved in May 1943, and von Ripper transferred to the Intelligence Section to interrogate prisoners. He was assigned to the 34th Infantry Division, with whom he took part in the Invasion of Italy.[4][1]

In Italy, he served as acting intelligence officer of the 2nd Battalion of the 168th Infantry Regiment.[14] He also led patrols against Nazi positions, either with squads of soldiers or alone.[1] For actions in these sorties he was awarded a Silver Star and oak leaf cluster, and on December 12 1943 was promoted to second lieutenant,[4] which fellow artist Sergeant Mitchell Siporin described as 'a battlefield appointment about which much should be said'.[2] He also received a Purple Heart with oak leaf cluster and a Division Citation.[2]

Von Ripper and one of his men advanced in the face of intense enemy fire and killed two and wounded three of the enemy, took 11 prisoners and captured numerous enemy weapons

— Citation for Oak leaf cluster to a Silver Star, quoted in Von Ripper: Painter with a Gun by Peter Carlson[4]

In a later sortie, he was ambushed and wounded in his right hand, left leg and face by machine gun bullets. He was taken to Naples to recover, where he continued to work on paintings based on his front line sketches.[4] He became sufficiently known for his audacity when leading patrols that his division forbade him going on patrol without specific permission.[3]

In December 1943, his art was included in The Army at War, a War Department exhibition of combat art. Writing in the catalogue for the exhibition, von Ripper wrote:

A soldier-artist is a painter with a gun, a man to fight at times and to paint at other times. And in that he is very lucky: He can divert his effort from destruction, from killing, which is the soldier’s job, to creative work, to build, make new things.

— Rudolph von Ripper, quoted in The Army at War, War Finance Department 1943[2]

In February 1944 he returned to the front lines and was involved in the Battle of Monte Cassino.[4]

von Ripper's exploits drew the attention of Office of Strategic Services (OSS) director William J. Donovan, and he was recruited for its Secret Intelligence Branch.[1] He parachuted into Austria early in 1945 to organise resistance and inform the OSS about the situation.[4] After the war ended, von Ripper was involved in finding Gestapo and Nazi officials hiding in Austria.[4][1]

He left the OSS in late 1945,[4] though some commentators suggest he continued as an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency.[5] His final official evaluation form assessed him as "Outstanding in fieldwork but too restless for staff work".[4]

Divorcing Mopsa, he married art critic Evelyn Leege. First they returned to his pre-war home in Connecticut,[4] where he earned Guggenheim Fellowships in 1945 and 1947 for fine art painting.[15] In 1950, they moved to a villa called Ca'n Cueg near Pollença on Mallorca, despite the island still being under the Francoist regime that von Ripper had fought against in the 1930s.[5]

In 1960, returning from a four-month trip, von Ripper was arrested by Spanish police and charged with smuggling. His wartime comrade C. L. Sulzberger, who had cautioned him against returning to Mallorca, believed that this might be the Spanish regime seeking revenge against him.[4]

On July 9 1960, while on bail awaiting trial, von Ripper stepped outside the villa. He was found dead the following morning by Evelyn, with his death recorded as being from a heart attack,[4] though some commentators including biographer Sian Mackay have considered the death suspicious.[5]

His obituary in the New York Times was headed, "Rudolf von Ripper, Artist, Dies; War Hero Served With O. S. S.".[1]

In the 1990s, workers clearing out the Ca'n Cueg villa found a large number of papers and sketches belonging to von Ripper, which formed the basis of Sian Mackay's book Von Ripper’s Odyssey: War, Resistance, Art and Love.[5]