From Hitler Youth to America’s future

By Bryan McKenzie

Published: April 6, 2008

The Germans have a saying: Aus Schaden wird man klug.
No one exemplified that proverb, “sorrow and pain makes one wiser,” more than Bernhard Leipelt, who went from Hitler Youth and Wehrmacht officer in World War II to a Charlottesville social activist in his retirement.
Mr. Leipelt died March 4, in Charlottesville, 87 years to the day from his birth in Friedrichwalde, Germany, now a part of Poland. The death and despair he saw fighting in France, Africa and Russia led to his effort to bring America’s races together.
‘What America should be’
“Harmony is distinct voices blending into one sweet song. That is what America should be,” he said when forming Americans for Racial Harmony in his Crescent Hall public housing apartment. “That is how we should live. We are who we are and what we are. We don’t need to be anything different, but we should be able to live together.”
Mr. Leipelt came to the United States in 1966 as a research supervisor. He worked for Allied Chemical, A.H. Robbins and the University of Virginia.
Mr. Leipelt loved American culture. As a member of the Hitler Youth, he taught himself to tap dance to popular American big band music. At his high school graduation in pre-war Germany, he arrived in white tie, tails and top hat and performed tap to American recordings.
“The [school’s] director was a very staunch and fanatic Nazi,” Mr. Leipelt recalled with the impish grin of a troublemaker. “He told me that, if he had known what kind of youth I was, he would never have passed me.”
Captured by Americans at the war’s end, Mr. Leipelt was suspected of being a spy and brutally interrogated at the butt-end of a rifle. That left his kidney damaged and body bruised and battered. White soldiers interrogated him but black soldiers in the then-segregated U.S. military nursed him to health. That dichotomy led to his lifelong obsession with racial unity and community activism.
He actively pursued his dream through civic activities, appeals to city hall, special programs and a letter-writing campaign that could shame a presidential candidate.
Planting the seeds
“The Germans have a saying: Geben macht seliger als nehman. That means, giving makes you feel better than receiving and, if you give to others, you forget about your own misery,” he said. “I do what I do here in my community because, if you want to change the [world], you have to start where you’re at.”
He may not have succeeded in his lifetime, but he should rest easy knowing the seeds he tried to sow may yet grow.
Or, as they say in Germany, “ruhen Sie in Frieden, Herr Leipelt: Was nicht ist, kann noch werden.”