German Hero of Heaven’s Hundred

February 24 marks 40 days since the death of Hartmut Köppler, whom thousands of Ukrainian children know, love and remember – the German St. Nicholas, as they called him.

For much of his past 25 years, this man spent in Ukraine helping the victims of the Chernobyl disaster, organizing leisure and recreation for Ukrainian children in Germany, collecting and transferring humanitarian aid.

When the revolution began, he could not stay away and, in the middle of December 2013, he came to Ukraine.

Hartmut Köppler was one of the founders of the November 30th Group, whose goal is to achieve judicial redress for events in Ukraine in recent months. As for his wife, Lubomira Keppler-Khopta, Berkut special riot forces, on the night of the first dispersal on Maidan, broke her arm.

The Revolutionaries Movement on Michaylivskoho remembers the tall, gray-haired man who spoke Russian with an accent, helped make sandwiches, handed out tea and constantly repeated:

“For Ukraine and for me most importantly right NOW – this is Maidan.”

In his spare time away from Maidan, he managed to organize a meeting at the German Embassy in support of Ukraine, engaged in the creation of the International Ukrainian-German-Belarusian Medical Center in Pushchiy-Vodiciy, traveled to villages, to ordinary people, to hand out needed medicines and charity, raised a puppy, which he along with his wife, picked up on the streets during these turbulent days and named it, of course, Maidan.

On January 16, 2014, that terrible day when the Parliament of Ukraine adopted the “inhumane” laws, his heart could not stand it. People who know him say he just realized that in this world he cannot help Ukraine, and so he flew to help us from heaven …

We will keep the memory of Hartmut Köppler as an outstanding personality of steadfast life and moral principles, an active philanthropist and a man who has made a significant contribution to the development of Ukraine. Eternal Memory! Heroes never die!