Kipper, Paul

Lawyer

Born: 15.05.1876 in Berghofen near Dortmund

died: 17.05.1963 in Darmstadt

After studying law and completing his preparatory service, Kipper was in the Prussian civil service from 1900 and worked as a judge at the regional and district courts in Wiesbaden from 1930-34. He joined the NSDAP on 01.05.1933.

Although the son of a pastor, he had probably only rediscovered his interest in the church in 1933, according to the former pastor of the Luther Church, Hermann Otto Geißler. In the same year, Kipper became churchwarden of the Wiesbaden Ringkirche parish and a secular member of the Third Nassau State Church Congress, which forcibly retired the previous state bishop August Kortheuer at the "Brown Synod" on September 12, 1933 and appointed the Wiesbaden market church pastor Ernst Ludwig Dietrich as "Plenipotentiary of the Protestant State Church in Nassau". The latter appointed Kipper as his "deputy in legal matters" and in 1934 as "President of the Landeskirchenkanzlei" (from 1938 Landeskirchenamt) as the highest church administrative authority with its two administrative offices in Darmstadt and Wiesbaden.

After the resignation of the Nassau-Hessen "State Church Committee" in July 1938, which had effectively disempowered Bishop Dietrich, Kipper took over as President of the State Church Office and thus practically took over the management of the State Church of Nassau-Hessen - also in conflict with the "Confessing Church". On May 18, 1945, he announced his resignation.