White Rose families as I knew them. Geyers. Grimminger. Tilly Hahn. Hirzels. Traute.

I want you to know the family and friends of White Rose resistance the same way I do. As human. Real. Authentic. Without haloes. Without pedestals. Without censorship.

Sep 05, 2024

A back street in Schwabing. Photo © 1995 Denise Elaine Heap.

Following the Willi Graf conference in Munich last October, a small crowd of us walked from St. Sylvester to the university. It seemed an appropriate way to close out the day – in the place where White Rose work effectively ended. If you know that neighborhood at all, you know the sidewalks do not accommodate small crowds. To carry on a conversation required spilling over into the street.

As we turned onto Mandl-Strasse, Johannes Modesto of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising was standing on the steps of the Katholische Akademie. He spied me – in the middle of the traffic-less street – and called out. Be careful! You’re the only historian alive who knows all the families and friends! We need you!

I waved back at him and this small crowd of chattering conferees kept walking. Sometimes I was on the sidewalk, other times back in the middle of the street. Everyone in this small crowd was important, none more than others. I didn’t think further about Modesto’s compliment.

Until later.

His words underscore for me the importance of what I have been doing the last thirty years, what I am doing now, and how I want the legacy of Center for White Rose Studies to continue.

The first half of the last thirty years, I interviewed family members and friends of those murdered by Nazis for taking a stand on behalf of justice. Interviews became conversations, conversations became embraces and tears and laughter, emotions spilled over into years of correspondence with them.

Additionally, I read the Protokolle and entered every bit of data into my Access database. When I had questions from those documents, I’d often email or fax either Dr. Schmorell or Herta Probst’s son-in-law or Lilo or Lilo’s grandson Domenic or Traute Page nee Lafrenz or the Geyers or Anneliese Knoop-Graf. If they knew the answer to my question, they’d respond, sometimes by digging through closets and boxes until they found answers. To their credit, if they didn’t have an answer, they would say so.

Their approbation for my work and their openness, their transparency, not only enabled me to write a thorough history, but endeared them to me. As I labored over my detailed histories, I have heard Fritz Hartnagel’s “don’t make anything up” and Lilo’s “yes, it was worth everything” more times than I can count. I speak on their behalf, so their voices can be heard, voices that have been drowned out by Nazis and Nazi sympathizers who, after the war, impersonated freedom fighters: Inge Scholl, Robert Scholl, Franz Josef Müller, Jürgen Wittenstein, Albert Riester.

The second half of these first thirty years have been dedicated to staying on top of current White Rose “scholarship” – and yes, I use the term loosely. Despite abundance of primary source documents that disprove nearly every word of the Scholl-centric legend, White Rose “scholarship” continues to be dominated by that same Scholl-centric legend. It’s both disgusting and disgraceful.

I’m therefore currently focused on two projects, in addition to publishing Why This Matters, of course.

First, with help from friends and serious scholars, I am acquiring additional primary source materials from the postwar period. From documents I already have, I know (for example) that the Marshall and McCloy Fund people started to regret their decision to “fund” Inge Scholl, to the tune of DM 2,000,000, or $16,000,000 in today’s currency. I have one side of their discussions about pulling her funding, along with concerns expressed by non-governmental donors to Inge Scholl’s work about her politics and arrogance. Once we’re able to secure the other side of the conversations, we’ll be publishing those. Expect explosions.

Similarly, I’ve finally made progress in obtaining postwar records related to Jürgen Wittenstein’s activities during the war. Once he admitted – in writing – that he was an NS-Führungsoffizier and that he had been in Donauwörth during Hans Leipelt’s trial, I knew he was 100% an imposter. I’ve been fighting to get his records from 1945-1957, which will reveal a great deal about what he did from 1933-1945. And yes, the whole kit and caboodle will be published. In English translation.

In other words, archival acquisitions continue to be top priority for our work. Oral histories are great, but only when supported by primary source documents. Otherwise, oral histories can enable fraudulent claims, if not properly tested.

The second ongoing project, perhaps even more important than the first, is finding an institutional partner for Center for White Rose Studies. Ideally, this partner would eventually “adopt” our work. Perhaps structured like USC and Shoah Foundation?

I am not inflexible about the structure of such a partnership. I simply want Center for White Rose Studies to maintain its independence, while having the support and expertise of a larger institution (university, museum, library).

My only must-have: Our partner and perhaps-successor must commit to speaking in the name of the families and friends of White Rose – and other German – resistance. No legends, no fairy tales, no froth. Simply a commitment to letting these young people and the adults who worked with them be human. Be real. Be authentic. Without haloes. Without pedestals. Without censorship.

Because these are people I personally know and care about.

I care about the Geyers.

Wilhelm Geyer sacrificed a lucrative career as artist. If he’d been willing to align and shut his mouth, he could have retained the wealth and fame he’d acquired before 1933.

But nooo, Wilhelm Geyer singlehandedly stopped a Nazi rally in Ulm around 1933, earning him permanent disfavor and an early ban. When Julius Streicher mocked him as “the most dangerous artist in Germany,” he embraced the insult, knowing it was highest praise to people who mattered. He died in 1968.

His family welcomed me with open arms and archives. Clara was 90 years old when we first met her and several of her children. The month we spent in Ulm, we became “family” to them, with standing invitation to Thursday coffee and cake, a tradition dating back to 1940. They presented us with an extra “family” edition of Wilhelm Geyer Senior’s artwork, commissioned just for them.

Through them, we gained deeper insight into White Rose friendships. Wilhelm Geyer took most of his meals with Hans and Sophie Scholl from January through February 18, 1943. They openly discussed their resistance work with him. It’s also possible that Wilhelm Geyer took part in the January “scattering” operation, as a description handed in of a fourth person matches him. He taught Alexander Schmorell how to make the Down With Hitler template out of tin. And Sophie Scholl spent the most private moments of her last two days before the arrests talking to Geyer, a man she considered her mentor.

Inge Scholl wrote Wilhelm Geyer out of the White Rose story after he called her on financial improprieties related to Hochschule für Gestaltung (Ulm). Geyers told me where to find those records. Yes, that is on the above list of archival acquisitions.

The voice of Wilhelm Geyer should not be silenced.

I care about Eugen Grimminger and Tilly Hahn.

They both died before I started my White Rose research in 1994, but Armin Ziegler’s deep dive into their lives brought them to life for me. Without these two individuals, and without Eugen Grimminger’s deep affection for his Jewish wife Jenny nee Stern, White Rose resistance would have been a shadow of itself. At great personal risk, Grimminger and Hahn financed White Rose operations.

Both spoke plainly and clearly after the war about their experiences, about what they knew of White Rose work, and the conversations they had.

Inge Scholl wrote both of them out of the White Rose story after Eugen Grimminger insisted that anyone who had been a Nazi during the war should not be granted any position of power after the war.

The voices of Eugen Grimminger and Tilly Hahn should not be silenced.

I care about Susanne Hirzel and her brother Hans.

Yes, both became extraordinarily problematic in 1994 as they embraced far right-wing German politics and anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim views. And yes, Susanne Hirzel recanted almost all the good work found in her memoir, Vom Ja Zum Nein: Eine schwäbische Jugend 1933 – 1945. And yes, when I quoted from her memoir in my White Rose histories, she threatened to sue me, because her politics had changed. And yes, both she and her brother blocked access to their Protokolle. And yes, just writing all of the above makes me wonder why I care about Susanne Hirzel and her brother Hans.

But reading her Protokolle, and the Protokolle of her brother – obtained legally, I might add – flesh out the person I got to know as I was researching. If anyone knew the Scholl family well, it was the Hirzel family. Her mother was from Forchtenberg, the same Forchtenberg where Robert Scholl was fired as mayor for having affairs (the town invoked the morals clause of his contract), the same Forchtenberg where Sophie Scholl was born and mostly-raised. And Susanne’s mother hated the Scholl parents. Almost irrationally.

At the same time, Susanne Hirzel genuinely cared for and liked Sophie Scholl. Despite Sophie’s mood swings, despite Sophie’s sullenness, despite Sophie’s jealousy over Susanne’s successes. Susanne may have been Sophie Scholl’s only true friend, ever. Perhaps only Otl Aicher loved Sophie as deeply.

Susanne’s portrait of life in Ulm may be self-serving, may conflict in a few serious aspects with her Protokolle. But she does not spare either the Scholl parents or her own parents. We get a much clearer picture of the dysfunction at the great apartment on Münsterplatz that Inge always described in reverential tones.

Susanne also shared her private hell, growing up in a household where her father, a Lutheran pastor who had signed the Bonhoeffer-Niemöller confession both times, still advocated conforming to National Socialist rules and regulations without question, because, well, Romans 13 and Vaterland. When she wrote of the aftermath of the April 19, 1943 trial, I thought it served my father right to have to see by what kind of people we were governed. Father, who by nature could not hate anyone, could not fathom the depths of their villainy, you can almost hear her “I told you so!”

And when she wrote of her confusion and fear and anxiety when Ulm was besieged by Allied bombers, dropping incendiary bombs in a firestorm. With her father leaving her, a college student, in charge of four young children so he could save his church building. With her navigating burning streets, four young children in tow, trying to reach the safety of the countryside, with no adult to help her. When she writes that scene, you can feel her visceral anger, that a building was more important to her father than his children.

So yes, I care about Susanne Hirzel, and her younger brother Hans.

Inge Scholl wrote both Susanne and Hans out of the White Rose story, except for a wrongly-told legend about a “warning,” along with a legend-ary version of the Hirzels’ actual involvement, a version that starred Hans and Sophie, not Hans and Susanne. Most likely because Inge also knew what Mrs. Hirzel knew about her parents and the Scholl family. In those closed archives, to be sure.

The voices of Susanne Hirzel and Hans Hirzel should not be silenced.

I care about Traute Lafrenz.

Like Werner Scholl and Wilhelm Geyer, Traute was involved in resistance work long before many White Rose friends understood exactly how evil National Socialism was. When she was re-arrested in 1944, the Gestapo accused her of: Producing leaflets; listening to foreign broadcasts; distributing Thomas Mann’s Responsa; owning and reading banned books; granting aid and friendship to a Jewish family; having a particularly radical attitude and being conspicuous during political discussions, maneuvering literary discussions around to political topics; and, being a “free spirit.”

All of that prior to Munich and White Rose resistance!

Until I interviewed her in October 1996, she had not granted interviews. She had found great success in the United States after the war. It was as if she had put that part of her life behind her. She granted me that first-ever interview only because I sent her my pitiful third or fourth draft of my Histories for her to read and comment on.

When we met in person, I asked for her honest feedback. I told her I had hesitated writing about her, because I had so little to go on. She replied, “Well, you captured me quite well!” I could not have asked for higher praise.

Traute was always hesitant to talk about White Rose, because she knew her friends’ flaws inside and out, and did not want to be perceived as dishonoring them. It took forever for her to admit out loud that she had suspected she was Hans Scholl’s ‘beard.’ Funny, just as Susanne Hirzel was probably Sophie Scholl’s only true friend, Traute Lafrenz was probably the only person who genuinely loved Hans Scholl.

Despite her knowing more about Jürgen Wittenstein than he likely realized she knew, it took a long time before she would tell me why they had not associated with him. Only once she knew that I knew, would she acknowledge that they had avoided him because they knew he was a Nazi and wore his Party pin in public.

Her admonition to me that I could never make everything right, I could only do what was right? That served as North Star over many years of struggling to tell the White Rose story correctly.

When I – again, legally – obtained the documents that Inge Scholl had suppressed for over fifty years, including Traute’s 1946 letter to Inge, I asked her about it. Traute well remembered writing it, but had not kept a copy. I sent one to her post haste. I almost felt bad about doing so. It was as if there were old wounds contained in that letter.

True to form, whatever old wounds there were, Traute kept them to herself.

Why on earth Inge Scholl chose to suppress Traute’s outsized role in White Rose resistance, I’ll never know. Was she afraid Traute would “out” Hans Scholl? Was she afraid Traute would tell stories about what she observed in the Scholl household? Was she afraid that Traute would talk about Inge’s politics from 1941-1945? Which were so contrary to Traute’s own?

Whatever the reason, it has been absurdly difficult to fight the Scholl-centric legend that portrays White Rose with Traute on the outermost fringes.

The voice of Traute Lafrenz should not be silenced.

This will be continued next week. Lilo, Harald Dohrn, Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Gisela Schertling, and via Traute, Katharina Schüddekopf – and yes, the Scholls too – I want you to know these families and friends as I do, and understand why it’s an ensemble cast, with no tent-pole stars.

As Elisabeth Hartnagel nee Scholl told me, “Hans and Sophie were equals among equals.”

Those are the people I know. That is the story worth telling.

Why This Matters