Near-immortality Superhuman agility, stamina, and durability Expert in hand-to-hand combat and swordfighting
Karl Ruprecht Kroenen is a fictional character in the Hellboy comic book series, created by Mike Mignola.
Hellboy is a fictional superhero created by writer-artist Mike Mignola. The character first appeared in San Diego Comic-Con Comics #2, and has since appeared in various eponymous miniseries, one-shots and intercompany crossovers. The character has been adapted into two live-action feature films in 2004 and 2008 that starred Ron Perlman in the title role, and two straight-to-DVD animated films, as well as three video games – Asylum Seeker, The Science of Evil, and as a playable character in Injustice 2. A film reboot starring David Harbour was released in 2019.
Michael Joseph Mignola is an American comics artist and writer best known for creating Hellboy for Dark Horse Comics, part of a shared universe of titles including B.P.R.D., Abe Sapien, Lobster Johnson, Witchfinder and various spinoffs. He has also created other supernatural and paranormal themed titles for Dark Horse including Baltimore, Joe Golem and The Amazing Screw-On Head.
In the comics, Kroenen was a relatively unremarkable NaziSS scientist, whose most distinguishing characteristic was that he always wore a gas mask and protective bodysuit, which Mignola attributes to a disfiguring accident of some kind.
The gas mask is a mask used to protect the user from inhaling airborne pollutants and toxic gases. The mask forms a sealed cover over the nose and mouth, but may also cover the eyes and other vulnerable soft tissues of the face. Most gas masks are also respirators, though the word gas mask is often used to refer to military equipment. The user of the gas mask is not protected from gas that the skin can absorb. Most gas mask filters will last around 24 hours in a nuclear biological chemical (NBC) situation.
Director Guillermo del Toro created a significantly expanded biography for the character, to appear as a villain in the 2004 film adaptation.
Guillermo del Toro Gómez is a Mexican filmmaker, author, actor, and former special effects makeup artist. He is best known for the Academy Award-winning fantasy films Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and The Shape of Water (2017), winning the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Picture for the latter.
Hellboy is a 2004 American superhero film directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Ron Perlman, loosely based on the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel Hellboy: Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola. In the film, a demonic beast-turned superhero known as Hellboy secretly works to keep the world safe from paranormal threats with his team, the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense.
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, and the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, and Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west.
Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life via the Gleichschaltung legal process. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is also known as the Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918). The Nazi regime ended after the Allies defeated Germany in May 1945, ending World War II in Europe.
The Thule Society, originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum, was a German occultist and völkisch group founded in Munich right after World War I, named after a mythical northern country in Greek legend. The society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party. According to Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, the organization's "membership list ... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi sympathizers and leading figures in Munich", including Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Julius Lehmann, Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart, and Karl Harrer.
Kroenen, Haupstein, and Kurtz were frozen inside a secret Nazi base, until they were resuscitated by industrialist Roderick Zinco, acting on Rasputin's orders. Kroenen resumed work on several of his former projects, including making an "Apocalypse Army" by combining corpses with robotics. He also convinced Zinco to retrieve the head of his colleague, Herman von Klempt, from South America. Kroenen retained an affection for his colleague, though Rasputin had rejected Klempt as unsuitable for Ragna Rok. When Klempt's head was re-animated, he tried to convince Kroenen to abandon Rasputin's plan to awaken the Ogdru Jahad - and instead to use the Army to retrieve Klempt's work in South America. Overhearing, Kurtz became furious and attacked Klempt's head, screaming, "Rasputin is master!" In a panic, Kroenen seized a knife and killed Kurtz. When their plan failed, an enraged Rasputin struck Zinco, who was blinded. Wandering around, Zinco accidentally pressed a self-destruct button in the base, destroying it completely and taking Kroenen with it.
Herman von Klempt is a fictional supervillain created by writer/artist Mike Mignola for the Dark Horse Comics series Hellboy. He first appeared in the Comics Buyer's Guide.
The Ogdru Jahad are fictional Supervillains in Mike Mignola's Hellboy comic series. They are the Dragon of Revelation, and are destined to bring about the end of the world. Though the Ogdru Jahad are the central antagonists of the franchise, they are not themselves active, their release from imprisonment instead being the object of many other villains' plans. They were imprisoned in their Golden Cocoons by the Right Hand of Doom shortly after the creation of Earth, but not before they spawned 369 children, known as the Ogdru Hem.
Film biography
(Kroenen's expanded biography appears as a series of comic panels in the book Hellboy: The Art of the Movie, as well as in the special features of the film's DVD).
Karl Ruprecht Kroenen was born in Munich, Germany in 1897. A musical prodigy with angelic features and blonde hair, young Kroenen toured the capitals of Europe singing opera until his voice deepened with the onset of puberty, thereby ending his career. From a very early age, he demonstrated symptoms of masochism, whipping himself with a fresh branch of oak each day, and finding pleasure in the pain. As a teenager, he loathed his awkwardness and developed an extreme form of body dysmorphic disorder (termed "surgical addiction" in the film). In his obsession with physical perfection, he conducted brutal experiments on his own body, including surgically removing his own eyelids, lips, and his toe- and finger nails. He also designed a tight-fitting gas mask to filter out germs, which he wore almost permanently. He also became quite adept with mechanical devices, believing that fusing mechanical constructs with living bodies would help create perfection. One of his early inventions was a clockworknightingale that sang a Mozart aria perfectly.
Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, the second most populous German federal state. With a population of around 1.5 million, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg, as well as the 12th-largest city in the European Union. The city's metropolitan region is home to 6 million people. Straddling the banks of the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps, it is the seat of the Bavarian administrative region of Upper Bavaria, while being the most densely populated municipality in Germany. Munich is the second-largest city in the Bavarian dialect area, after the Austrian capital of Vienna.
Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. It comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia.
Opera is a form of theatre in which music has a leading role and the parts are taken by singers, but is distinct from musical theater. Such a "work" is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor.
Karl Ruprecht Kroenen as seen in the first Hellboy film
In 1930, he met the resurrected Rasputin for the first time. Obsessed with purity, Kroenen quickly became Rasputin’s most loyal disciple. He subsequently joined the Nazi Party, and rose quickly through the ranks, joining the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1933 and achieving the rank of Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel). He was awarded the Iron Cross for services to the Third Reich, including a tour of duty as commandant of Auschwitzconcentration camp, where he served with distinction. Kroenen became head of the Thule Society, a group of German aristocrats obsessed with the occult. He helped them to spearhead Project Ragna Rok, engineering the portal generator that would conjure the Scarlet Beast, Hellboy, in October 1944.
A masterful fencer, he also became renowned for his swordsmanship and created his own signature swords.
When Allied Forces stormed the island off the coast of Scotland where Project Ragna Rok took place, Kroenen killed several of the American soldiers attacking the base, but was distracted by a grenade thrown under the portal device by a young Professor Trevor Bruttenholm. Kroenen tried to retrieve the grenade, but his left hand was blown off, and a length of concrete reinforcing rod (or rebar) impaled him through the chest, severing his spine. Shortly thereafter, he disappeared.
After his disappearance, in 1956, an unmarked grave in Romania was found. Dental records identified the remains as those of Kroenen.
However, Kroenen reappeared in 2004. Thanks to the inexplicable powers of science and black magic, Kroenen "repaired" himself with a prosthetic mechanical hand, a steel rod replacing the broken part of his spine and a clockworkheart, operated by a wind-up key implanted in his chest. By cranking the key, he was able to increase his speed and reflexes. After long decades, the blood in his veins dried up completely, leaving only dust, and rendering him virtually invulnerable to gunshot wounds. He could also turn the key to "switch off" his body (literally), remaining in a dormant state and appearing dead, until he was reanimated. He used this deceptive technique to infiltrate the BPRD headquarters. After critically wounding BPRD Agent Clay, he faked his own death and lay beside Clay, and they were both taken into the headquarters. Once inside, Kroenen drew Rasputin there, and personally killed the now elderly Professor Bruttenholm, before disappearing with Rasputin.
The BPRD tracked Rasputin to his own mausoleum beneath Moscow. Hellboy seemingly avenged Bruttenholm's death by throwing Kroenen into an impalement trap — a spiked pit hidden beneath a trapdoor. Skewered on the stakes, Kroenen was crushed when Hellboy dropped a giant cog on top of him. The damage done to him was probably more than Kroenen could survive.
Kroenen's smashed gas mask later appeared in a display case at the BPRD in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. In the script for that film, an epilogue scene was written to be a lead-in for a third movie, but was cut for budgetary reasons. An animated version of the scene appears on the DVD's special features. Found by Roderick Zinco in the mausoleum ruins, Kroenen's remains are brought to a doctor to be revived with advanced alchemy, before traveling to the Arctic into a long abandoned Nazi weapon storage building to insert the disembodied head of Kroenen into a huge robotic body at which point Kroenen awakes and praises his "Master" foreseeing his resurrection as Rasputin appears on screen.
In the commentary of Golden Army, Guillermo del Toro also stated that, in the planned story for the third film, Kroenen was to have some history with the character of Johann Krauss. This was hinted in the second film when Johann is seen staring in deep thought at Kroenen's mask in the display case during the part when Hellboy is in the ward.
Weapons and equipment
Kroenen's comics version is a fairly ordinary scientist, who seems to possess some surgical training.
In the original script for Hellboy, the young Professor Bruttenholm describes Kroenen as "one of the Reich's top scientists, and head of the Thule Occult Society." In the film release, the line was re-dubbed so that the first phrase was replaced by "Hitler's top assassin."
In his initial appearance, while wearing an SS uniform, Kroenen wields a Luger P08 pistol against the attacking U.S. soldiers, and then a pair of Katar (कटार)-like daggers that extend from the sleeves of his trench coat.
In his later appearances, he wields a pair of tonfa-style swords, and also has several other daggers strapped to his suit.
Kroenen is also briefly seen in his workshop, which includes a whole array of disturbing gadgets, along with several different versions of his gas mask.
Several times in Hellboy II, Kroenen's battered gasmask can be seen in a display case along with a golden mask that resembles the head of Sammael.
Portrayals
Czech actor Ladislav Beran portrayed Kroenen in the film adaptation of Hellboy.
This portrayal is radically different from the comics. Kroenen, who originally played the part of a meek character, who Del Toro describes as someone who is likely to say "Aargh! Don't break the machine!" is here portrayed as a murderous soldier who is inhumanly loyal to Rasputin.
Critical response
German film historian Florian Evers devotes a whole chapter of his book on National Socialism in modern pop culture to the character of Karl Ruprecht Kroenen. He points out the allegoric puzzle segments of Shoah-iconography behind the design of Kroenen, calling him an incarnation of the Holocaust.[1]
The real Karl Ruprecht
The real Karl Ruprecht was an Austrian Nazi official and folklorist. He was born on June 19, 1910 in Gratkorn.[2] He studied German and English philology and folklore at the University of Graz, then at the University of Vienna, and then from 1934 on at the University of Königsberg. Karl Ruprecht earned his Phd with Prof. Walter Ziesemer and a work on Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl. He then worked at the "Office for the Improvement of Literature" (Amt Schrifttumspflege),[3] and at the "Office for Folklore and Organization of Festivals" (Amt Volkskunde und Feiergestaltung),[4] both part of the Rosenberg Bureau. Within the Advanced School of the NSDAP, he was a leading member of the "Reich Institute for German Folklore".[5] Karl Ruprecht was the leader of the "Research Post for Peasant Life Structures" (Forschungsstelle Bäuerliche Lebensformen). He published articles in the National Socialist Monthly and the journal "Idea and Action" (Idee und Tat).
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↑ Karl Ruprecht, dissertation: Wilhelm Heinrich Riehls "Kulturgeschichtliche Novellen" mit Berücksichtigung ihres Verhältnisses zur Quelle, Paul Escher Publishing House, Königsberg, 1936, page 79.
↑ Mitchell Ash, Wolfram Nieß, Ramon Pils: Geisteswissenschaften im Nationalsozialismus. Das Beispiel der Universität Wien, Vienna University Press, Göttingen 2010, pages 219. 221.
↑ Chriatiaan Janssen: Abgrenzung und Anpassung. Deutsche Kultur zwischen 1930 und 1945 im Spiegel der Referatenorgane Het Duitsche Boek und De Weegschaal, Waxmann, Münster 2003, pages 186-187.
↑ Nancy C. McEntire: The Folkore Historian, Journal of the Folklore and History Section of the American Folklore Society, Indiana State University, Volume 22, 2005, pages 40, 54, 57.
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