Character Biography
A German scientist, von Klempt was a close colleague of Karl Ruprecht Kroenen at university. Although the two men apparently shared similar ideas, Von Klempt was not, like Kroenen, recruited by Rasputin as a disciple. Von Klempt was assigned to other Nazi projects.
During the Second World War, and especially during the final years, when Germany faced defeat, Adolf Hitler launched a series of what the Allies called "Doomsday Projects," attempts to combine science with black magic. Among these was Project Vampir Sturm (1944, proposed by Heinrich Himmler); Project Ragna Rok (The Fatal Destiny), which resulted in the appearance of Hellboy in a church in East Bromwich, England (December 23, 1944); and, lastly, the Nazi Space Program.
The Nazi Space Program was initiated in or around 1939, when German scientists managed to make contact with non-corporeal beings in outer space (which Hellboy, half-facetiously, nicknamed "space ghosts"). These beings promised that, if a human shell was sent into space to provide a host for them, it would return to Earth powerful enough to destroy the Nazis' enemies.
The Nazis prepared to launch into space the remains of Dr. Ernst Oeming, a German physicist often referred to as the "Nazi Einstein," who had been assassinated by a car bomb earlier that year. The launch platform was Hunte Castle in Austria.
On the night of March 20, 1939, the date Oeming's body was to be launched, the American hero Lobster Johnson led a group of American troops in an attack on Hunte Castle. In a state of panic, the Nazis launched Oeming's ship before the roof's doors could open. Although the rocket cleared the castle and made it into space, the explosion resulted in the immediate incineration of everyone inside the castle except one man: Herman von Klempt.
Although most of his body was destroyed, his head was kept alive in a jar, which was attached to a robotic body. Von Klempt also created what he called a Kriegsaffe (German, "war ape"), a sort of Frankenstein's monster-like ape, to be his henchman. At some point he had a swastika tattooed to his forehead.
Read more about this topic: Herman Von Klempt
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