A photograph of my cousin Lt. Benjamin 'Ben' Nathan Rippe (son of Maurice and Winifred 'Winnie' (Nathan) Rippe, taken in Brooklyn, New York City on October 24th, 1943 just before Ben headed for his military assignment in Europe.

Ben was an inspiration to anyone that knew him. He was intelligent and a thoughtful man and was my grandparent Blanche and Max's nephew. Ben's active duty in the Army began on July 5th, 1942, soon after he joined the U.S. Army in New York City. By 1946, Lt. Benjamin Nathan Rippe was awarded 5 Bronze Stars, the European African Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal and the Meritorious Service Unit Medal.

Benjamin graduated in 1934 from Dartmouth, and in 1935 he earned a Masters Degree from Harvard. In 1939, Ben Rippe graduated from the Brooklyn Law School of St. Lawrence University, where he was the Editor-in-chief of the Brooklyn Law Review in his last two years. He passed the New York State Bar in 1939. In 1943, Corporal Rippe was assigned to a department of Army Intelligence, assisting in specific matters with a group of European artists emigrating to NYC, fleeing from Nazi oppression.

Some of the notable artists that were involved in the project were Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Wassily, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Fernand Leger and Piet Mondrian. In 1944, Corporal Rippe was promoted to Composite Unit Commander and served in Europe during the Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes, Rhineland and Central Europe campaigns.

In late 1944, Ben was promoted to Lieutenant and began serving as a Provost Marshal. Some of the duties of a Provost Marshal are handling investigations and incarcerations of U.S. Army personnel. In 1945, Lt. Rippe served as the Commandant of a Prisoner of War Camp in Glasenbach, near Salzburg, Austria. Glasenbach primarily held higher-ranking German officers. Most prisoners were being processed through a form of de-Nazification, such as it was. Ben continued on as Commandant after the war when it was converted into a Displaced Persons Camp in Glasenbach, near Salzburg, Austria. The German prisoners respected Commandant Rippe to such a degree they carved a small marble monument in his honor and presented it to him.

It reads:
'To Commandant Lt. Benjamin N. Rippe: In memory of the German prisoners of war camp Glasenbach, Austria. Christmas 1945.'

Ben brought home the marble piece (photograph below) when he left Glasenbach in 1946, and kept it for the rest of his life. Lt. Benjamin Nathan Rippe was honorably discharged on February 25th, 1946 and went home to Brooklyn, and inevitably, where he joined his father Maurice's law firm as a lawyer.

Key to my grandmother Blanche and my mother Bernice's unique art education and contacts were the many artists Ben met in the 1940s. He became good friends with Marcel Duchamp. I often imagine Ben and Duchamp at Peggy Guggenheim's 'Art Of This Century Gallery,' on 30 West 57th Street and mingling with the likes of Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Wassily Kandinsky, Lee Krasner, Jean Arp, Fernand Leger, Andre Masson, Roberto Matta, William Baziotes, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Hans Hofmann, Willem & Elaine de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Ad Reinhardt and the list goes on.

The most interesting times in American art history was this period in New York City. Where European painting and sculpture mingled with the blossoming American art forms. It was this time that began the eventual shift of eyes on Paris, to the intense spotlight that would be cast on American art in the 1950s in New York City.

Ben's father was Maurice, and was a lawyer at Frutkin, Waldie and Rippe in the Wall Street area of New York City. Maurice was a friend and Harvard classmate of Edward Kasner, the well-known mathematician. Kasner is best remembered today for introducing the term, 'googol.' In order to peak the interest of children in Mathematics, Kasner sought a name for a very large number: one followed by a hundred zeros. On a walk in the New Jersey Palisades in 1920, with his nephews, Milton and Edwin Sirotta, Kasner asked for their ideas. Nine-year-old Milton, suggested 'googol.'

Move many decades forward and the word, 'googol' was appropriated in 1996 as the name for the Internet monster, Google. Below is a card written by Edward Kasner notifying Maurice he had sent a letter of recommendation for Ben, to teach at Harvard just the week before.

Edward Kasner wrote:

April 27th, 1939
430 West 116th Street
New York City, New York

I wrote a recommendation for Ben as a
teacher and sent it to Harvard last week.
Let me know results.

Ed


Ben later joined his father's firm and was a partner there for 25 years, before he became a Christian Science practitioner- which he was for another 30 years. Below is the image of the postcard written by Edward Kasner.