Julius Lippert (9 July 1895 – 30 June 1956) was a German Nazi Party politician who served as the Staatskommissar (State Commissioner) for Berlin from 1933 to 1937 and as its Oberbürgermeister and Stadtspräsident (City President) from 1937 to 1940.
Early life
Born in Basel, Switzerland, Lippert became an extreme antisemite in his youth after reading works by antisemitic writers such as Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He was educated in the gymnasium in Wiesbaden and passed his abitur in 1914. He joined the Imperial German Army at the outbreak of the First World War, was wounded twice, and ended the war as a Leutnant of reserves in the artillery. Between 1918 and 1922 he studied political science and received his degree from the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Lippert was a member of the Black Reichswehr, and then worked as a journalist and editor at several newspapers from 1923 to 1927. A member of the conservative German National People's Party from 1919 to 1921, he joined the even more extreme German Völkisch Freedom Party from 1921 to 1923.
Nazi career
On 19 April 1927, Lippert enrolled in the Nazi Party (membership number 59,957) and became prominent due to his rabid antisemitism. He became a protégé of Joseph Goebbels, the Gauleiter of Berlin and became the editor-in-chief of Goebbels' paper, Der Angriff from June 1927 to January 1933. He was elected to the Berlin City Council in November 1929, becoming the deputy leader (1929–1933) and then the leader (1930–1933) of the Nazi faction on the council. In the 1932 Prussian state election, he failed in his bid to be elected to the Landtag of Prussia. However, shortly after the Nazi seizure of power, Lippert was appointed to the Landtag in March 1933 and was made the Staatskommissar (state commissioner) for Berlin on 14 March 1933. He purged the capital's government of opposition and was responsible for much of the early persecution of Jews in Berlin. In October 1933, he was made an inaugural member of Hans Frank's Academy for German Law. Also in October 1933, he entered the Nazi paramilitary organization, the SA, with the rank of SA-Standartenführer. He commanded the SA–Gruppe Berlin-Brandenburg from January 1934 and would eventually rise to the rank of SA-Gruppenführer. On 16 October 1934, he was made the president of the Prussian Provincial Council for Berlin. In October 1935, Goebbels commissioned him to begin preparatory work for the Berlin Olympic games, and in February 1936 he joined the Olympic Organizational Committee. He was also appointed to the Prussian State Council by Prussian Minister President Hermann Göring. Also in 1937, Lippert was named as a senator of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society.
Lippert was succeeded by his deputy, Ludwig Steeg, and his departure from his prominent position led to rumors that he had been executed. However, he had actually joined the Wehrmacht, and from 1941 to 1943 was the commander of the "Southeast Propaganda Department" in Belgrade. He then was transferred to Belgium where he was the commandant of Arlon from May 1943 to August 1944. His next and last assignment was as the commander of a Feldjägerkorps regiment in Slovakia and Hungary.