Hartmut Wilhelm Hopp (born May 24, 1944, in Western Pomerania) was the doctor of the religious sect and commune called Colonia Dignidad in Chile and the right hand of its leader Paul Schäfer, and follower of the teachings of William Branham. Hopp was sentenced by a Chilean court to five years in prison for complicity in child abuse committed by Paul Schäfer, but he fled the country for Germany and, as a German citizen, was not extradited to Chile by the Federal Republic.
Colonia Dignidad
Hartmut Hopp joined the Private Sociale Mission e. V. in Lohmar-Heide near Siegburg, the community of the later Colonia Dignidad founder Paul Schäfer. In 1961, at the age of 17, he went to Chile with Schäfer, where he set up the Colonia Dignidad. The heavily fenced settlement is located about 350 kilometers south of Santiago de Chile in a rural area. During the military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet, political prisoners were tortured and murdered in the settlement by the DINA secret service and settlement members. Many people "disappeared" in the Colonia Dignidad and have not appeared to this day. Some of their corpses were buried, some were later exhumed and cremated on Pinochet's orders. The DINA secret service maintained its only other base in Colonia Dignidad besides the headquarters in Santiago, Chile.
Hopp is also said to have been abused by Paul Schäfer as a teenager. Schäfer and some of his advisors instrumentalized Hopp in a false testimony against Wolfgang Kneese, who had fled the colony and reported in the Chilean press about Schäfer's sexual abuse of children. In return, Schäfer denounced Kneese for alleged abuse of Hopp, which Hopp falsely confirmed in court; Kneese was then convicted, but was able to flee to Argentina. Hopp was rewarded and was one of only three members of the group who were allowed to leave the Colonia for their training. He studied medicine at the University of Davis in the USA, as well as piano and singing, and returned in 1977 to complete his medical studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In the Colonia he married the ten years older nurse Esther Dorothea Witthahn (born September 13, 1934). A little later he was sentenced to a suspended sentence for violating the Chilean weapons law. Human rights activists say that from this point on, Hopp was active as "Foreign Minister" for Colonia Dignidad. Hopp himself denies this.
The human rights organization ECCHR describes the management structure of Colonia Dignidad in its dossier on Hopp. Accordingly, this initially consisted of Paul Schäfer at the top and a group of leaders who were often referred to as Jerarcas ("hierarchs"). The Jerarcas had different functions to fulfill internally or externally. In the early years this group was made up of Gerd Seewald, Kurt Schnellenkamp, Gerhard Mücke, Dorothea Hopp, and Gisela Seewald, among others. The representative in Germany included Alfred Schaak until his death in 1985. After his return from the US, Hopp rose to the Jerarcas in the mid-1970s. In 1977 it appeared for the first time in the national press and in the files of the German embassy in Santiago. Since the 1980s he acted for journalists and ambassadors as the "de facto foreign minister" of the Colonia Dignidad and number 2 at the head of the sect.
In 1978 Hopp became head of the Colonia Dignidad hospital. In the hospital of the settlement people were torture tortured. Settlers who defied the rules of leader Paul Schäfer were shocked with electric batons and given high doses of psychotropic drugs and Valium against their will. The German doctor Gisela Seewald, a former colleague of Hartmut Hopps, confirmed these measures in a Chilean court. It is unclear what Hopp, as head of the clinic, knew about the practices.
After two families had managed to escape from Colonia Dignidad to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1984, they reported on the conditions in the settlement. The Investigative Committee for Human Rights of the Bundestag heard Hopp on 22 February 1988. It should provide information about whether German involuntarily were in the Colonia Dignidad. However, he remained vague in his statements and was able to return to Chile.
In 1990 the Pinochet dictatorship ended in Chile. In 1991 the democratically elected President Patricio Aylwin dissolved the Colonia Dignidad, while Paul Schäfer continued to fight for his "life's work". From 1995 the Chilean police and judiciary began investigations into the Colonia Dignidad. The following year, Schäfer was sued by Chilean parents. During this time Hartmut Hopp negotiated with the police to get the Colonia.