Hans Coppi

Coppi was born in Wedding, Berlin to a working-class family. His parents were Robert Coppi, a house painter who specialised in lacquer cutting and gilding and Frieda née Schön (1884–1961), a seamstress and dressmaker who worked to supplement the family income. Both his parents were ardent communists who in 1930, became members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). This resulted in Coppi becoming politicised at an early age and that led to him becoming a communist activist and later agitator. From 1929 to 1932, Coppi attended the Schulfarm Scharfenberg, a left-wing progressive "school-farm" on the island of Scharfenberg in Lake Tegel in Berlin. During 1931–32 Coppi became a member of the "Red Boy Scouts" (Roten Pfadfinder) and the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD). In November 1932, Coppi was expelled from the Scharfenberg school after supporting students who had watched Georg Wilhelm Pabst's banned Franco-German solidarity film Kameradschaft and subsequently was transferred to the Berliner Lessing-Gymnasium, a gymnasium in the Wedding area of Mitte, Berlin. In February 1933, the Coppi family moved to the newly created garden-colony known as Am Waldessaum in Borsigwalde.