1938The SA Man Hermann Trips

Hermann Trips (1902–1941) was born in Tressingen/Lorraine and lived in Alsfeld from 1922 onwards. He served as an alderman (Beigeordneter) of the city of Alsfeld, joined the NSDAP in 1928, and was a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA) holding the rank of Obersturmbannführer. During political actions and demonstrations, he led the local Alsfeld SA unit.

On March 6, 1933, Trips—together with his SA Regiment (Standarte 115), Gauleiter Jacob Sprenger (1884–1945), and the NSDAP district leader (Kreisleiter) in Alsfeld, Heinrich Müller (1896–1945)—actively participated in the violent takeover of power in Hesse. The SA occupied the Ministry of the Interior and other public buildings in Darmstadt. The following day, 500 members of the SA, SS, and the Stahlhelm (League of Frontline Soldiers) were sworn in as auxiliary police officers. Over the subsequent days, they conducted mass searches targeting political opponents and terrorized the Jewish population.

Hermann Trips was rewarded for his service when he was appointed director of the Bezirkssparkasse (regional savings bank) in Alsfeld on April 15, 1934—despite having no experience whatsoever in banking. Supposedly, Gauleiter Sprenger appointed him as director of the savings bank against his own will. On the night of the November Pogrom (November 9, 1938), he made an anonymous phone call to ensure that the fire in the synagogue was extinguished. His intention was to prevent the mortgage held on the property by the savings bank he directed from becoming worthless. He fell in battle on December 28, 1941, in Ssokolja Plota near Kursk, Russia.

After the end of the war, denazification proceedings (Spruchkammerverfahren) were conducted against Hermann Trips. The posthumous proceedings were initiated by his widow in order to secure entitlement to a widow’s pension. During the proceedings, the widow and her lawyer testified that Trips held no functional position within the SA. This was clearly a protective claim. One contemporary witness even cited his role during the burning of the synagogue as exonerating evidence, without addressing his actual motive for intervening. There was consensus on one point: that he had been a convinced National Socialist. A close friend remarked regarding his death in Russia: “He died the death he had wished for.”