Background
Franz Hipper was born to Anton and Anna Hipper in Weilheim in Oberbayern, some 40 miles (64 km) south of Munich, on 13 September 1863.
Franz Hipper was born to Anton and Anna Hipper in Weilheim in Oberbayern, some 40 miles (64 km) south of Munich, on 13 September 1863.
When Franz turned five, he began his education at a Catholic grammar school in Munich. At the age of ten, Franz attended the Gymnasium in Munich. Hipper graduated from the Gymnasium in 1879 with an Obersekunda the equivalent of a high school diploma.
After completing his education, Hipper signed up as a volunteer reserve officer (Einjährig-Freiwilliger), a one-year volunteer position in the German military. After basic officer training in 1879, Hipper decided to join the navy. He went to Kiel, where he took the Pressen, courses designed to prepare officers for the naval entrance examination, which he successfully passed. On 12 April 1881, at the age of 18, Franz Hipper became an officer of the Imperial German Navy. Among the fellow cadets of the 1881 class was Wilhelm Souchon, who went on to command the Mediterranean Division at the outbreak of World War I.
The outbreak of the war found Hipper unprepared: on August 28, 1914, the British surprised his forces in the Helgoland Bight, destroying the light cruisers Ariadne, Mainz, and Köln while Hipper tarried in port. Thereafter the chief of the Scouting Forces undertook several raids against the English east coast, shelling Yarmouth and Lowestoft on November 2/3 and Hartlepool, Scarborough, and Whitby on December 15/16, 1914. A further raid on January 24, 1915, cost Hipper the armored cruiser Blücher at the Dogger Bank, while the battle cruiser Seydlitz was severely damaged. This disastrous action curtailed offensive sorties until April 1916, when Hipper's units again shelled Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. The Bavarian was promoted vice admiral in June 1915.
Hipper opposed a decisive fleet encounter with the British throughout 1914/1915, arguing that Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's public call for such a thrust was designed merely to assuage his Reichstag critics on this matter. But by 1916 Hipper began to fear that an idle fleet would have no future and he yearned "to do battle." He got his wish at the end of May 1916. Admiral Reinhard Scheer left port on May 31 in order to intercept isolated units of the Grand Fleet in the Skagerrak; at about 3:30 P.M. that afternoon, Hipper on Lützow sighted Admiral David Beatty's battle cruisers and within an hour engaged the enemy. Hipper proved himself a coldblooded tactician that day as he outmaneuvered Beatty and with deadly accurate fire destroyed the British battle cruisers Indefatigable, Queen Mary, and Invincible. By about 7 P.M., however, Admiral John Jellicoe was bearing down hard upon the Germans with the entire Grand Fleet, and Scheer twice managed to avoid annihilation only by desperate 180-degree turns; Hipper's ships took a terrible pounding while attempting to cover these evolutions with smoke and fire. At 8:13 P.M., Hipper received Scheer's order "Attack the enemy!" and he hurled his remaining forces against the entire Grand Fleet as Scheer once again found that Jellicoe had crossed his T; the Lützow was destroyed and only the Moltke remained seaworthy and served as Hipper's flagship that night. Scheer and Hipper managed to reach port safely. They refused on the morning of June 1 to offer the British battle in the Helgoland Bight. For his actions, Hipper received the Prussian order Pour le mérite and was raised into the Bavarian nobility.
The next year brought not further fleet action but rebellion on many capital ships. Hipper denounced his sailors' complaints for food quality improvement and supervision as an "anarchist movement" and counseled that several leaders of the action "ruthlessly" be "put against the wall." Moreover, Hipper saw the time ripe for a major political change in Germany: "Send the Reichstag home and appoint a dictator." In the end, several leaders of the rebellion were summarily executed, but the unrest and low morale of the sailors continued unabated.
In April 1918, Scheer decided to advance with the High Sea Fleet as far north as Bergen in order to intercept Scandinavian convoys bound for the British Isles, and Hipper covered this advance with his Scouting Forces. The last major sortie by the Germans was highlighted only by the mechanical breakdown of the Moltke; Hipper, well remembering the plight of the Blücher at the Dogger Bank, favored cancellation of the operation rather than risk the loss of another heavy unit. On August 11, 1918, Hipper was promoted admiral and appointed chief of the High Sea Fleet as Scheer accepted the new post of head of a Supreme Command of the Navy.
Early in October 1918, as the German armies were being driven back in France, Hipper and his staff decided upon "an honorable fleet engagement, even if it should become a death struggle." With the assistance of Rear Admiral Adolf von Trotha and Commodore Magnus von Levetzow, Hipper on October 24 formally endorsed Operations Plan Nr. 19, which called for a sortie by the entire High Sea Fleet against the British on October 30. Instead, the sailors of the fleet got wind of the planned death ride and refused to get up steam. A belated attempt to attribute the planned assault to the government of Prince Max von Baden failed, and on November 9 the sailors raised the red flag on Hipper's flagship. The last commander of the High Sea Fleet retired on December 13 after having witnessed the surrender of the ships to the British ("My heart is breaking"). Hipper died at Altona-Othmarschen near Hamburg on May 25,1932.