Gerhard Klopfer, Nazi Party Chancellery: A Nationalist Ideologue and a Respectable West German

On 2 February 1987, a death notice appeared in the Ulm newspaper Südwest-Presse that caused some readers to double take: “In memory of Dr Gerhard Klopfer, who passed away after a fulfilled life in the service of all those in his sphere of influence.” The announcement was signed by his wife, sister and four daughters with their husbands and nineteen children.¹ It would not have been remarkable had the deceased not been the former state secretary in Martin Bormann’s Party Chancellery, and the longest surviving participant in the Wannsee Conference. The chairman of Berlin’s Jewish Community, Hans Galinski, found the