A novel way to “do” White Rose
Please read this post as a call to action: Tell the true story. Pay attention to details. Even if White Rose is tangential or in the background, ensure you get it right.
About fifteen years ago, Jo Horne — a young adult novelist writing as Anna Schmidt — contacted me. Her historical fiction novel was set in Munich during World War II. Her protagonists were greatly influenced by White Rose resistance. Would I, could I help?
I did, and that first YA novel – entitled All God’s Children – turned out to be the first in a trilogy called THE PEACEMAKERS. Jo’s work in general centers on Friends’ or Quakers’ approach to life. This particular trilogy follows a young Quaker woman named Beth Bridgewater as she navigates the brutal world of the Third Reich, living as a devout Quaker pacifist in an era that discounts her beliefs.
Jo knows Friends. She did not need my help there. Rather, she wanted to ensure that what she wrote about White Rose would ring true. Because Beth and others among the equally-maligned Friends community were drawn to nonviolent White Rose resistance. Although it was a fictional world, it had to be believable.
Conversations and correspondence with Jo were almost always uplifting. She had fallen into White Rose through the pretty bad exhibit at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, which regurgitates the Inge Scholl legend. It became clear that although that had been Jo’s introduction to White Rose, she was not satisfied with that superficial story-telling. She wanted to know about the real-life people, about response to their work within Munich, about Munich during the Third Reich.
We talked as much about cafes and streets and buildings in the 1940s as we did about the leaflets. White Rose remained first and foremost, but she wanted her historical fiction YA novel to be as accurate as possible. She didn’t try to write Beth Bridgewater into the story as a fringe member of White Rose resistance. Instead, Beth draws inspiration from them. And she and her soon-to-be boyfriend know friends of friends – and those friends-of-friends needed to be depicted correctly too.
I genuinely enjoyed the time spent with Jo on both All God’s Children and Simple Faith, the second book in the trilogy. Jo’s questions demonstrated her interest in historical accuracy. Plus, I learned a great deal about Friends in general, and German Friends in particular, and the work they undertook during the Shoah. You may be familiar with the American Friends Service Committee. You may know that name, but not know that it was a branch of the Society of Friends, or Quakers. USHMM devotes a rather lengthy page to this group, extolling the hard work done by the AFSC on behalf of refugees from Hitler’s murderous rampages.
Over a year or two, Jo and I corresponded and talked.
Despite knowing her, and knowing her interest in historical integrity, I was still blown away when I read those first two novels. To begin with, Jo is a consummate story-teller. She knows how to draw her readers in, so you don’t want to put the book down. I’m shocked her stories haven’t been picked up for feature films. Engrossing would be a good word to describe her story-telling gift.
I was even more impressed by her attention to detail. She does something on historical fiction basis that I wish someone would undertake on a nonfiction basis, that is, focus on reception to White Rose (and other) resistance among regular Germans in Munich, Stuttgart, Ulm, and more, based on primary source documents from the era. Jo conceptualized this well, but I’d love to see real-life testimony from contemporaries of the White Rose circle, people who read the leaflets and were impacted either positively or negatively.
People like Lisa Grote, whose postwar testimony was suppressed by Inge Scholl. Inge should have interviewed Lisa and her friends, asked them more about how they received the leaflets, whether they duplicated the entire document or only highlights. Because now it is too late.
Until someone takes on this project, we can reliably look to All God’s Children for a hint of what it must have been like to receive a seditious leaflet that resonated, to admire the unknown authors, to have been so inspired by White Rose work that a body simply had to follow suit and also resist.
A long time ago, I wrote a positive review of Jo’s books. In the meantime, dozens upon dozens of very bad “nonfiction” screeds have been published. Few of those screeds have the impact or the veracity that Jo’s historical fiction works possess.
Please read this post as a call to action: Tell the true story. Pay attention to details. Even if White Rose is tangential or in the background, ensure you get it right. [Even more so if you’re writing about White Rose!]
Jo’s work in progress – after a long pause in writing YA historical fiction – focuses on Willi Graf! I can hardly wait. And yes, we are talking again. And I am loving every minute of every conversation and every email.
If you have read Jo’s Peacemaker trilogy, what did you think of it? If you haven’t: It’s on Amazon. Let us know what you think after you read it. Bet you read each book in one sitting!
© 2024 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote. To pre-order digital version of White Rose History, Volume II, click here. Pre-publication price is $48; after April 30, price will increase to $54. Digital version of White Rose History, Volume I, is already available here.
I did not know that. My father and grandfather lived there and I'm drawing from my father's autobiography. Thanks for the info.
I'm in the middle of a MG graphic novel that takes place in Nuremberg and am familiar with White Rose because of that.