October 14 - October 15, 1942.
Storybook:
Josef Söhngen receives Hans Scholl’s September 11 letter. Hans’ letter delights Söhngen so much that he immediately responds — on his personal stationery, not business! He is pleased that Hans opened up his inner being for Söhngen.
Söhngen agrees to send Hans the Dostoevsky books he requested, but argues that the truly great Russian writers were Pushkin, Gogol, and Turgenev. He finds Russian literature too much of a “sinister puzzle.” Söhngen asks that when Hans is back in Munich, he will save an evening for him when they can discuss Russian literature.
He also tells Hans Scholl that the September bombing raid damaged his store windows, and he has not been able to replace them yet. Wood covers the empty frames. And, he attended a Bach concert given by the great pianist Wilhelm Kempff, a concert Hans undoubtedly would have attended with Söhngen had he been in Munich.
Söhngen concludes the letter by asking Hans to “tell the other two hello as well,” and Werner too, “if he will accept [his greetings].” Despite Söhngen’s extensive postwar explanations of this letter, he never said who the “other two” were, or why he doubted that Werner Scholl would accept his greetings.
After the war, Söhngen said that their correspondence did not adequately portray how “warm” their friendship was. During interrogations, he claimed that he was only interested in Hans Scholl’s mind and did not know he was “sexually tainted” (gay). It’s not only likely, but probable, that Söhngen enjoyed Hans Scholl’s company because Hans was intellectual and gay.
Meanwhile on the Russian front, Otl Aicher is diagnosed with jaundice. The front line doctors send him to a field hospital in the rear. Since Otl is ambulatory, he is pointed in the direction of the nearest railroad track and told to catch the first train heading west. In the middle of the season’s first snowstorm, a German locomotive materializes. Otl realizes that they will be transported to the rear in a boxcar that had recently delivered munitions to the front lines.
Otl cannot sleep, so he watches for railroad station signs to mark their progress. Once he sees Armavir, he knows they are in Armenia, safely distant from Russian oilfields in Baku. He is still in the USSR, but feels oddly free - and human.
He uses his pocketknife to loosen a stitch on the Nazi eagle that adorns his cap. Otl hopes that it will get loose enough to fall off - his heart needs a sign!
Why this matters:
There is no doubt that Josef Söhngen spoke the truth when he said that the surviving correspondence between him and Hans Scholl did not adequately convey the warmth of their “friendship.” As you will see in a later chapter, Hans Scholl’s final, loving words were for Josef Söhngen, not one of the many women whom Hans Scholl used as “beard,” and treated horrendously in so doing.
The telling of true White Rose history has been hampered since 1945 by an older sister (Inge) who protected herself and her family from “scandal” by pretending that Hans’ final, loving words were for… which woman? She dangled that carrot on a very long stick, leading to decades-long speculation whether Hans meant Traute Lafrenz, Gisela Schertling, Rose Nägele, Ulla Borchert, or Ulla Claudias.
Anything that put her or the Scholl family in bad light, or simply not in the spotlight!, was suppressed, unpublished. As Inge Jens noted - to me and to other researchers - Inge Scholl granted her access to less than 10% of Scholl archives, and only Inge’s typewritten transcriptions, not the originals.
History cannot be accurately written where there in censorship. Josef Söhngen’s troublesome relationship with Hans Scholl should have been honestly addressed back when Inge wrote her very first book. “Troublesome relationship,” not because Hans was gay, and Söhngen’s other relationships were with similar “Section 175” young soldiers.
“Troublesome” only because Hans Scholl jeopardized their operations with his relationship with Söhngen. As you have already seen in Chapter 3, and as you will continue to see in subsequent chapters, Söhngen associated with several young, gay soldiers who were ardent National Socialists.
Gestapo Agent Schmauβ will later use Hans Scholl’s “Section 175” relationships to flip him on others in the White Rose, most notably Christoph Probst. Similarly, you will hear accusations of “Section 175” behavior when Söhngen is interrogated.
Two very strong takeaways, if not three:
The genuine and deep love that Josef Söhngen and Hans Scholl had for one another will likely never be known, unless Söhngen’s love letters to Hans Scholl are in the blocked Scholl archives. Because Söhngen destroyed all but the most innocuous letter from Hans to himself, in advance of his interrogation.
Sometimes histories can only be told truthfully once family members die off. It’s a two-edged sword. On the one hand, we lose access to their memories after their deaths, memories that can explain and interpret incidents we don’t understand. On the other hand, they can no longer be “embarrassed” by a relative’s sexuality or addictions or fatal flaws. We as historians are then freer to write the truth.
The third point: Often when I am reading correspondence by and between Hans Scholl and his “lovers,” I tend to read a bit jaded. Because Hans could be so very shallow. Especially his letters to Rose Nägele can be sickening. He is trying to hard to “be” heterosexual, while also abusing and misusing the love entrusted to him by his “beards.”
When reading this segment aloud, the first take had that same cynical approach to Söhngen’s almost-love letter to Hans Scholl. When listening to it before posting, I was ashamed of myself for treating Söhngen the same way I treated the women Hans hid behind.
Because Hans Scholl did in fact love Josef Söhngen. It was complicated, it was messy, but it was real.
So I re-recorded, and this time without cynicism, but recognizing the deep emotions that Söhngen felt for Hans, masked by convention and fear of concentration camp.
I hope the change in voice comes through.
White Rose History, Volume II, pages 219-221.
This post is free to all readers, because the topic of Hans Scholl’s relationship with Josef Söhngen is too important to put behind a paywall.
Notes and references
Josef Söhngen’s letter to Hans Scholl:
One odd thing about Söhngen’s letter to Hans Scholl: He combined formal ‘You’ (Sie) with use of Hans’ first name, something rarely done even in 21st century Germany, and certainly not common in 1942. Even Carl Muth called Hans “Mr. Scholl” and addressed him as “Sie.”
Despite the use of formal address, the letter has a very intimate tone.
Another oddity in the letter – Söhngen wrote, “I will gladly send you Dostoevsky, since that is what you wish; if it were my choice, I would not have done so, because I do not love him. There are greater masters among the Russians.” He literally said, “weil ich ihn nicht liebe” (emphasis mine), a turn of phrase one associates with a younger reader and not a 48-year-old seller of books.
One paragraph in Söhngen’s letter is so tortuous in its pseudo-theological-philosophical construction that I include it in its entirety here.
I became aware of something when I reread your letter so often; it became blissfully clear that for you this time will be one of great long-term profit. A law of physics states that no energy is ever lost. Emotional energy is also never lost.
The path out of this chaos will end in a different plane than the one that we abandoned in olden times. We will never be able to re-stitch the threads that have been torn. Rather we will once again find ourselves in a situation that has been changed at its very core. We will need a living, inner strength to master this life.
The only source of this strength – one we can call by name – is inclination (*) to God, the objective of a true Christendom. That is still quite distant, not in the sense of plain chronology. But it is still distant because the bitterness, the inner distress, and the worries about other, dear people have their own more difficult, more harried, more tormenting measure of time.
The asterisk: Söhngen wrote inclination, not worship as one would expect in that context.
In Söhngen’s postwar narrative, he claimed that he could not understand why the Gestapo thought the sentence about “the path out of this chaos” referred to something political, because it was (according to Söhngen) followed by “an addendum” (his word) about “inclination to God.” It is almost as if he reconstructed the paragraph in his mind.
As you will see in later chapters, Söhngen initially claimed he had destroyed Hans’ letters. When the Gestapo pressed the point about a political connection to Hans Scholl, he miraculously produced two of at least three he had in his possession. The Gestapo concluded theirs was nothing more than a homosexual liaison. Otherwise, they would have treated Söhngen far more harshly.
Use of personal stationery, instead of business, would undercut Söhngen’s claim that Hans Scholl was just another customer.
Wilhelm Kempff: Rare Recordings (1936-1945). From the collections of Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv and Norddeutscher Rundfunk. The link takes you to the same recording as is in the body of this post. But searching for +Wilhelm Kempff and +Bach on YouTube will yield many, many more such recordings.
Zavrel, B. John. “The Pianist Wilhelm Kempff is Dead.” In Prometheus: Internet Bulletin for Art, Politics, and Science, May 24, 1992. Clarence, NY: West-Art, 1991. Retrieved from www.meaus.com/KEMPFF.html.
Third White Rose Trial: July 13, 1943. October 14, 1942 letter from Josef Söhngen to Hans Scholl; Josef Söhngen’s post-war narrative; initial interrogation of Josef Söhngen on March 16, 1943; May 24, 1943 letter from Söhngen’s attorney requesting his release; April 13, 1943 interrogation of Josef Söhngen.
Otl Aicher:
Writing this book has given me a whole new appreciation for medical advances of the past fifty years. What was then called “jaundice” is now recognized to be several diseases, some serious, some not. German medical staff on the front lines apparently considered it contagious.
Aicher, Otl. innenseiten des kriegs. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag GmbH, 1985.
Cleveland Clinic. Adult Jaundice. Retrieved from https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/15367-adult-jaundice.
Smithsonian Institution. Armavir: My Armenia. Retrieved from https://myarmenia.si.edu/en/guide/regions/armavir/index.html.
WebMD.com. Understanding Jaundice: What You Need to Know. Retrieved from https://www.webmd.com/hepatitis/jaundice-why-happens-adults.
Errata to auto-generated transcript:
The lion’s share of Söhngen’s letter centered on religious topics. He told Hans that it had become “blissfully clear” that his time in Russia would bring him long-term profit. “A law of physics states that no energy is ever lost. Emotional energy is also never lost.” — Italicized portion is omitted from transcript.
Surreptitiously, he used his pocketknife to loosen a stitch on the Nazi eagle that adorned his cap. “Maybe it would start to get loose and one day, simply fall off. My heart needed a sign.” Loosening a stitch on the eagle! — Italicized portion is omitted from transcript.
Podcast © 2024 Denise Elaine Heap. White Rose History, Volume II, Chapter 18, © 2002 Denise Elaine Heap and Exclamation! Publishers. Please contact us for permission to quote.
This podcast is a project of WHY THIS MATTERS, a newsletter of Center for White Rose Studies, that explores the reasons that voices silenced more than eighty years ago still speak to us today.
To order digital version of White Rose History, Volume II, click here. Digital version of White Rose History, Volume I is available here.
Chapter 18, part 2: Loosening a Stitch on the Eagle