Death and the White Rose: Part One
As we head to Memorial Day weekend, to fun on the shore or celebrations with graduates, join me in remembering, grieving, standing on the shoulders of these White Rose friends who gave their all.
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. (Ernest Hemingway, 1946). The final objective in war is the destruction of the enemy’s capacity and will to fight, and thereby force him to accept the imposition of the victor’s will (Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz). War is hell (General William Tecumseh Sherman, during the American Civil War).
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity (General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1946). The only way to win the next world war is to prevent it (also General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956).
Where there is war, there is death.
We are fast approaching the long weekend known as Memorial Day. For many of us, this holiday signals the beginning of summer. Pools and beaches open. College graduation ceremonies are finished, and fresh college grads generally take a break before that long, hard campaign for Job #1. Schools too are wrapping up, with students and teachers alike embracing life outside the classroom.
But in small communities like Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Memorial Day retains its original meaning, that of remembering soldiers who died in battle. There’s a parade here. Locals place flags on graves, a daunting task in a town that is home to the National Cemetery where thousands of those killed in action during the Gettysburg campaign are buried.
It therefore seems appropriate to honor White Rose deaths – not simply the deaths of Harald Dohrn, Willi Graf, Professor Kurt Huber, Hans Leipelt, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl, and Sophie Scholl, but also deaths in their circle, deaths that impacted them, that made them fight harder for justice.
Join me for a few minutes to remember, to grieve, and above all, to stand on their shoulders. In Part One, we will consider the weight of losses through April 30, 1942, before they coalesced as “White Rose” and began their work. Part Two follows later this week and contemplates the crescendo of death from May 1, 1942 through the end of the war.
NATURAL CAUSES
Wolf Dohrn. Harald Dohrn presents us with a complex and overlooked biography. In the White Rose story, we see him primarily as Christoph Probst’s father-in-law, as the cantankerous and divisive apologist for the Vatican in debates and discussions held at Manfred Eickemeyer’s studio. Wilhelm Geyer, himself a devout and practicing Catholic, asked Hans Scholl not to invite Dohrn to subsequent meetings, as Dohrn dominated every discussion to the detriment of unity.
And yet.
Harald’s brother Wolf served as project manager and financial advisor for Germany’s first “garden city,” Hellerau near Dresden. Founded in 1909, Hellerau attracted A-List artists, dancers, playwrights, actors, and musicians. Residents prided themselves on their lifestyle, as among other things, Hellerau encouraged the wearing of comfortable clothing! But Sinclair Lewis, Martin Buber, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, and Alexander von Salzmann, along with productions of Claudel’s mostly-inaccessible works put Hellerau on the cultural map.
Barely five years after its establishment, Hellerau failed. Not just failed. Failed miserably. Wolf Dohrn plowed personal funds into Hellerau to stave off bankruptcy. To no avail. He lost everything he had.
Including his life. Wolf Dohrn died in 1914.
When Harald Dohrn returned from military service following World War I, he assumed his brother’s obligations. He married Wolf’s widow, took Wolf’s children as his own (including Herta Dohrn, who would later marry Christoph Probst), and tried to rescue Hellerau. His brother’s estimates of outstanding debt totaled RM 300,000 ($2.4 million). Actual debt? RM 1,400,000 or $11,200,000.
From 1918-1928, Harald Dohrn came up with innovative ways to keep Hellerau afloat. He believed that debts should be paid, contracts should be honored, family mattered. He reacted to his brother’s death by rolling up his shirt sleeves to ensure the Dohrn legacy remained whole.
Ten years later, he gave up. He divorced Wolf’s widow (but Wolf’s children went with him) and accepted full responsibility for the divorce. He all but gave Hellerau to Saxony. Harald Dohrn abandoned his idealistic dreams and moved to Bad Wiessee, just south of Munich on Tegernsee, where he became a masseuse and physical therapist.
Additionally, his brother’s death made him resistant to National Socialist ideals. He converted to Catholicism and refused to join NSDAP organizations, even ones that could have benefited his business.[1] [Footnotes and bibliography for paid subscribers only.]
Willi Ramdohr. When Lieselotte Fürst-Ramdohr’s father died, Willi Ramdohr became her guardian. Lilo’s stepfather provided her no emotional or financial support. Willi Ramdohr was the father she loved and adored.
Willi Ramdohr’s father, Lilo’s grandfather, had lent their hometown of Aschersleben a sizable sum of money, about $10 million in today’s currency. Aschersleben did not wish to repay that loan, despite promissory note, and Hitler’s new government sided with Aschersleben.
Not only were the Ramdohrs out the value of the promissory note. Göring (and Hitler) decreed that Willi Ramdohr had to repay the Reich for its legal fees, defending itself and the city of Aschersleben again the Ramdohrs.
In 1940, when all appeals had failed and Willi Ramdohr received an invoice from the NSDAP for court costs and legal expenses, it was more than he could bear. He died of natural causes, but Lilo attributed his death to the unbearable stress of losing the lawsuit and the family’s financial security.
Lilo remembered that when Willi Ramdohr died, she felt bereft, as if he had been father, not guardian. When her good friend Falk Harnack learned of Willi Ramdohr’s death, he made it a point to stay in regular contact with her. Falk worried about Lilo. His letters reminded her how rich her life had been with her beloved guardian.
Nothing could have topped Falk’s ultimate gift to his friend than the Harnack family’s visit over Christmas that same year. Falk brought “Muhmi” (his mother), and his brother Arvid and sister-in-law Mildred! The Harnacks celebrated Christmas with Lilo in her tiny, cramped apartment.
That difficult year ended on a high note for Lilo, wrapped in the presence of a family who grew dearer to her with each passing day.[2]
Friedrich Schüddekopf. We know very little about the death of Katharina Schüddekopf’s father. He had converted to Catholicism to marry Käthe’s mother, but did not accompany his wife to church. While his wife was adamantly anti-Nazi – to the point of not contributing to any of the NSDAP’s “welfare” funds – Friedrich was hardcore National Socialist. He joined the Party at the earliest possible date after Hitler’s ascension to power: May 1, 1937.
Käthe’s father was part of the team charged with maximizing production of Germany’s mid-sized tank, the SdKfz 161, at the Krupp Grusonwerke in Magdeburg. The last year of his life, that team had successfully improved production by 25%.
The death of Friedrich Schüddekopf in February 1942 seems to have marked a positive turning point in Käthe’s life. She no longer had to please her father, while agreeing with her mother’s politics and religion. After his death, she became close friend of Traute Lafrenz, a friendship that would last until Käthe’s too-early death.[3]
Mathilde Scholl. Born March 1925 when Sophie Scholl was almost four, Thilde Scholl died in January 1926. She is invisible in Scholl biographies and accounts, as if she had never lived.
SUICIDE
Otto Harnack. Father of Falk Harnack, Otto Harnack enjoyed an illustrious career as a literary historian and producer of Swabian folk plays in Stuttgart. He especially loved Friedrich Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Germany was his “family.”
Despite his financial and scholarly success, Otto Harnack suicided in 1914, shortly after Falk’s first birthday. Otto had asked his wife Clara to accompany him to a Mozart matinee. Clara had already booked a studio and model for a painting session that conflicted with the concert. She had even secured a babysitter for the afternoon.
“Oh all right, go paint if you like it that much,” Otto told Clara. He went to the Mozart concert alone. And suicided.
The rest of her life, Clara Harnack blamed herself for her husband’s death. If only, if only…
In addition to the emotional trauma resulting from Otto Harnack’s suicide, Clara found herself a single mother to four children in the very-patriarchal world that was Germany during the World War. Clara deemed Otto’s brother Adolf von Harnack, the renowned Lutheran theologian, her loyal adviser.
Despite her brother-in-law’s assistance, Clara struggled to make ends meet. Her wealthier brothers Werner and Rudolf Reichau did little to help her. Clara moved her small family from Stuttgart to Jena, hoping that her children could at least get a good education.
The move would eventually put Falk Harnack square into the dichotomy of German life post-1933. On the one hand, the Harnack siblings of her deceased husband were known for their resistance to Hitler and his policies. On the other, Clara’s brothers worked in the Reich Ministry of Justice in Berlin. Clara herself joined the Reich “Cultural Chamber,” a requirement to continue working as an artist.
Falk grew up in this conflicted atmosphere. His father’s suicide – the death of a parent he had not even known – colored his emotional well-being, while financial hardship and divided loyalties rendered life in dissonant chords.
He opted for theater over the more cerebral pursuits that most Harnacks chose. No politics, he thought at the time. Where his father had considered Germany his family, Falk Harnack could not see his country as more important than family and friends.[4]
Hermann Probst. Only two days before his father’s suicide in a psychiatric clinic, Christoph Probst penned a happy, excited missive to that adored father. He told his dad about an upcoming Hitler Youth camping trip to Mittenwald. Since Hermann Probst loved the mountains, it’s possible that Christl thought the upbeat message would remind his father of the life-affirming qualities to be found in that place.
There is no surviving correspondence or diary entry related to Christl’s immediate reaction to his father’s death on May 30, 1936. Hermann Probst was fifty. His family would later credit Hermann for Christl’s “natural intellectual curiosity.”
On June 6, 1936, Christl wrote his stepmother Elise Probst about the headmaster’s attempt to find out how he (Christl) was doing. “When he asked, I told him a lot about Papa’s life. But he did not seem to understand very much, since he kept asking such stupid questions.”
Indeed, for the rest of Christl’s Schondorf (boarding school) experience, the headmaster and other teachers rode Christl hard. They expected him to live up to the German ideal of “hard as Krupp steel.” There was no room for mourning. (I often wonder if Hermann Probst’s mental illness and suicide factored into the decision to ignore Christl’s grief. Patients with mental illnesses were deemed “useless eaters.”)
Bernhard Knoop, Christl’s teacher and future brother-in-law, proved the exception to that rule. He gave Christl room to vent, and he also directed Christl’s superior intellect to subjects the teenager had never considered: Astronomy, classical German literature, biology. Christl was insatiable, with conversations with Bernhard Knoop, plus the new worlds to which Bernhard introduced him, consuming his waking hours.
This forced suppression of his grief drove Christoph Probst away from National Socialism, away from the harsh standards of his Nazi teachers. When that headmaster wrote on his report card that “life must toughen him [Christl] up a little still,” and that only three weeks after his father’s death, it’s surprising that Christl could survive in such an uncaring environment.
Christl didn’t just survive. He thrived. He masked his tears as “hay fever,” or other illnesses, to explain away swollen eyes and red nose. But he kept going. As with Falk Harnack, the severity of National Socialism made Christl a more loving, caring human being. Nothing meant more to him than family and friends. It’s no wonder that Lilo identified him as the moral backbone of the White Rose friends.
He despised the “Krupp steel” expectations for German men and embraced a tenderness that was rare for that era. Christl ensured that his Jewish stepmother was protected after she lost the security of marriage to an “Aryan” man. According to his sister Angelika, he became “surrogate for their father.” Once he met Herta, his protection of his girlfriend and eventually wife, as well as his children!, became fierce. Nothing else mattered.
All that grief was transformed into an ability to love that surpassed Christl’s own opinion of himself. Ability to love, coupled with a healthy sense of humor, a sense of humor grounded in grief.
“Love reigns everywhere, in every world, and between the worlds. It reigns between ‘the dead’ – who have more life in them than mankind in this world – and the living, who perhaps are really dead.”
So wrote 16-year-old Christoph Probst, in a letter to his stepmother Elise, on June 13, 1936. Two weeks after his father’s suicide.[5]
KILLED IN ACTION/MISSING IN ACTION
Otto Berndl. Lilo had been attracted to Otto Berndl because of his strong anti-Nazi convictions. He stood well outside the National Socialist circle, a characteristic that suited her just fine. They had married on February 28, 1940. An early squabble in their young love dealt with Lilo’s war-time service in a military hospital. Otto thought she should have refused to serve.
A few days before Christmas in December 1941, Lilo received a letter from this man she loved so dearly. And she did not recognize his words. He advised her that instead of taking the three-week leave he’d promised her, he would be staying on the Russian Front through Christmas, leave having been revoked. He now saw fighting in Hitler’s war as “a wonderful fulfillment of duty.” He was a changed man. Oh, and Lilo should get down to a military hospital and volunteer her services.
To prevent a complete meltdown and nonstop crying, Lilo answered every single piece of correspondence on her desk. She welcomed Alex Schmorell into her home, more talkative than usual. She went on a shopping spree for Christmas presents for the Harnack family, then tried to figure out a way to finagle an invitation to spend the holiday with them.
All to keep her grief in check, grief over a husband who had changed sides.
When Lilo received his death notice a few months later, shortly before Easter 1942, she had no tears to cry. She only felt numb.
Lilo and Alexander Schmorell had already been good friends before Otto Berndl’s death. When Alex learned that Otto had fallen, he asked her what he could do to assuage her grief. Their friendship deepened to the point that both could open up about things that moved them.
And her small apartment near Schloβ Nymphenburg became a safe haven for Alex, and his friends who were to start writing leaflets that sounded like the words her husband had uttered – before he saw fighting in Hitler’s war as a wonderful fulfillment of duty.[6]
Hans Scholl’s friend. After basic military training ended, Hans Scholl was assigned to a military hospital in Tübingen. Still a soldier, he would earn his certification as a medic (not a student company!).
He had not been there even a week when he was required to assist in the autopsy of a good friend from Ulm, who was also stationed in Tübingen. Hans never wrote about the cause of death, nor how he learned of it. Only that everything went black before my eyes. He had difficulty separating his personal feelings for this friend from the gruesome (yet interesting) medical procedure he witnessed. Even harder – figuring out what he would say to the friend’s sister. The incident deeply affected Hans, rattled his implacable composure. He became preoccupied with thoughts of death.
[No name given, no cause of death. Included in this section because of connection to a military hospital.][7]
SIGNIFICANT OBSERVATIONS
This represents a selection of the most meaningful observations about “death” as recorded by friends in the White Rose circle. Some were penned after the war, some during. All add perspective as we remember their lives and work.
Susanne Hirzel. Susanne loved music. One thing that drew her into Jungmädel (Hitler Youth for young girls): The music. They sang all the time.
One song bothered her even then, although she ignored the warning sign. “The flag means more than death.”[8]
She also recalled that her mother loved to read sanitized versions of Grimm’s fairy tales to the younger children. The older children – presumably Susanne among them – pretended not to listen as Mother Hirzel entertained her babies.
Susanne reminisced about the three favorite stories. The first, The Two Brothers, because it was the longest. Nils Holgerson’s Amazing Trip with the Wild Geese, second choice.
The troublesome request? “Read us something funny about death.” Susanne remembers that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.[9]
As the war progressed and the outlook became bleaker, Susanne’s vision for her future changed. The young woman who loved performing – star athlete, valedictorian, extraordinary cellist – abandoned her artistic desires. The thrill of entertaining, of playing a piece so well that an audience would be moved, had lost its charm. There were too many death notices. And with the US now in the war, she assumed that Germany’s ultimate defeat was sealed.
She therefore switched her emphasis to music history and theory, away from performance. It was simply easier to focus on cold, hard facts than on interpretation of a musical line. She and her fellow musicians walked around in a fog, in a perpetually bad mood. They felt powerless, chained, as if they were imprisoned under a giant Bell jar. She understood the irony of their – the conquerors – feeling like they had been conquered.[10]
Otl Aicher. World War II had been sputtering along for almost two years when Otl Aicher and Inge Scholl visited Sophie Scholl at Krauchenwies, where she was fulfilling her Reich Labor Service obligation. Their visit coincided with the June 22, 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, an event that thinking Germans knew meant the war had ratcheted up to a level that made it perhaps unwinnable.
Instead of a happy visit, Otl said it was an “evening of sadness.” To that point, the war had been fought on foreign soil. That would likely change, and fast. They would all be personally affected. “What is a glimpse of hope worth if it flourishes in a cemetery of millions?”
He summarized their thoughts as follows.
Ties, bonds – even our own? – are broken, people we love are trampled. Love is blown up by grenades, the mother is burned alive in her own house. Our friends are mutilated, our fathers are treacherously murdered, brothers and sisters are extinguished, and that in a measure such that hardly a family is spared. Neither here, nor there.[11]
Willi Graf. Back on the Russian front, under skies that stretched endlessly over vast spaces, Willi came to terms with his surroundings. “The other army also knows how to fight,” Willi noted wryly in a letter home. Obviously better than anyone had anticipated. Days and nights became confused, sleep grabbed on the run. Incessant mosquitoes, incessant heat, exacerbated by wool uniforms that collected fleas and other insects, when would it end? “Sunshine, dust and mosquitoes plague us, for their supply exceeds our demand.”
As war closed in, his horizons expanded through the books he read. Hölderlin. Guardini. Poems. Theology. Beauty in the midst of ashes. But the beauty confused him, frustrated him, made it hard to distinguish reality from dreams. Or truth from fiction.
A few decades later, the historian Marshall Dill explained what Willi experienced. “It is difficult to describe the epic magnitude of the German campaign in Russia where no less than nine million men were deployed at a single time. This was no old-fashioned warfare in which the movements of an army can be followed by a pencil line on a map, nor was it the warfare of 1914-18 in which the shifting front can be indicated by lines moved back and forth. There really was no front. Sometimes the ‘front’ was many miles in depth where rapidly moving units bypassed strong points, where air attacks were miles removed from infantry fighting, where pockets of resistance held out sometimes for months. It was the French campaign enlarged many times; it was an elemental struggle of vastly powerful and complex forces locked in combat unto death. The author had the official responsibility for many months of following this front from day to day and never felt that he could visualize it; how then to describe it in retrospect?”
Among the sounds of war, Willi held on to memories of happier days. As he numbed to the sight of gutted bodies, unsure where his pulse started and another’s ended, Willi recalled glorious days when life itself was wide open and the possibilities – not the scenery – were endless. “But one may not think about such things too much.”[12]
Senta Meyer (Eugen and Jenny Grimminger). On November 6, 1934, Senta Meyer bought a house in Stuttgart for 35,000 Marks ($280,000) and took out a mortgage in the amount of 19,000 Marks ($152,000), which she paid off in the next few years. The address was Altenberg Street 42.
Senta’s mother, her sisters Mina and Julie, along with Eugen and Jenny Grimminger, moved into that house, as well as Grimminger’s sister Luise Haas and her daughter and son-in-law, the Merker family. There were other tenants too, as Senta Meyer listed rental income among her revenue.
From September 15, 1941, Senta Meyer and all her children had to wear a yellow Star of David. They avoided going outside, which was just as well since new laws had restricted their movements for a while. They could shop in only a few stores. Jenny Grimminger was not bound by these laws due to her status as a Jewish woman married to an Aryan man, but even she did not leave the house. Eugen Grimminger took care of necessities. His sister Luise Haas and her daughter Eugenie Merker did all the shopping.
Senta Meyer and her four children were among the first to be deported from Württemberg. The operation [to deport Jews] took place on December 1, 1941 in Stuttgart. At the time, she was 38 years old. Her four children were between the ages of 19 and 11 years old.
Paul Sauer describes this operation as follows:
“On November 18, 1941, the Gestapo / State Police headquarters in Stuttgart, which were responsible for deportations from Württemberg and Hohenzollern, had instructed the district magistrates and local police about the evacuations of thousands of Jews planned for December 1. They gave them running updates about the collection of assets of the persons to be deported, about preparation for and execution of the transports. …”
“The Gestapo made no concessions when collecting and confiscating Jewish assets. Those persons who were to be deported were required to complete detailed declarations of their assets, which had to be approved by the competent municipal bureaucrats and forwarded to the appropriate revenue office. They were strictly forbidden to take cash, jewelry, bonds, and savings passbooks with them. … On November 27/28, those to be transported were assembled at the Killesberg [convention center]. On December 1, 1941, the deportation train left Stuttgart headed for Riga. In the meantime, the residences of the deportees had been officially sealed. … In accordance with the 11th ordinance of the Reich’s Civil Code dated November 25, 1941, as soon as the deportees crossed the German border, their assets devolved to the Reich. At the same time, those who were being forced to leave were stripped of their German citizenship. …
“After a journey of several days, the deportees arrived at the train station in Riga on December 4. There they were handed over to SS men, who looted their luggage and even beat them. … “ (Here follows a description of the inadequate accommodations, partially even in barns, where many died due to freezing temperatures.)
“The few who survived recall with horror the mass shooting of March 26, 1942. Children under fourteen years of age and their mothers, along with all who were over fifty, and those not able to work, among these whole families, were gathered for a special transport. Even sick beds were emptied. SS men let it be known that the prisoners were to be taken to Dünamünde near Riga, where they were to be employed in a cannery if they were able to work. In reality they were shot in Bikernieki, a small stand of birch trees, one of the favorite execution spots for those in the Riga Ghetto. … About 1,500 people, among them many from Württemberg, were affected by Operation Dünamünde Cannery.”
Eugen Grimminger reports that he accompanied his sister-in-law and her children to Killesberg. Since Senta and her children were wearing yellow stars, they were all harassed on the way there, while riding in the streetcar. Immediately following Senta Meyer’s deportation, the Gestapo appeared in the house on Armin Street and removed furniture, fixtures, and clothes from the apartment where Senta and her children had resided. The title of the house on Altenberg Street was transferred to the Reich on July 28, 1943. But the Grimmingers did not live there any longer. By this time, they were already in prison [Eugen] or in the concentration camp [Jenny].
On August 12, 1948, Senta Meyer and her four children – Gertrud, Lore, Fritz, and Ilse – were declared [legally] dead. Date of death was given as March 26, 1942. That was the date of the mass execution in Riga.[13]
KRISTALLNACHT
Excerpt from White Rose History, Volume I.
Lotte Barth [same age as Sophie, lived one floor up from the Scholls in the house on Adolf-Hitler-Ring] survived the war. She emigrated to the United States when she was 18, after Kristallnacht, sailing to New York on the ship Washington. Her father Heinrich was among those dragged from his bed on November 9, along with her uncle Julius Barth. Julius was beaten to death in Dachau in November or December 1938. Her father returned to Ulm from Dachau, but Lotte did not get to see him, as she was on her way to America.
To comprehend why Armin Ziegler insisted I add this level of detail to this chapter, and why the Scholl silence – and the silence of Germans in general – is such a big deal, here is Lotte Greenwood nee Barth telling about her trip to the United States.
I can still see my dear mother at the train station in Ulm. It’s a good thing I was young and stupid, because today I understand what that look in her eyes meant.
It was not easy to set off into the world completely alone at eighteen, knowing that I would never return to my parents, relatives, friends, and hometown. I had grown up [in Ulm] and I loved that city. I had never lived anywhere other than Ulm on the Danube.
The journey was very stormy and New York was “confusing.” That first year, I worked with children. Then I became quite ill. I met my dear husband in the autumn of 1939, and we married on October 13, 1940, even though he too was a “refugee” and we had very little in comparison to today. But we were young and healthy and worked hard…
Julius Barth was not the lone family member to die at the hand of the Nazis. Her father, mother, sister Suse (eight years younger), and cousin were all shot in the woods near Riga a few years later.
So while Hans Scholl got all sad and teary-eyed recalling the horrible injustice perpetrated on him the previous year, and while the Scholl children planned their annual New Year’s ski trip (Hans to Werner: Scrape the old dirt off the skis and get them freshly tarred, but leave the waxing to Inge, because she does it best), the Barths sat shiva in their home, mourning the death of a brother and uncle, worrying about a daughter off to a strange land – and safety.
Jewish Germans who remained also faced the ruinous specifics of Hitler’s legislation that fined them one billion Marks for the damage “they” inflicted on Germany the night of November 9. In mid-November, it had been an obliquely worded mandate. No longer. Deprived of a means to earn a living, Jewish Germans had to cope with a new tax – not on income, but on assets both liquid and fixed. For an example of how this affected a single family, see Appendix C [Senta Meyer]. When you read it, try to put yourself in that family’s shoes. And be aware that that family had direct connection with Eugen and Jenny Grimminger, who financed so much of White Rose work.
Susanne Hirzel looks backs on those days with the wisdom that comes with adulthood and remarks that Germans were willing to tolerate a large dose of illogic. “A little undisguised barbarism could not dampen the enthusiasm of the masses for the Führer,” she writes.
“Everywhere you heard, ‘If only the Führer knew.’ Though it did not seem to occur to anyone how great the contradiction when at public events, the Party would say, ‘Führer, we thank you.’”[14]
WHITE ROSE AND DEATH – THE SYMBOL
Lilo had sent her penpal, Fritz Rook, a basket of cherries. They had briefly met while on a train in September 1940. Fritz Rook asked her to write him. Lilo trusted her instincts and agreed to do so. Which eventually led to that basket of cherries she sent him in August 1941, as he recovered from wounds received on the front lines.
Fritz Rook thanked her with a letter that changed the trajectory of the White Rose, at least as far as leaflets went.
Fritz Rook’s words stirred Lilo, lit a fire inside her. She kept going back to it, fingering the free-flowing words on cheap paper. This was a letter she saved, putting it in a place where she could access it quickly.
Yesterday, late in the evening, I spied a white rose. It is said that white flowers are for the dead – but death, love, and youth are all one and the same. (The dead, insofar as they really live inside of us, live transformed as the image of shining youth!) Therefore it is precisely the white rose with its fragrance and its fragile purity that is the symbol of eternal youth. I thought of that this very moment. I love to give people white flowers (and all Christians make the sign of the cross when they see one). I am sending a white rose petal to you with a kiss. F.[15]
“Death, love, and youth are all one and the same.” The symbol of eternal youth.
Not exactly the juxtaposition we think of as we head for the shore or treat our favorite college grad to a sumptuous feast or fire up the grill for the first barbecue of the year.
But it was their reality then, and it is the reality wherever wars continue to be fought.
Why. This. Matters.
© 2024 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote. To order digital version of White Rose History, Volume II, click here. Digital version of White Rose History, Volume I is available here. Excerpts from White Rose Histories © 2002, 2003, and 2007 Denise Heap.
Footnotes and bibliography are available to paid subscribers only.
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