Death and the White Rose: Part Three

On this Memorial Day, I challenge us also to remember and revere those who made the ultimate sacrifice fighting against a Fatherland they loved. May we never know the darkness that comes from tyranny.

Gettysburg National Cemetery. Photo © 2022 Denise Heap.

As Memorial Day is now in full swing, this part of the Death and the White Rose series focuses solely on those who lost their lives fighting for freedom and against injustice. Some like Willi Graf had seen through the corruption and emptiness of National Socialism almost from the beginning. Others like the Scholls took a bit longer to change sides.

On this day we may enjoy fireworks and parades. We may place American flags on the graves of those who died in defense of this country.

I challenge each of us to also remember and revere those who made the ultimate sacrifice fighting against a Fatherland they loved. May we never, ever know the darkness that comes from tyranny. May we never, ever know what it feels like to be an Other, just because we’re an artist, or a socialist, or LGBTQ, or Jewish, or Muslim, or a refugee, or poor, or uneducated. May we never, ever stand idly by as civil rights, as human rights, are eroded.

May we always, but always be willing to stand up for what is right, even when it’s hard.

May we always, but always do justice, love loving-kindness, and walk humbly with our God. Regardless of faith or lack thereof.

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WHITE ROSE DEATHS

Arvid Harnack. Although Arvid and Mildred Harnack were in the White Rose circle, they were close to Lilo. Arvid’s brother Falk was respected by several of the friends, as well as part of the political debate that drove White Rose asunder.

To learn more about Arvid and Mildred Harnack’s work with Schulze-Boysen/Harnack resistance, check out Shareen Blair Brysac’s Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra (link takes you to our book review). It’s the definitive book on Mildred Harnack’s role in that Berlin-based group. Blair Brysac also confirmed Lilo’s assertion that Falk was cousin of the Bonhoeffer brothers, Dietrich and Klaus.

Arvid Harnack was executed on December 22, 1942. His death served as fear-provoking, courage-inducing motivation to White Rose students to intensify their efforts. Falk Harnack saw in Lilo’s friends both the remote possibility that his brother could be broken out of prison, as well as an avenue to continue his brother’s efforts.

Falk reacted to Arvid’s execution by falling to pieces. “It took almost every ounce of my life energy” to continue living, he would later say.

Lilo agreed to spend Christmas with the Harnacks, knowing that as they had comforted her after the death of her guardian, she could now comfort them.

From the moment Falk picked Lilo up at the train station, she was conscious of the depth of his grief. He did not want her to see him cry or say anything that would demonstrate weakness. He had to be strong.

So when Falk put his arm under hers and gripped her hand tightly, Lilo knew that was the closest he would ever come to expressing his grief. It was enough to hold her hand and have her close.

As soon as they arrived at “Muhmi’s” home, Ansa Harnack (Falk’s sister) took Lilo straight to the brokenhearted mother. “Mrs. Harnack sat still as a rock in her chair,” Lilo recalled. “She nodded at us. Her eyes were wide open, with a perplexed expression peering into the depths of the emptiness that had torn her son away from her. The pain of this dear woman was indescribable. And yet, with what superhuman greatness she bore that sorrow!

‘What kind of poor souls are they who must carry out such a death sentence?’ she said almost inaudibly.”

Lilo was shaken, speechless at Muhmi’s declaration. She had sympathy for the executioners? She did not wait until they asked for forgiveness? Hitler had taken her son from her. Muhmi was not supposed to forgive!

Suddenly, for the first time since Alex had cautiously told her what they planned to do, Lilo understood. She finally, finally felt a personal association with Schurik’s plans.

But Muhmi had collapsed. “She appeared awfully tiny to me in her chair. Her beautiful blue eyes burned in their dark caverns. Death was near her, in her, around her. We hardly dared to move, lest we touch her frailty with our youthful power.”

This was the woman the Gestapo feared so much, this “Muhmi” who could not move from her chair? They called her a “gasbag,” ridiculed her political views. She had once vowed that her sons would never fight the Russians. And now she sat unmoving, forgiveness on her lips, life drained from her body.

As Lilo left the Harnacks’ home a few days later, Falk confided in her that Arvid’s death had left him shaken. He wondered if he should forget about the work that Arvid had undertaken. Maybe it was time for him to focus on the arts, start a family, live a normal life. Perhaps Arvid’s death was a warning to him.

Lilo did not know whether she should take his words seriously. What would Alex and Hans think? She could not tell them about the forgiveness that Muhmi granted her son’s executioners.

But Falk did continue his brother’s work. His counsel fortified White Rose friends as he advised them about leaflet style, about targeting “the man on the street” and forgetting the intelligentsia. Arvid’s death made Falk more committed, not less. And that commitment touched every corner of White Rose work.[1]

Hans and Sophie Scholl. We know the most about reactions to the death of Hans and Sophie Scholl because of Inge Scholl’s call for memories of her siblings. Interesting that some of the more poignant accounts of the deaths of Alexander Schmorell and Kurt Huber come from unpublished documents in that collection.

• Carl Muth: Werner Bergengruen recalled that Carl Muth “spoke of Hans and his sister. He spoke of all the young, openly, or silently protesting persons who were falling prey to the so-called greatest strategist [Hitler’s self-description] and executioner of all time. He grieved like a bereaved father.[2]

• Gerhard Feuerle: This young man and admirer of Sophie Scholl fell apart. He said he “fell deeper emotionally than he had ever experienced before.” He could not make himself stay in Munich. Although as a soldier he was under strict orders not to leave the city, he would show up at home. His mother would put him on a train back to Munich, only for him to return a few days later. He gradually lost touch with reality. Months later while serving on the Russian Front, memories of Sophie Scholl caused Gerhard Feuerle to despair, to experience depression like nothing he had ever known. ‘Would life ever be normal again?’[3]

• Lisa Grote: She and her small band of friends who had painstakingly copied out White Rose leaflets and distributed them? They now did not know what they should do. They met briefly after the 2/22/1943 executions. She could see the fear in their eyes.[4]

• Eugen Grimminger: “I was flatly upset about the way the two of them acted. I could see that I had gotten myself into a difficult situation.”[5]

• Susanne Hirzel: People did not just gossip about the death announcement in the newspaper. They also talked about what the Scholls and Christoph Probst had said during the trial, truths that could not be contained. “These unbending siblings who went to their deaths together for their political convictions.”[6]

Excerpt from White Rose History, Volume II, regarding the reactions of the Scholl family to the executions. Primarily from Inge Scholl’s own account in Sippenhaft.

If anyone was aware that the State destroyed its enemies, it would have been the families of Hans and Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst. On February 24, the Scholls learned that they would be allowed to bury their two children, just not in Ulm. They would have to travel to Munich and the burial would have to take place at Perlacher Cemetery, with Rev. Dr. Karl Alt presiding.

Unaware of that cleric’s penchant for reporting everything he witnessed to the Gestapo, the entire Scholl family went to Munich. None of them would have stayed away, even if they had been conscious of Alt’s true role in the affair. Inge thought Rev. Alt demonstrated “solidarity with the dead.”

Before they met at the grave site, Inge made two stops that were important to her. She visited Carl Muth, who told her that if he had known what Hans and Sophie were doing, “he would have tied them up with ropes.”

And she stood in Hans and Sophie’s rooms, together with Otl Aicher. There was a houseplant on Hans’ desk. It had not been watered in ages. Violet leaves were attached to the stems “like butterflies” and were scattered across the desk, his desk. A pot with tulips bloomed in Sophie’s bedroom.

Then the moment that had brought them to this place – the Scholls plus beloved friends Otl and Traute… Perlacher Cemetery was closed and under the pronounced supervision of the Gestapo. Föhn still reigned supreme, because they could see snow-covered Alpine peaks in the distance.

Sun had started to set “blood red” as the funeral got underway. Rev. Alt pointed to the Alps and reminded the mourners “where our help comes from” in time of need. There is one sun that never sets, he said, and it only beams light and strength into the darkest and most sorrowful hours.

He closed the service with I Corinthians 13, telling those who grieved that their beloved children, siblings, friends had requested just that passage before they passed on. “No one has greater love than he who gives his life for his friends,” and the graveside service was ended.

They found “some place” to sit together, “in deep spiritual weariness,” as Inge recalled.

Robert Scholl interrupted their reverie with a most disturbing proclamation. “Shouldn’t we all simply slit our jugular and join them? Show them that we won’t take this?”

Hans and Sophie would not have wanted that, friends and family implored him. Don’t even think such a thing!

Mrs. Scholl distracted her husband from his suicidal contemplations with a matter-of-fact, Let’s go eat supper. “She insisted that we eat together in some restaurant or another before we went home,” Inge said. “She was thinking about her still-living children. I believe she used up half her meat rations for the month for that meal [in the restaurant].”

One last stop remained for the Scholls before they caught the late train home. Werner, Inge, and Liesel showed up at Gisela Schertling’s apartment – accompanied by Traute Lafrenz – around 9 pm. They told Gisela that the parents were in town, and that they had also been present at the trial on the 22nd. They (the whole crowd) had gone to the burial that day.

Inge told Gisela about her visit with Carl Muth, and how that man had said he would have tied Hans and Sophie up with ropes had he known. This visit made Gisela very, very uncomfortable. She let them do most of the talking.

For one thing, they were far more upset about Hans and Sophie’s death than she was. Even Traute seemed broken up. Gisela’s anxiety must have been evident, because they stayed only fifteen minutes or so, before making some excuse or the other and taking their leave.[7]

By September 1943, the Scholl family had erected a shrine to Hans and Sophie Scholl in their home. When Fritz Hartnagel visited the family that month, they toasted To Peace, even as a Hitler Youth parade took place on Münsterplatz below the Scholls’ apartment. Hitler Youth boys had lined nearby Hirschstrasse with machine guns.

After going through old photo albums with Inge and Magdalena Scholl, Fritz joined the two women in lighting candles at the shrine to Hans and Sophie. The three of them recited I Corinthians 13 before the photographs of the siblings.

Inge started referring to Sophie as “a saint,” while Magdalena Scholl called her deceased children “die Guten” or the Good Ones.[8]

Christoph Probst. Excerpt from White Rose History, Volume II.

As her stepfather had requested, Angelika left first thing the next morning from Marienau, the northern German town where she and her husband Bernhard Knoop ran a boarding school.

The trip took all day. When she arrived in Munich late on the evening of February 23, she kept looking for Christl. If everything were truly all right, he would be there to greet her. In the lights, noise, “bustling masses of people,” nowhere could she find her brother’s eyes.

“Rather, I saw the pale gray face of my stepfather,” she said. She asked him if something had happened. “And as if in a dream, I heard the answer. Yes, something has happened. Our Christl is no longer alive.” With those few words, Angelika’s world crumbled.

When her stepfather took Angelika to her mother, she found Karin Kleeblatt “wholly broken,” her anguish over Christl’s death unbearable. Dr. Kleeblatt had learned of her son’s execution after the fact. She had not had an opportunity to say goodbye.

Angelika went for a walk the next morning, still unable to come to terms with Christl’s death. She was shocked to come face to face with bright reddish posters plastered on advertising pillars, posters proclaiming: For high treason, the following were sentenced and executed: Hans Scholl, 26 years old; Sophia Scholl, 21 years old; Christoph Probst, 24 years old.

She also knew that her dear friend Alex had fled, and that there was a bounty on his head.

With this insult added to the injury she could not endure, she was all the more pleased to observe new graffiti sprout on the walls of the University of Munich overnight. Some brave soul painted in huge letters, THEIR SPIRIT LIVES!

“And that is the truest and greatest thing that could possibly be said about what happened,” she concluded.

Anneliese Knoop-Graf, who would become a lifelong friend of Angelika Probst, described their time together in Gestapo prison. “We two sisters – I who still had hope, and she who mourned her brother but shared my hope – you can only imagine, that was a relationship that lasted a lifetime. I dare say that Angelika never healed from the death of the brother she loved so dearly.”[9]

Alexander Schmorell. These are among the most moving of all the remembrances of those who resisted Hitler under the symbol of the White Rose.

Lilo Ramdohr (excerpt from White Rose History, Volume II):

[The air raid] had been a false alarm, so she prepared tea. But Alex grew impatient. They expected the Gestapo to show up on Lilo’s doorstep any moment. Since I cannot find Willi, he said, I will have to flee by myself. Lilo did not try to dissuade him. He would certainly be discovered if he stayed in her apartment much longer.

She regretted she had so little food. She’d hovered over him like a mother hen the last three days, barely allowing him out of her sight. Which meant she had not been grocery shopping since the arrests. She scraped together what she could, but in her mind, it was not nearly enough.

Shortly before daybreak, Lilo went part of the way with Alex. They said their final farewell, knowing but not admitting that they would never see one another again. “If I make it through, my life will change,” Alex said. “If not, then I will rejoice in death, because I know that it does not end.”

A few more steps, then, “I am very happy that everything has happened this way. Something in my life had to change.” Lilo could not make sense of those words then or now, but she could not make herself ask him what he meant.

Instead, she took his hands wordlessly. This was it. He was really leaving. Alex stood with her, hand in hand, silent for an eternity. Then almost as if to himself, “Du, mein bester Freund. You, my best friend.”

Lilo repeated his last words twice in her memoirs. Grammatically, it’s all wrong. Lilo was and is a lovely woman. Alex addressed her in the masculine. In 2002, I asked her about this.

She leaned forward, moved by the memory. “Don’t you understand? He was not talking to me. He was talking to God, his only best friend.” For Alex had lifted his hands, almost as a benediction, a prayer.

With those words, he left. She stood perfectly still so she could hear his footsteps. As they faded away, she felt like she had been struck by lightning. Her lean-to near Chiemsee, Bumpererhof!

“My God, why didn’t I think of that earlier?” she rebuked herself.

She took out running, not caring who may hear her or report her unusual activity. She looked and looked, and could not find Alex. “Angry and deathly sad, I returned to my apartment,” she said. “There was no way to reach Alex now. I could no longer help him.”[10]

Dr. Siegfried Deisinger’s memory of Alexander Schmorell’s execution. From a letter sent to Inge Scholl after the war. Unpublished.

Excerpt from White Rose History, Volume II.

While [Clara Geyer and the Riecks] anxiously waited [the verdict in the third White Rose trial], hoping for an acquittal but ready for anything, the executions of Alexander Schmorell and Kurt Huber were just beginning. Alex went first. But not before spending a few moments with Dr. Deisinger, the attorney who was awed by the young man whose life he had been unable to spare.

“You may be surprised to find me so at peace at this hour,” Alex told Deisinger. “But I can tell you that even were they to tell me that another – say this prison guard here who has been assigned to guard me – if even he were to say that he would die in my stead, I would nevertheless choose to die. I don’t know what else there could be for me to do on this earth were I to be released at this moment.”

Alex made Deisinger promise that when the war ended, if the Allies tried to prosecute Marie Luise for denouncing him, Deisinger must take her case. No harm should come to her. His attorney should make that clear to everyone.

Deisinger joined the others who had gathered to “witness” Alex’s execution on behalf of the State. Even the executioner was surprised when three SS officers appeared around 4:45 pm, bearing special permission to watch the prisoner die.

“I will never forget the conversation among these SS Officers and the magistrates,” said Deisinger. “They discussed when death occurred at a beheading and whether it were possible to make it happen slower or faster if they so desired. It was also noteworthy that the execution was delayed for a while because the three SS Officers and the executioner thought it necessary to discuss the age, set-up, and methodology of the guillotine.”

“These were terrible minutes for me,” he continued, “as well as for those sitting on death row. On the one hand, the idealism and moral greatness of a young person who was ready to die for that idealism in just a few minutes; and on the other hand, the ribald lust of subhumanity hungry for a glimpse of the death of a defenseless sacrifice.”

But the execution took place despite these morbid contemplations. Forty-six seconds after Alex left his cell, eight seconds from the time he was handed over to the executioner named Reichhart. “There are no incidents or other events of any significance to report,” Mr. Tiefenbacher would report to Berlin two days later.

Alex’s clear and loud “Yes” – when asked if he were the prisoner Alexander Schmorell – remained inside Dr. Deisinger’s head for a very long while. That room was so oppressive. His young client, so terribly free. “I left that room shaken to the very core of my being,” said Dr. Deisinger.

When Deisinger told the Schmorell parents about Alex’s execution, they were shocked. No one had advised them that July 13 was execution date. They, as well as Klara Huber, were caught completely off guard.[11]

A little over a month later, Lillo Holl traveled to Munich to mourn at Alex’s grave. Lilli was a young woman whose contribution to White Rose work has been overlooked. She was present at the Ostbahnhof when the student soldiers left for the Russian Front in July 1942. Apparently, she had grown close to Alex after meeting him at the Scholls’ residence. For Lilli Holl was a good friend of Otl Aicher.

After going to Perlacher cemetery, Lilli made her way to the Schmorells’ home. She gave Alex’s parents copies of the photographs she had taken on July 23, 1942, photos which seem not to have survived. Most of all, Lilli sat with Hugo and Elisabeth Schmorell, grieving with them over the death of a son they loved so dearly.[12]

Professor Kurt Huber. Siegfried Deisinger also described Kurt Huber’s execution in his postwar letter to Inge Scholl.

Excerpt from White Rose History, Volume II.

When I entered the prison hallway, I passed Professor Huber’s cell. He was the next sacrifice who was to be presented to that Moloch Hitler. And he was also being led from his cell, as he called out a final farewell to the prison chaplain, an ‘I’ll see you in a better world.’

Mr. Tiefenbacher may have reported that nothing of significance happened, but the Catholic prison chaplain told a different story. When the executioner’s assistant asked Huber if he were the prisoner Kurt Huber, he said yes, and “Shame on you!” Deisinger recalled what happened next.

The chaplain stood at a window in the hallway from which you could see over to the execution room. Shortly thereafter, a hollow thud. We knew that Professor Huber had also sacrificed his life for freedom. The chaplain made the sign of the cross in the direction of that room of death.

We silently shook hands and I left that terrible house of horror, left to tell the parents of Alexander Schmorell about the death of their son.

Wolf Jaeger recalled that his revered professor had written a short poem not long before his execution, a poem that Wolf would treasure until the end of his days.

When I ask myself: What have I left behind?
Rough drafts, sketches only – papery masses,
hardly a clean copy. The clean copy of my life
is only my death. And it was not in vain.

“His death remained for us a legacy,” Wolf said.[13]

Willi Graf. When Willi Graf’s father read about the executions of Hans and Sophie Scholl, he reportedly said, “I hope Willi wasn’t one of them.” He would find out soon enough that his son had been arrested.

About a month before Willi Graf’s execution, Günther Schmich paid Willi Graf a surprise visit in prison. Günther was what the NSDAP called a “half-Jew,” meaning only one parent was Jewish. Friends in that tight-knit circle had long protected Günther, worried that he would lose the protection of the cassock he normally wore as a Catholic priest.

Although not wearing his cassock the day he visited Willi Graf, Günther got a tour of the prison from the chaplain, on the pretext of showing a fellow priest around. When they reached Willi’s cell, the chaplain left the two friends alone.

(Excerpt from White Rose History, Volume II.) “Till the day I die,” Günther said after the war, “I will remember his unbroken eyes, pure as ever, bright, not a sign of fanaticism. For months, he had been ready for the execution of his sentence. We knew that we would never see one another again in this life.”

“I gave him everything I had on me,” he continued, “a few sugar cubes. I still carry the first surprised words he spoke with me, and his joy, Günther!, and the light in his eyes.”

Before Günther left, Willi told him, “It was right, what I and my friends have done.” This certainly was not escapism, said Günther.

(Excerpt continued, October 12, 1943.) While Willi readied himself for the executioner, the Gestapo called Warden Schneider. Under no circumstances was Willi Graf’s corpse to be released to his family. The farewell letter was to be handed over to the Gestapo. Someone from State Police Headquarters would come by the prison to take possession of Mr. Graf’s body. Repeat. Under no circumstances was Willi Graf’s corpse to be released to his family. And Mr. Schneider should ensure that the public did not learn about the execution.

At 5 pm sharp on Tuesday October 12, Willi Graf was summoned. Mr. Kummer reported that it took one minute and eleven seconds from the time he left his cell, and about eleven seconds from the time he was handed over to the executioner until the blade fell. There were no incidents of other events of any significance to report. Mr. Tiefenbacher certified the report for the People’s Court. Eduard Rauscher completed the death certificate, noting time of death as 5:03 pm. Another clerk made an entry in the file.

The District Attorney dashed off another telegram to the People’s Court, attention Dr. Geissler, at 5:55 pm. “To 6J 24/43” – again, no name – “matter was taken care of today without incident.”

No incident as defined by National Socialist statute, that is. Chaplain Brinkmann remembered how acquaintance with Willi affected him, how he “persisted in his stubbornness” when threatened with unspeakable horror if he did not denounce his friends.

“He was like a candle, so upright, so straight, so self-deprecating in holy idealism,” the chaplain said. “He remained brave, loyal, and strong until he went home to be with God, the one who honored this young person with holy dignity. One could see this in his countenance.”[14]

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Somewhere in Stuttgart or Ulm, Swabian housewives juiced apples, pouring the priceless liquid into barrels to become Moscht, hard cider. Somewhere they sliced cabbage into stinking vats that would yield sauerkraut. And they shivered at the cold and fog that autumn brought, at mist that rose from the waters of the Danube.

Somewhere in Munich, crimson geraniums were brought in from window boxes, carefully pruned and stored in basements till spring. Somewhere diligent bakers mixed the first batch of dough that would become Lebkuchen, Christmas honey cakes, and placed the bowl in a chilly cellar. L’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, some things never changed.

And that day, a strong bright glow was extinguished, the last of the White Rose torches. The swastika had silenced their voices, had obliterated their names.

Or so the Nazis thought…[15]

We remember. And as we remember, we honor their lives and their work.

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© 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. White Rose Histories excerpts © 2002, 2003, 2007.

Coming on Tuesday, May 28, 2024: Death and the White Rose: Reflections. Their thoughts on war, on peace, on justice.

Footnotes and bibliography are available to paid subscribers only.