Holiday “cheer” – Sophie Scholl and my sister Janet

White Rose resistance: Friends who decided they did not have to wait to BE GOOD to DO GOOD. What Sophie Scholl had in common with my sister Janet.

Janet Kaye Heap, 1976. Galveston. © 1976 John Heap.

December 12, 1977, while a student in Augsburg, Germany, I received a telegram from friends in Munich. As background to “telegram” and “1977” in the same sentence –

Augsburg was a relatively new university. It had been a Hochschule, granting degrees. But it first became a full-fledged university, granting PhDs, in 1970. And 1977 was the first year it qualified for, and accepted, Fulbright-Hays fellowship recipients.

They hadn’t known what to do with the two of us Fulbrighters. There was no structure in place – we had to invent the wheel regarding banking, grocery shopping, registration (!). It was a combination of first year for Fulbright, plus new and untested infrastructure for all students who did not come from Augsburg itself.

Augsburg successfully tested the prefab modular dormitories that had debuted with the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The dorms were in fact quite nice. But they took the German philosophy of “we provide only the basics” to an extreme. Furnishing that dorm room required expenditures for things students later would have had provided.

Worst of all: There was no telephone. 1977, so no cell phone. But also no phones in a room. Not even an outlet where a phone could be plugged in. There was one community phone – per floor! Granted, it was a great way to get to know your neighbors. Completely unreliable, however. I didn’t give out that phone number for that reason.

Therefore, telegram in 1977. It merely stated, “Call home.”

I walked the 1+ mile to the shopping district, everything inside me on high alert. I had just been with those friends the day before. I could not imagine what would provoke a telegram less than 24 hours later, much less why my parents would have contacted them. I remember walking past one particular farmhouse – the university was established in what was then a rural part of Augsburg – and thinking to myself, “It’s Monday. The farmer’s wife did her laundry, even though it’s below freezing.” Those flapping white sheets pointed to the very normalcy of the day.

Nothing was normal once I reached the post office and placed that collect call to my parents. Janet? Suicide? That didn’t make sense. My younger sister was drop-dead gorgeous, an accomplished singer and pianist, smart. She had been clean and sober for a year. She had a great job. We learned later she was less than a couple days away from a promotion. The turbulence of her teen years seemed to be fading into the distant past.

But yes. Suicide. One guy too many dumped her. She thought her boss was getting ready to fire her. And she had started drinking again. Life, according to Janet, was hopeless. She found a pistol, pointed it at her heart, and fired. Her best friend Kathy found her body.

I remember the laundry flapping in the breeze on the way to the post office. I remember nothing of the return walk. Except that I could not stop crying. “Crying” isn’t even the right word. Great sobs, my body shaking.

How was this possible? Her letters over the previous few months were funny, full of life. She had a crush on one of my close high school friends, who didn’t seem to know she existed. She was thinking long-term again. Her turns of phrase were old Janet, before the drugs, before her life crumbled. Sarcasm, irony, tenderness, worried about her big sister all by herself in Germany. Where had she found this guy who dumped her? What? Why?

Faculty and students of Augsburg wrapped me up in the warmest embrace of kindness and caring. As noted, dorm infrastructure was rudimentary. An outer sidewalk ended at the door to my room, so I’d gotten to know a great many people who thought that my door was an entrance to the dormitory. Initially an annoyance, that misplaced sidewalk accounted for many friendships. Even once people knew it wasn’t an entrance, they’d knock and stop for a chat.

As word spread about my sister’s suicide, the knocks became more frequent, friends stopping in to sit and grieve. That tiny efficiency apartment burst at the seams with genuine love and compassion.

Therefore when working through primary source materials associated with the group of friends we call White Rose, I was perhaps hypersensitive when the subject of suicide appeared. It’s surprising how often that discussion shows up and in which contexts.

Falk Harnack’s father suicided in 1914, shortly after Falk’s first birthday. Christoph Probst’s father suicided on May 30, 1936. The headmaster and teacher at Christl’s boarding school expected him to keep a stiff upper lip and behave as if nothing had happened.

August 1940, Hans Scholl condemned a French-Jewish psychiatrist for suiciding instead of resisting. Not only did he get the gender of that psychiatrist wrong – Sophie Morgenstern was a woman – but Hans’ short rant demonstrated his inability to understand what life was like for Jewish Europeans in 1940.

August 17, 1942, Hans Scholl penned a screed entitled On Melancholy, where he posited that suicide is not driven by melancholy. In Hans Scholl’s typical overblown style, he stated that those who suicide have been deserted by melancholy, because melancholy would prevent suicide. – This document prompted me to ask White Rose families whether Hans were on drugs. The “essay” sounds very much like 1960s-era drug-induced literature. Three different people said yes. Apparently Kurt Huber had been deeply concerned about Hans’ drug use.

Eugen Grimminger reported that when he was arrested in March 1943, Gestapo agents told him he may as well suicide, because the evidence was so strong against him. Susanne Hirzel wrote that during her six months in prison (end of 1943), three different women attempted suicide. The prison warden tasked an imprisoned psychic to let her know in advance when prisoners were thinking about suicide.

Otl Aicher’s memoirs contained the shocking assertion that Ludwig Wittgenstein, Georg Trakl, and Theodor Haecker were depressive-suicidal. Pages 28-34 of innenseiten des kriegs, Aicher discussed the relationship between these three men and the impact they had on one another, in itself worthy of a dissertation.

But nothing could have prepared me for Otl Aicher’s narration of the September 1941* conversation he had with Sophie Scholl. “Sophie asked me whether I had ever considered suicide. Many times, I replied.”

Otl then unwraps this conversation. He told Sophie that his suicidal thoughts had always come when he felt most like an outsider. Some days he simply felt he couldn’t go on, being a loner. Yet neither could he bring himself to conform, to join Hitler Youth, to take the easy way out. Those were the days he thought about ending his life.

Sophie’s depression was less driven by external forces like Hitler Youth or feeling friendless. Somewhere along the way, she had read one page too many of Augustine and internalized the worm-like nature of wretched humans before an all-powerful God who would damn all but the most righteous to hell. Every “evil” thought, every shallow action, dug her grave that much deeper.

Outwardly, Sophie’s life appeared to be perfect. On the inside, she was miserable. She thought herself unworthy of love – love of family, love from a man, God’s love (which she passionately sought). Her correspondence with Fritz Hartnagel from those days is gut-wrenching. She hated herself so much that she could not accept even “Ich mag dich” (I like you) from him, much less any declaration of love. It’s painful to read. It goes almost without saying that Sophie was incapable of loving herself, seeing only her flaws, never her strengths.

Worse yet, Sophie thought God hated her so much that she could not pray. And when she tried to pray, it was formal (per Sie), not informal (per Du) as Germans pray.

There had been signs of this depression a good two years prior. In May 1939, Fritz Hartnagel wrote his beloved and asked what was wrong. He said she made a “desperate impression” on him, as if she were suppressing something, hiding something from him. Fritz told her that she should not keep everything inside her, that only tragedy could come of so doing. “Too many people have perished for that reason.”

Sophie’s diary entries from late 1941, early 1942 also hint at depression so deep, it threatened to undo her. The dribbles that Inge Scholl allowed to be published are dark enough. It makes me wonder what is in the censored parts.

Wilhelm Geyer likewise described the utter darkness of Sophie Scholl’s last days. On February 16, 1943, not long after Hans Scholl had been warned that they had been betrayed and should be careful, Hans and Sophie prepared to leave for dinner at the Bodega. When the doorbell rang, they worried it could be the Gestapo.

Geyer, their would-be visitor, persisted in knocking and ringing that doorbell until they finally opened the door. He was surprised to see the siblings standing in a darkened hallway. Sophie sounded relieved when she stated, “Oh, it’s just Mr. Geyer!” She explained they were leaving for dinner and asked him to join them.

After dining, Sophie borrowed money from Geyer to purchase a ticket to a concert of the Prague Quartet. She and Traute had made plans for the evening. Hans stayed behind to talk with Geyer about his vision for Germany “after the war,” which included starting a free press and making Wilhelm Geyer president of the academy. Geyer didn’t take Hans seriously. He knew him too well.

Concert ended, Sophie made her way to the studio on Leopoldstraβe. Geyer had already retrieved coal or wood from the cellar, so the studio was nice and warm. He made tea for his young friend and sketched Sophie while the two of them talked.

Sophie told Geyer about the warning they had received, that they knew the Gestapo was on their trail. She told her mentor that she and Hans had considered fleeing, but worried about what would become of their friends and family if they did.

And then, words that Wilhelm Geyer could never forget, words that haunted him for the rest of his life. “So many people are dying for this regime,” Sophie said, “it is high time that someone died in opposition to it.” She held out little hope for the future and could hardly bring herself to think about what would happen “after the war.” If they were to be arrested, she maintained, it should be publicly, not secretly, so the whole world would know about it.

Sophie did not tell him details about their leaflet operation, planned for February 18. But Geyer was not surprised when he later learned of their arrests.

There is a not-insignificant debate among White Rose scholars as to whether the final leaflet operation was “suicide by cop.” I personally tend to fall in the “no, it was not” camp, with the caveat that Sophie’s mindset was in fact suicidal. As I learned with my sister’s death, there is rarely logic or rational thought involved in one’s actions leading up to the final, irreversible moment. I don’t believe it was suicide by cop, but I do believe Sophie felt hopeless and therefore did not act rationally.

Because there’s no doubt that pushing the leaflets over the balustrade and standing there, waiting for Jakob Schmid to huff and puff up three flights of very long stairs was a final, irreversible moment. At least Sophie took a few seconds to dump evidence that incriminated others, something her brother did not do.

When I wrote these things for the first time in 2002-2003 in my White Rose History, Volume I and Volume II, the pushback was not only astonishing, but hostile – and immediate. People defamed me in the German press, and editors of those newspapers refused to print letters from other scholars supporting the accuracy of my work. One of those who made himself an “enemy” of me personally and our work in general emailed me that I had no right to write anything negative about Scholls. That they were the closest thing Germany had to heroes, and that therefore they were above reproach. One should simply not write negative things about heroes. (Oddly, that man claimed to be a devout Christian. His copy of the Bible must have excised a whole lot of negative things penned about biblical heroes.)

If we are ever to understand what drives regular, ordinary people to resist an evil as great as National Socialism, if we would like to wrap our heads around the reasons non-Jewish students would risk their lives to protest the genocide of European Jews, if we want to comprehend the pivot points in moving from compliance and complacency to outright conflict with The Powers That Be – if we are serious about our scholarship regarding German resistance during the Shoah, we may not pretend that these students and the adults who mentored them were born holy or lived on pedestals.

They were not raising sand or protesting to hear the sound of their own voices. They had grown into these convictions, step by step, book by book, conversation by conversation. Every injustice they personally witnessed reinforced their resolve.

And most importantly, they were all – to a person – flawed, hurting souls who did the best they could in the darkest of eras. They did not wait until they were “good” to do good. They ignored depression, anxiety, Otherness, cowardice, insecurity, fear, and much more, determined to do what was right and just and moral.

If anyone reading this post suffers from depression, if you have had or are having suicidal thoughts, if you think your life is not worth living:

• Reach out for help. In the USA, call 988. Veterans can text 838255 for help. The old phone number (1–800–273–8255) still works as well. CrisisTextline.org also is available 24/7. US: Text 741741. CA: Text 686868. UK: Text 85258. Ireland: 50808. Trained counselors are on standby.

• This Wikipedia page collects all known suicide prevention hotlines – phone, text, and Web chats – no matter where you are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

• Know your life has immense value. Sophie Scholl and her friends of the White Rose may not have overthrown the cruel regime of their day, but they made a lasting impact on history. Along with her imperfect friends, they took on Goliath. Not all of them lived to see the knockout punch, but they encourage us to pick up the first stone and put it in the slingshot.

If you have a loved one who is contemplating suicide, who jokes about suicide, who has attempted suicide: Take them seriously. They are not being selfish. They are not wisecracking. They are not being melodramatic. They are not weak. They are not ‘just joking around like kids do.’ Take. Them. Seriously. Go with them to get help. Especially at this time of the year. Any time, but especially over the holidays.

If you are teaching White Rose resistance, please:

• Be honest! Avoid making it a sugary, too-sweet story, even if you are teaching high school students.

• Listen to your students. How do they react to Sophie’s suicidal ideations? If they think it’s cool, take them seriously and get help! – You will likely be surprised at how “grown up” your high school and undergraduate students are when discussing this topic.

• Allow (encourage!) your class to “see themselves” in the lives of one or more of the friends. Are they like Alexander Schmorell, who as a half-Russian, felt like an unwanted Other? Do their parents discourage their intellectual pursuits as Otl Aicher’s did, making him uncomfortable in his own skin? Do they have nightmares related to unspoken traumas, as Willi Graf did, that make them occasionally act irrationally? Are they torn between feuding parents (as almost all of these students were)? Is their life “perfect” on the outside, concealing dysfunctional families (all of the White Rose friends!)? – This story is not meant to be a therapy session, but it tends to have that effect. Let it.

If talking about Sophie Scholl’s suicidal ideation can save one life, can pull one young person off the precipice, it will have been worth the pain associated with writing this post. Because believe me – if you have ever lost a loved one to suicide, you do not wish that on your worst enemy. It’s a grief that never fully heals.

May the broken lives of Sophie Magdalena Scholl and Janet Kaye Heap somehow be for a blessing, for healing.

© 2023 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote.

For deeper discussion of this topic with detailed footnotes and full attribution, see the White Rose histories, © 2002, 2003.

*This is the date arrived at when placing this conversation in our Access database. Otl Aicher did not date it in his memoirs, but Sophie mentioned a long, heartfelt discussion with Otl when she was home between Krauchenwies and Blumberg. That would have been September 1941. Subsequent “long discussions” with Otl – while she was in Blumberg – do not mesh with her letters and diary entries. Those revolved around politics and resistance. – DEH.

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