History of the History of the White Rose: 1980-1989
The 1980s brought us some of the best - and the worst - publications related to White Rose resistance. The worst promoted false legends. The best preserved memories of heroes.
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1980-1989:
The 1980s opened with one of the worst “biographies” to enter White Rose historiography: Hermann Vinke’s Das kurze Leben der Sophie Scholl [The Short Life of Sophie Scholl]. Vinke relied – according to his own preface – almost solely on Inge Scholl’s self-serving memories. In true Scholl fashion, this little book is a mixture of pure fiction with just enough fact to make it tempting to White Rose aficionados.
Inge’s postwar religiosity and rose-colored recollections of a dysfunctional family only intensified the pervasiveness of the Scholl mythology. When historians uncritically quote Vinke’s book, I immediately discount their scholarship. Cites of Vinke’s work indicate lack of historical process. For a more complete account, see our book reviews page.
Two years later, the first major White Rose movie debuted. Written by Mario Krebs, directed by Michael Verhoeven, Die Weiβe Rose [The White Rose] purported to tell their true story. The first time I saw this movie, I was a White Rose novice, not yet having completed our Microsoft Access database. Even without benefit of the revelations that database would bring, I understood that the movie was wrong on so many levels. When they are writing their graffiti with chalk? No! When they are stealing stationery? No! Alexander Schmorell and Sophie Scholl bicycling together? No!
As with other poor scholarship, the perpetuation of the legend hurt individuals and families who had indeed sacrificed everything during the war. By way of one small example: The original script correctly portrayed Alexander Schmorell and Lilo Ramdohr bicycling through the streets of Munich. Lilo kept a copy of that script, one of her prized possessions. She and Alex had been dining at the Osteria when Hitler and his entourage entered. Alex loudly whispered to her, It smells like sulphur in here.
The two friends left the Osteria. As they bicycled towards Lilo’s apartment, bombs started to fall. Initially they tried to outrun the bombers, with Alex shouting that he wished the RAF knew that Hitler was in the Osteria. Lilo and Alex eventually ducked into a bomb shelter.
When the movie was released, suddenly Sophie replaced Lilo in all the scenes – including that one – where Lilo should have been. According to Lilo, Verhoeven explained that Inge Scholl had threatened to withdraw permission to use “her” photographs in the movie. Verhoeven had staged some scenes to correspond precisely to the pictures “she” had copyrighted – the irony being that many of the photographs were the intellectual property of Jürgen Wittenstein. Verhoeven therefore complied with Inge Scholl’s demand.
I would have granted Verhoeven the same pass as Petry, since this movie too came out before the Gestapo interrogation transcripts were re-discovered. Once I understood that Verhoeven and Krebs had done more homework than most writers in the 1980s, and had then abandoned their scholarship simply because Inge told them to do so, I could not. As with Wittenstein and Inge Scholl’s words, Verhoeven’s movie solidified the mythology that was growing up around Hans and Sophie Scholl. Unlike Inge Scholl and Wittenstein, Verhoeven and Krebs did not need the mythology to cover up a Nazi past. Their acquiescence to the mythology therefore makes less sense.
Also in 1982, Percy Adlon released The Last Five Days, based on Else Gebel’s account of Sophie Scholl’s imprisonment and execution. We would later learn from Susanne Hirzel’s memoirs that she too was incarcerated with Else Gebel. It’s far more likely that Gebel was a Gestapo mole. Everything she said appears to have made its way into Gestapo files. One thing is for certain: Else Gebel’s self-serving postwar account of Sophie Scholl’s last five days do not hold up to any sort of scrutiny. The tiniest bit of historical process exposes her as a fraud.
These three terrible offerings are followed by a series of refreshingly positive works.
Dr. Hermann Krings, close friend of Willi Graf, delivered the second of two speeches honoring his friend in 1983. Entitled “Das Zeichen der Weiβen Rose: Zur politischen Bedeutung des studentischen Widerstands” [“The Sign of the White Rose: On the Political Significance of Student Resistance”], Krings had devoted his life as philosophy professor to the study of freedom as the basis for human reason. This 1983 essay should be read by all thinking White Rose scholars. Krings steadfastly refused to accept a sentimental version of their work, choosing instead to evaluate what they did, what they accomplished, who they were, in that light.
As Micha Probst would later stress, Krings underscored that the White Rose was not defined by a political ideology, but rather by the desire for freedom, “a name whereby mankind bestows dignity on itself.” He disliked the notion that the White Rose was an example to be followed, unimpressed by senseless martyrdom. Rather, they were “a sign of hope.” Krings continued, “It reveals that when we have done all that is humanly possible, there is still something else we can do – something that cannot be touched and is eternal.”
We posted a tribute to Prof. Dr. Krings upon his death in 2004. I hope you gain an appreciation for what his friendship meant to Willi Graf.
In 1984, Anneliese Knoop-Graf partnered with Hildegard Vieregg and Jos Schätzler to publish Willi Grafs Jugend im Nationalsozialismus: Im Spiegel von Briefen [Willi Graf’s Youth in National Socialism: In the Light of (His) Letters]. This excellent book did not enjoy the wide circulation it deserved. I have it only because Anneliese Knoop-Graf gave me one of her spare copies.
The sweet, funny letters contained in this volume reveal Willi Graf’s personality as few do. Before he witnessed the inhumanity of fellow Germans on the Russian front, before the nightmares, before he saw Katja’s Russian village burning – before the pain that led to his involvement with the White Rose circle, Willi was a teenager. A serious teenager, to be sure. One who read Johannes Maaβen, who worried that they could lose freedoms of speech and religion, who loved his parents while hating their politics.
But these letters introduce us to the Willi who sat in a tree eating cherries, who wished he had two stomachs like a cow so he could eat more cherries, who chewed on cherry pits so he could think better.
More like this!
The very next year, 1985, two more top-notch publications: Otl Aicher’s innenseiten des kriegs [Inside the War, alt. The Insides of War] and an essay by Dr. Inge Jens.
Otl’s little book made me wish he had never been tethered to the Scholl machine. Published six years before his death in 1991 (struck by a motorbike while mowing the lawn), Aicher wrote frankly about his own life during the war and the difficulties he knew as an outsider. More importantly, he shone an almost-bright light on the Scholls’ dysfunctional family life.
It’s from Otl that we learn the most about Inge Scholl’s life and work as a Ringführerin in Ulm’s BDM/Jungmädel organization, teaching antisemitism and Nazi racial ideology. It is Otl who tells us of Sophie Scholl’s suicidal ideations and her deep unhappiness at home – although he stopped short of telling us the cause of her depression and alienation, and merely stated that they talked about it. Otl – not Inge – spoke of Hans Scholl’s shallowness and superficial intellectual wannabe-ness. And of Hans’ infatuation with German military life, even to the end.
Otl also fully discredited Inge’s insistence that Hans and Sophie were driven by religious motivations. He recounted conversations he’d had with Sophie where they decried the apathy if not outright hostility of organized religion to courage and truth.
If only he had lived to write a more comprehensive biography of the Scholl family!
Also in 1985, Dr. Inge Jens composed a lecture on the importance of friendship in the White Rose: “Die ‘Weiβe Rose’: Biographische und kulterelle Traditionen.” Although she delivered the speech, the essay was intended for use as foreword to her edition of Hans and Sophie Scholl’s letters. Inge Scholl forbade use of the essay. As far as I know, it was never published.
A welcome trend started in 1986, that of non-Scholl friends and family documenting their memories of White Rose work and the larger circle.
The first of these covered the letters and diary entries of Gerhard Feuerle, a young artist who considered Wilhelm Geyer his mentor. Lothar Drude edited the 1986 collection, and the Geyer family gave me a copy. Gerhard Feuerle was an ever-present, if invisible, attendee at almost every White Rose function from January 1943 through the Haecker reading two weeks before the arrests, as well as his visits (with Wilhelm Geyer) to the Scholls in their rented rooms. He had a schoolboy crush on Sophie Scholl. We see a side of Sophie that Inge Scholl kept well-hidden: The young woman who could not handle the attention of a would-be suitor, and who treated him pretty much like dirt to keep him away. In other words, a side of Sophie that most young women can identify with.
Gisela Schertling betrayed Feuerle in her interrogations, causing him to be arrested. The Gestapo suspected him of creating the tin templates used in the graffiti campaign (Alex was the real culprit, which they never learned). Although they had to let him go for lack of evidence, they continued to investigate him.
Drude’s little book - Der aufgeschobene Tod des Gerhard F.: Ein Bericht nach Originaldokumenten aus den Jahren 1943-1945 [The Postponed Death of Gerhard F.: A Report Based on Original Documents from 1943-1945] – should be on all reading lists for those who wish to understand the dynamics of White Rose friendships from an outsider’s point of view.
Clara Huber also published a small book about her husband, Prof. Kurt Huber, the same year. If Kurt Huber is the primary focus of a scholar’s research, this publication may not be overlooked. However, she danced around the hard parts of her husband’s life. Research for a Huber biography should focus more on primary sources.
1986 brought us one of the worst books ever published about the White Rose. Not the worst, mind you, but in the top ten. Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn’s Shattering the German Night: The Story of the White Rose should not have been as bad as it is. Unlike previous (and subsequent) historians, Dumbach and Newborn were among the first to extensively interview non-Scholl family and friends. They traveled throughout Germany with tape recorder, talking to the Probsts, the Schmorells, and others.
I’m not sure what happened on their way to the typewriter. I read this book even before I started my database. I didn’t yet have the millions and millions of words that needed organizing. At the time I read Shattering, I was working off memory and my grad school version of 3x5 notecards.
And this book drove me nuts. Dumbach-Newborn used real quotes, but attributed them to wrong time, wrong place. I didn’t understand this almost thirty years ago, and I still do not understand it.
They squandered truly excellent information. I could not use anything in this book when writing our histories, because their credibility was shot. On the bright side, although I resented them for the automatic distrust I had to fight when I asked for interviews from the same people a few years later, all it took to gain trust with Erich Schmorell, Herta Probst, Anneliese Knoop-Graf, and others, was to point out the discrepancies in Shattering.
Please, no more like this! (Although sadly, there would be more to come.) To learn more about the inaccuracies of this book, read the review.
One year later, Heinrich (“Heinz”) Brenner would join those who recorded their recollections of those dark days. In July 1987, he tape-recorded his memories of the duplication and distribution of Bishop Galen’s sermon in opposition to the T-4 euthanasia (eugenics) program. Contrary to legend, neither Hans Scholl nor Franz Josef Müller participated in this endeavor. I remain hopeful that the tape recording has survived in the archives of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Munich). It was not available to the public during our research trips in 1995, 2002, and 2007.
That same year, Inge Jens’ edition of the letters of Hans and Sophie Scholl were published, in the USA entitled At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl. On a personal note, I appreciated Jens’ openness about this edition of letters. Even pre-database, I could sense there were gaping holes in the letters contained in this edition.
When I asked her about those holes in April 1995, she did not grow defensive. Instead, she told me about her frustrations at working with Inge Aicher-Scholl. In contrast to Anneliese Knoop-Graf, who opened up her private archives to Jens, no holds barred, Aicher-Scholl presented Jens with typed excerpts of the letters that she wished to have included in this edition. Read my review of Jens’ edition to learn more about Inge Aicher-Scholl’s censorship.
The last publication in 1987 only indirectly belongs in this White Rose historiography. But its contribution to the literature is significant.
In Gegen den Strom, Albert Riester narrates his autobiography as a teenager and young man in Ulm. His life story is the reverse of most in the White Rose circle. Riester started out as a devout anti-Nazi Catholic who witnessed Hans Scholl’s beatings of Catholic boys who refused to join Hitler Youth. Riester clearly delighted in telling those tales. And indeed, it’s an aspect of Hans Scholl’s evolution that is overlooked in favor of halo and pedestal.
Riester eventually became a V-Mann or informant for the Gestapo. This was about the same time the Scholls were in Munich, beginning their resistance activities. It seems that Riester’s double-agent status was known, even if not well-known. Yet both Hans Scholl and Hans Hirzel maintained their friendship with him. He repaid them with denunciation.
I want to engage with Riester’s story in greater detail in the next year or two. His prose is difficult to read. Not dense, not philosophical. Just disjointed and incoherent. But it should not be ignored. It’s worth the struggle.
1988 brought us three small books, every one of them invaluable.
In the first, Marianne Bock and Wolfgang Lipp tell the history of the Martin-Luther-Kirche in Ulm. Pfarrer Ernst Hirzel was the first pastor at that church when it opened in 1928. This little book explains why its architecture was significant. Since Bock and Lipp also gave a short lesson in comparative architecture in this book, it provides insight into the places of worship – both Catholic and Lutheran – in Ulm. Mind you, the Ulmer friends in the White Rose circle rarely attended church. But their families’ choices for catechism, Communion, and special events made a difference in their attitudes. Bock and Lipp help us understand why.
The second book is a must-have reference resource for anyone writing about the White Rose friends from Ulm. Dr. Silvester Lechner is Director of the DZOK (Dokumentationszentrum Oberer Kuhberg) in Ulm, a research facility dedicated to understanding the evolution of concentration camps in Germany and Eastern Europe. Oberer Kuhberg in Ulm was site of one of the earliest concentration camps.
The DZOK published a book he edited entitled Die NS-Zeit in der Region Ulm/Neu-Ulm [The Nazi Era in the Ulm/New Ulm Region]. In addition to a chapter dedicated to the seven friends from Ulm who were associated with White Rose resistance, Lechner and his staff compiled exhaustive information about the NSDAP in Ulm. From an organizational chart for Hitler Youth, to pictures of uniforms for all branches of Hitler Youth, to a who’s who of Ulmer Nazis, to miscellaneous newspaper articles about issues relevant to anyone studying that era – it is amazing what all Lechner was able to cram into this compact book.
I only wish that this reference had been updated since 1988. Like Roget's Thesaurus or the Shell Reiseatlas, it is a source that belongs next to the keyboard or on an open Google Chrome tab of every writer involved with White Rose research.
The third and final 1988 publication is one of my favorites. Clara Geyer, wife of the famed and banned artist Wilhelm Geyer, wrote a short biography of her husband for the Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte, Band 7. When she sent me a copy of this article – entitled “Wie Wilhelm Geyer die Folgen der Studentenrevolte der Geschwister Scholl auf wunderbare Weise überstanden hat” [How Wilhelm Geyer Miraculously Survived the Consequences of the Student Revolt Led by the Scholl Siblings] – I was skeptical.
First, the Yearbook is an annual publication of the diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. The Catholic Church has a poor track record when it comes to publications about the White Rose, as most official Catholic authors try to force all White Rose activity into the mold of Catholic theology. And frankly, that does not work. [I stress official, because there are plenty of good, honest Catholic historians.]
Second, the usage of “miraculous” in her title. Again, in keeping with Inge Scholl’s postwar conversion to a strict form of Catholicism, the Scholl mythology attributes too much plain old human courage to “miracles” and not enough to backbone.
Third, when I read the article and it made me cry, I just knew it had to be fake.
Then we met the Geyer family, including Clara Geyer. Despite having already met Erich and Hertha Schmorell (who had in turn recommended we talk to the Geyers), we were unprepared for the anger and hurt left over from Inge’s exclusion of Wilhelm Geyer from the White Rose story. He called her and Otl Aicher out on financial irregularities related to their Hochschule. That was all it took for him to be excised, despite his critical, vital role for the White Rose students.
Where the Schmorells invited us to share white asparagus and wine, the Geyers included us in their family tradition that dates back to 1940. Every Thursday at 2 pm, the entire family (or all who can) assembles for coffee, cake, and conversation. Since 1940.
Over four weeks of coffee and cake, the Geyers threw open their private archives. Every word in Clara Geyer’s biography of Wilhelm has basis in fact. Every letter is real. Every memory documented.
To learn more, read the review.
The last two publications from the 1980s are neither bad nor exceptional; they’ve merely become outdated.
Benigna Schönhagen’s “‘Wenn keiner etwas tut, dann ändert sich nie etwas.’: Die Weiβe Rose und Stuttgart.” [“’If no one does anything, nothing will change’: The White Rose and Stuttgart”] from 1989 included an interview with Jürgen Wittenstein. Except for this interview, Wittenstein was relatively silent in the 1980s. However, he used Schönhagen to float some ideas about his additional involvement with White Rose resistance, things he had never mentioned before. This is his first mention (as far as I have found) about his alleged participation in the 1943 graffiti campaigns in Munich. His “memory” wasn’t very good at this point, and he got enough facts wrong to make it clear that he was not involved. Our fellow researcher, Dr. Armin Ziegler, apparently knew Benigna Schönhagen and spoke highly of her.
Dr. Schönhagen was a (younger) colleague of Dr. Inge Jens in Tübingen. She worked primarily in the field of Jewish history during the Third Reich, focusing especially on Augsburg.
Also in 1989, Dr. Hinrich Siefken published the first of many works about Theodor Haecker. Entitled simply Theodor Haecker: 1879-1945, Siefken wrote sparingly about Haecker’s influence on the students in the White Rose circle. It’s worth mentioning here that the majority of the group found Haecker way too boring, way too religious, and especially way too Catholic. Haecker began as a Protestant with well-known biographies of Kierkegaard, along with analyses of Kierkegaard’s works.
Somehow Haecker’s work regarding Kierkegaard’s theology moved to considerations of the works of Cardinal Newman. Haecker then converted to Catholicism and became an ardent, almost fanatical adherent of that faith.
My problem with Siefken’s Haecker books, including this one: His overstates the importance of Theodor Haecker to the entire White Rose group. Inge Scholl, who also converted to Catholicism when she married Otl Aicher (who, ironically was less “devout” than she), encouraged this notion, to the detriment of a better understanding of the role religion played – and did not play – among the friends.
Siefken’s 1989 work would be superseded by his 1991 publications about Theodor Haecker.
The 1980s ended on a very high note. After the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, a German historian named Christiane Moll was working in the “national archives” in former East Berlin. She re-found the Protokolle from the White Rose Gestapo interrogations and trial transcripts buried in that dark, unwelcoming space (we were there in 1995, when the documents were held in the same place).
[I say re-found, because the log-in sheet we saw in April 1995 included the signatures of Robert and Inge Scholl from the 1960s; it also included proof that Susanne Hirzel and her brother Hans had only recently viewed those documents, critical, since shortly thereafter, the Hirzels “blocked” access to their files. When we returned in 2002, that log-in sheet was missing.]
These would be the prosecutors’ files, not the files of the Gestapo agents in Munich and Stuttgart. The latter two still remain unfound.
From Moll’s discovery on, White Rose research changed. For good.
If you are curious about supporting documents for any of these Substack posts, check out our White Rose Histories (Volume I, 1/1933-4/30/1942, and Volume 2, 5/1/1942-10/12/1943), along with primary source materials. As always, if you have questions or private comments, please contact us. If you find errors, or if we missed a publication, please contact us, or post a comment below.
Next post: History of the History of the White Rose (part 2, 1990-1995).
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