Johann Otto Herpel, a most impressive man

There must be many families with a remarkable and extra-special member in their midst, a star in their own right, who can rise heroically above the difficulties and tragedies of ordinary life. This story tells of one such person.

Johann Otto Herpel was born in 1886, in the small town of Kelsterbach, which is situated on the river Main not far from Frankfurt, Germany. He was the first child of Peter and Amalie Herpel and his father was a teacher and later a rector. He was followed by seven brother and sisters, of which three died in infancy. When Otto was three years old the family moved to Bickenbach, a small town south of Frankfurt near Darmstadt, where his father had taken a new post in teaching and in 1892 Otto started school. There were two further moves – Auerbach and Bensheim, where in 1896 Otto finished his schooling obtaining his ‘Abitur’, a considerable academic achievement, current to this day in German High Schools.

Otto set out on a career in theology, his family being staunch Lutherans, and studied at a number of elite Universities – Bonn, Gießen, Friedberg, Darmstadt and was finally ordained in Langen. All these towns are not very far from Frankfurt am Main in Germany. Otto’s first professional position was as assistant vicar in Langen where he remained for six months.

Unfortunately Otto was afflicted by chronic nephritis, which had been identified at his medical examination when being checked for the two years’ compulsory military service that all male school-leavers were required to undertake. He was advised then that he would most likely not survive beyond the age of forty. At the time, he was already engaged to be married to Martha Schmeckenbecher so he offered to release her from their engagement, but she would not hear of it.

On the 16th June 1911 they were married and went to Darmstadt where for two years Otto worked as an assistant vicar to the Paulusgemeinde and also served as chaplain for the prison.

On 12th August 1912, their first daughter was born – Katarina, Bertha, Martha, Johanna, Ruth! The first four names were after her Godmothers and Ruth was her personal name, by which she was known all her life.

The position in Darmstadt was very onerous and Otto was not a very strong man, so when Ruth was 1 year old they found a less demanding position in the medieval village of Lißberg.

Lißberg was a small village with about 300 inhabitants when Otto was sent there in 1913 to be minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church that had been built in 1618.

Otto was a very learned man and whilst in Lißberg he honed his skill as a writer. He published his inaugural dissertation in 1915 and became a doctor of theology of the University of Gießen .

In 1915 he wrote an essay ‘Das Leben in alten Lißberg’ [Life in old Lissberg] a history of the nineteenth century.

In 1916 he published ‘Das Dorf auf dem Hügel – Wie es den Krieg erlebte’ [The Village on the Hill – How it experienced the war] (Herpel, 1916), in both soft and hard cover, in the German Gothic script and dedicated to Frau Martha (his wife). This is the book for which he is best remembered. It has been published several times, the latest in modern script in 1996 .

Also in 1916, on the 2nd February, Ursula Agnes Elizabeth was born. She now lives in the US and will soon be celebrating her 101 years of action-packed life!

1917 saw Otto, no mean poet himself, publishing ‘Die Frömmigkeit der deutschen Kriegslyrik’ – [The pious innocence of German war poetry], a quite remarkable book collecting and presenting the sensitivities of poetry relating to the war. This book is the third in a series looking at studies addressing practical theology. I have an original copy with its thick blue, slightly battered, paper cover and its cut pages; it is dedicated to Otto’s parents (Herpel, 1917).

A new departure for Otto, he published in 1918 a small volume of five short stories in a book titled ‘Die Übermacht’ – [Superior Strength] (Herpel, 1918).

Otto Herpel left an impression with the Lißberg villagers that he was an extraordinary and intelligent and brilliant man. People still talk about him after all this time and he is still remembered.

Then in September 1917 things took a turn for the worse. Otto was commanded to take up the position of war chaplain to the army in Metz in Poland. Seemingly the powers-that-be felt that he was not supportive of the war and this was coming through in his work – probably considered to be affecting the morale of his contacts. During his time in Metz, Otto experienced at first hand the grim horrors of warfare and the dreadful pain, the anguish and sheer misery of the wounded. This affected him so deeply that he was not able to maintain a positive appearance. His pacifist approach could not be tolerated by officialdom and he was posted East to the Province of Posen, presumably where he could do less damage!

His daughter Ruth takes up the story:

And so the family managed to get out in the nick of time and Ruth, in her eighties, still remembered so much detail!

Although he wrote poetry, Otto never had any of his work published and all the originals were lost, most probably during the Second World War. It was not until the death of his daughter Ruth in 2001, here in Australia, that family members, sorting through her books, found a very small volume with poems hand-written in Gothic script, which no-one could decipher!

A trip was made to America where Ursula was able to transcribe what she had actually written out by hand in 1937 as a gift to her sister Ruth who was about to leave Germany to go and live in England. And so, in 2004 twenty eight of Otto’s poems were made into a slim volume by his great niece, Helen Ferguson.

My reading of these poems was an eye-opener into the spirit and mind of this man whom I never knew. I worked hard to translate a selection of four of these quite beautiful poems, which were written during the war, when he was often parted from his family owing to the nature of his work as army chaplain.

The poems are presented below with the English translation on the left and the original German text on the right.

The first poem is clearly written for his young wife back at home:

One happy event was the arrival of Ruth’s sister Eva who was born on the 14th of November in 1919. She was baptised Dorothea Ida Emmy Eva.

Once back in Lißberg, Otto found it very difficult to settle into his old routine. Some profound changes had occurred for him and he turned towards political action, combining this with many very fundamental questions about Christianity.

Otto believed that his vocation was to enter politics and do something for the greater Good. However this period of his life was fraught with dissention, frequent conferences, rejection, changes of heart between colleagues and debates with contentious thinkers. All this would have been some reflection of how society in general had been shaken up by the recent war.

By 1922 he decided to leave the ministry and took up a teaching position at a High School for Girls in Offenbach am Main, teaching theology, philosophy, art history and Greek.

From this time, until his death on his 39th birthday in April 1925, he and his wife Martha devoted a great deal of energy to working actively with young people, participating in the growth of the Wandervögel, an informal movement of wandering youth known as the "birds of passage.” Otto was a foundation member of the Youth Hostels Association, which exists to this day but not in the same spirit as he and his colleagues had envisioned.

Throughout all, Otto continued to write articles, anthologies and frequently contributed to diverse journals. He said already in 1924 that Hitler was mad – he prophesied this and warned of Hitler’s ‘pathologically affected brain material’! He also maintained that Germany would only have a future in a combined united Europe. Otto Herpel was far in advance of his time and would have never survived the Third Empire (Hitler).

His funeral was organised by the young people whom he had inspired, with numerous oral tributes and songs. As Otto Herpel was lowered into his grave, a large ring of brightly coloured flags was lowered to the ground, a moving tribute to a unique man, so dearly loved by the many who knew him.

This is the story of the grandfather that I never did know. He died as the result of meningitis when my mother, Ruth, was twelve years old. I only met Martha (‘Mutti’) my grandmother, for the first time at the age of 11, but we instantly formed a strong bond of affection and I visited her in Germany regularly thereafter. All I knew about Otto was through her and my mother’s stories, my sister’s Family History and now, through having made a close study of some of his poetry. I also made frequent references to the Internet, which to my surprise and pleasure has a great deal of information about Pfarrer Otto Herpel.

Someone should write a book about his life!

First and foremost I owe my sister Sue Gibson a huge debt of gratitude for all the information she was able to provide from our Family History which she has been working on for very many years. And all the lovely photos.

Many thanks also to Johanna McBride and to Barbara Neu for working with me on the poems, especially those mysteriously elusive meanings. Johanna and I both got totally stuck over one word, so that poem had to be abandoned!