Hans Leipelt (18.7.1921 Vienna – 29.1.1945 Munich-Stadelheim Prison)

Leipelt was the son of a Catholic engineer and a chemist from a Christian family of Jewish origin. They moved from Vienna to Hamburg in 1925. He graduated from high school there in 1938, finished his labor service, and subsequently volunteered for military service. He was discharged from the Wehrmacht as a ‘first-degree half-breed‘ in August 1940. In the winter of 1940/41 he began studying chemistry, which he was able to continue a year later in Munich at the State Chemical Laboratory under the wing of its director Heinrich Wieland. There he met Marie-Luise Jahn, with whom he soon developed a firm friendship.

Leipelt received the White Rose's sixth flyer in the post in February 1943. He promptly made several copies of it together with Marie-Luise Jahn. The two students added the caption "And yet their spirit lives on" to each copy and distributed them, including in Hamburg. When they collected money for the widow and children of Professor Kurt Huber, who had recently been executed, they were denounced and arrested in October 1943.

The People's Court in Donauwörth charged both of them and others among their friends in Munich with "preparation of high treason while aiding the enemy and committing broadcasting crimes." Leipelt was sentenced to death and Marie-Luise Jahn to twelve years of penal servitude after her friend took all the blame to exonerate her. He was executed in Munich's Stadelheim prison on January 29, 1945. His body was buried in the cemetery at Perlacher Forst in Memorial Grove II in 1954.