Boris Schipper

Boris Schipper is the sergeant in charge of the LSE unit in which Hans Hubermann serves, a minor but sharply defined figure whose authority is expressed through smoke, exhaustion, dark humor, and practical judgment. He first appears as a leader accustomed to men arriving under suspicion, yet his response to Hans’s past reveals an ability to distinguish moral disobedience from military usefulness. Through him, the air-raid service becomes both an institution of rescue and a machinery of death.

Identity and Introduction

Boris Schipper leads the Air Raid Special Unit, whose official duties are to remain aboveground during raids, extinguish fires, support damaged buildings, and rescue people trapped in the ruins. The men also give the acronym a grim alternative meaning, Leichensammler Einheit, or Dead Body Collectors. That double definition captures the setting in which Schipper operates: the same work that saves survivors also brings soldiers into direct contact with the dead. Schipper is introduced as round-faced and physically marked by fatigue. His eyes are repeatedly described as round, and he is constantly wiping them, whether from tiredness, smoke, or dust. The details make him less a distant military emblem than a working man exposed to the bodily conditions of the raids he commands. His authority exists inside smoke-filled ruins, not above them.

Leadership and Moral Judgment

When Hans arrives, Schipper asks directly what he has done to deserve such an assignment. Hans answers by explaining the bread, the Jews, and the whipping that followed. Schipper responds with a short laugh and tells him that he is lucky to be alive. The remark acknowledges the seriousness of Hans’s action without treating him as useless or irredeemable. Schipper does not praise the act, but he recognizes the danger Hans has already survived. His next warning is more significant than the laughter. Schipper tells Hans to remember that the enemy in the unit is not in front of him. Reinhold Zucker immediately widens the point, saying that the enemy is not over the hill or in any particular direction but all around. Schipper’s leadership therefore rests on a practical understanding of modern war: danger is embedded in smoke, damaged structures, machinery, and chance, not confined to an identifiable opposing line.

The Raids and the Unit’s Danger

During Hans’s first major raid, Schipper forms a line with Kessler, Brunnenweg, and Hans. Schipper stands at the front and directs the hose into the fire; the men behind him hose the sergeant, and Hans hoses all three of them. The arrangement is both functional and precarious. Each man protects the others while working inside a scene in which visibility, heat, and collapse make ordinary safety impossible. A building behind them groans and falls face-first, stopping only a few meters from Hans’s heels. Schipper’s unit is thus threatened not only by fire but by the structures it is trying to preserve or enter. The scene gives concrete force to his earlier warning: the enemy is not located in one direction. It can arrive from behind, without intention, as a wall of concrete and powder.

Hans Hubermann’s Reprieve

The unit’s most consequential episode follows Reinhold Zucker’s death. After the men return with Zucker’s body, they try to avoid pulling him from the truck. Hans takes only a few steps before the pain in his leg brings him down; an examination confirms that the leg is broken. Schipper stands nearby with half a grin and tells Hans that it appears he has got away with it. Schipper then uses his authority to protect Hans from returning to the LSE. He says that Hans will rest, that he will report Hans did a great job, and that he will recommend sending him back to Munich for office work or other cleanup duties because he is no longer fit for the unit. The broken leg is therefore both injury and escape. Hans’s reply, made through a grimace of pain, accepts the transfer as good news. Schipper’s intervention changes the meaning of the accident: what looks like another wartime mutilation also becomes a reprieve from the unit’s deadly work.

Narrative Function and Significance

Schipper’s character is defined by contradiction. He belongs to a military structure, yet his most important action toward Hans is not punishment but protection. He speaks with the bluntness of a sergeant and laughs at the danger surrounding Hans, but his decision to recommend a safer assignment reveals judgment that is more humane than the institution’s immediate logic. He also anchors the novel’s account of war in ordinary labor. The LSE is not presented as heroic spectacle alone; it is a place where men hose one another through smoke, stumble around bodies, forget where feet are placed, and try to survive the consequences. Schipper’s command turns that brutal routine into a moral landscape. He understands that the enemy is everywhere, and his treatment of Hans shows that survival may depend as much on a superior’s recognition as on courage itself.