Alfred Toepfer

Toepfer was born in 1894 in Lüneburg Heath, the son of a merchant. He lived on a farm and completed an apprenticeship while learning several languages at school. Early 1912, he joined the Wandervogel, and was greatly influenced by the historian Julius Langbehn. Its leader Hans Breuer shaped his thinking, especially his call for reflection on one's own folklore. In 1913 Toepfer was one of the participants in the meeting of the first Free German Youth Day. World War I The following year he joined the Army as an infantryman, serving in World War I and participating in the Battle of Masurian, the Second Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, and the Fourth Battle of Ypres. He was wounded several times and in January 1919 was discharged a highly decorated lieutenant. Freikorps The year Toepfer left the military he joined the Freikorps, led by General Georg Ludwig Rudolf Maercker. As the leader of a mounted machine gun unit, he was first deployed in Weimar to protect the Weimar National Assembly. In the following months the Freikorps was ordered to put down Bolshevik insurrections, including in Halle, Magdeburg, Brunswick, Gotha, Erfurt and Eisenach. With the integration of the country's fighter forces in the Reichswehr, Toepfer left the Korps by the end of the year. ==Alfred C. Toepfer Company==

Back in Hamburg, he founded the trading company Alfred C. Toepfer Company, In 1979, Toepfer International was founded in Hamburg. He would also start the JWG Foundation, and in 1936 created the Hanseatic Scholarships, which allowed British students to study in Germany. By 1973, his foundations awarded 30 cultural prizes and 75 scholarships. His European Prize for Statesmanship was first awarded in 1973 to British Prime Minister Edward Heath. Other notable awards include the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, Shakespeare Prize and Herder Prize. Toepfer, a close friend of European Union founding father Robert Schuman, named a prize in his honor in 1966 called the Robert Schuman Prize. In 1943, he commissioned Ernst Jünger's work "Peace", which was a manifest to the youth of Europe of how to proceed after the war. In 1952 his foundations oversaw the reconstruction of the Hamburg State Opera. In 1953 as head of the Verein Naturschutzpark (VNP), he organized protests against the occupying British forces at Lüneburg Heath. His foundations purchased the Hof Möhr for the VNP, which would house nature conservations. As President of the Association of German Nature Parks, a particular concern was the preservation Lüneburg Heath and the creation of National Parks in Germany. In the 1970s, he commissioned the renovation of Hamburg's "Old Quarter." ==Politics==

A member of the Hamburg National Club since its founding in 1919, Toepfer was introduced to Ernst Niekisch, who published the magazine Resistance, focused on nationalism and revolution. Toepfer between 1928 and 1931 supported the magazine financially several times despite his opposition to National Bolshevism and the policies of the Soviet Union which at that time were creating a catastrophic humanitarian situation known as the Holodomor. He was also introduced to work of Ernst Jünger and his brother Friedrich Georg Jünger. Nazi era Toepfer was never a Nazi party member himself, and spent a period in 1937–1938 in confinement after being arrested. ==Legacy==

In 1959, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Kiel. The Alfred Toepfer Foundation founded an independent commission of historians in 1997, led by Hans Mommsen, which published a 488-page anthology in 2000 with a critical inventory of Toepfer Foundation biography and history. The commission concluded Toepfer had not shared the key objectives and motives of National Socialism, not even anti-Semitism, and was not enriched by the war. In 2007 Hans Mommsen praised Toepfer as an exemplary European. He was in accord with the establishment of West Germany, having close contact with leading representatives. The Alfred Toepfer Academy for Nature Conservation was founded in 1981 as part of Lower Saxony's Ministry of Environment. Toepfer once said “after the terrible World Wars with the enormous sacrifices of human life and material loss, I am committed to European unity, the promotion of peace, general welfare and to cultural development.” ==References==