Ken Burns, Sam Waterston, and the White Rose
White Rose leaflets, for which they gave their lives!, came from the depths of anguish and sorrow over injustice. You’re not hearing me. You’re hearing their voice, their witness.
I smiled as I noticed my seat number: O2. Yes, that was what I wanted from this evening, what I expected. A chance to breathe. To cleanse my palate.
I was nearing the finish line for digitization of White Rose History, Volume II. Although it’s nearly been thirty years since I first heard this story, twenty-nine years since I sat across from surviving family members and friends and heard them speak passionately about their loved ones who made the ultimate sacrifice, despite all that time… This story still gets to me.
I wanted that pause.
Ken Burns, Sam Waterston, Martin Sheen, Andrew Dalton, and Jake Borritt were determined that I keep thinking.
The first evening of the Gettysburg Film Festival started as you may expect, if you are at all familiar with the work of Ken Burns. Before Andrew and Jake appeared onstage to kick off the discussion, Jay Ungar and Molly Mason reprised the simple, poignant music from the Burns Civil War documentary series. Jay composed, and together with Molly, performed Ashokan Farewell, that haunting melody, that golden thread, that runs through the Burns documentary like a river. Ah, the O2 I needed!
They continued to trick me into a false comfort zone with fun chit-chat as the conversation got underway. Reminisces, memories from the filming of the Burns documentary series 35+ years ago (it debuted in September 1990 on PBS). Old friends, chewing the fat, “do you remember” anecdotes allowing me to exhale and enjoy the moment. References to Martin Sheen as “the president we all wanted to vote for and couldn’t,” softball questions to Sam Waterston regarding the differences between the Ken Burns production and the earlier Gore Vidal novel turned miniseries, Lincoln (1988, directed by Lamont Johnson).
Then they had the nerve to go and get all serious on me. I had to start taking notes. Because what they were saying was, is relevant to White Rose, to our work. Three things, three intense ideas I could not ignore.
First sign that this was steering me back to White Rose considerations. What about heroes, how do we define heroes, what makes heroes different from us? Innocuous question, no? No! Because exactly that question trips up the majority of White Rose would-be scholars.
In 2002, shortly after publication of White Rose History, Volume I, a branch of the Scholl family went on a very-public rampage against me personally. They could not find fault with my work, so they attacked me. Publicly. In the German press. They enlisted foot soldiers, who repeated their scurrilous accusations in supposedly peer-reviewed academic journals. They called me “Gestapo.” They ridiculed me. They reduced me, and hence my work, to a laughing stock, not to be taken seriously.
Why? Because although I take nothing away from the heroism of Hans and Sophie Scholl, I also dared – DARED – to write them as human beings. Human beings, with flaws, faults, imperfections. With suicidal thoughts. With drug addiction. With a pedophilia conviction. With Hans Scholl’s misogyny towards the “beards” who protected him, as a gay or bisexual man, from being sent to a concentration camp. With a codependent relationship between these siblings – Hans could take his crystal-meth-fueled risks because Sophie was always there to catch him, to cover for him.
Yes! I also wrote about their good side. About Sophie’s ability to spot injustice a mile away. About Hans’ charisma. About Sophie’s ability to make things happen. About their daring to distance themselves from Robert and Inge Scholl’s toadyism to Nazi bigwigs. About Sophie’s kindness. About Hans’ garrulous nature that made him a natural communicator – although he would have been more effective had he had a mentor to channel his natural energies. About Hans’ backbone when stationed in France in 1940, his willingness to stand against Nazi aggression towards the populace.
But I wrote them – and the others! – without haloes, without pedestals to stand on, without spotlight. They are heroes, not despite their imperfections, but because of what they DID with all those imperfections.
When both Dr. Armin Ziegler and I responded to the defamatory stories posted in Hohenloher Tagblatt, the editors refused to publish either Ziegler’s or my words. One man behind the smear campaign wrote me a smarmy email explaining why they could not, would not, retract their libelous words. He said that Hans and Sophie Scholl were ‘untouchable,’ because they had become “symbols” for Germany, symbols of heroism. As such, no one – especially not an American – could say or write anything about them that would disparage that status as heroic symbols. Germany needed those symbols!
So here comes this question to the Burns-Waterston-Sheen trio. And their response triggered my note-taking. I think it was Sam Waterston who made me dig through my purse and find a pen, so I could write this down.
The problem with heroes? We look at them as if they are this much – gesturing with his hand several feet above his head – taller and greater than us. When in reality the gap is very small. And the gap is overcome when we simply decide that we must DO what is right. That is the only difference between us and a hero. These words are not in quotation marks, because they are from scribbles on a sheet of paper in a darkened auditorium. If Gettysburg Film Festival releases video of the evening, I’ll cite properly!
But that is the essence. Yes, yes, yes! It’s making the CHOICE to do what is right, to speak up when hate-filled speech fills the air, to intervene (or at minimum, to call 9-1-1) when we see violence against a defenseless person, to use whatever voice we have to make things right.
That’s all a hero is. That’s why heroes stand head and shoulders above the rest of us, even when they are ‘burdened’ with suicidal ideation or addictions they cannot conquer. Their faults don’t demean them. Their faults exalt the nobility of what they did. Because it’s the whole person. [Frankly, that’s my larger issue with beatification of White Rose students or mentors. Once they’re officially “saints,” it’s harder to talk about the reality of who they were.]
On to the second point. Very simply, it’s the tag line for the Gettysburg Film Festival. There’s only us. This quote, used often by Ken Burns when talking about the Civil War, seems to have ‘originated’ in modern times from Bill Clinton’s acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination in July 1992. [Gift article, no paywall.]
Clinton said, “It is time to heal America. And so we must say to every American: Look beyond the stereotypes that blind us. We need each other. All of us – we need each other. We don’t have a person to waste. And yet for too long politicians have told the most of us that are doing all right that what’s really wrong with America is the rest of us. Them. Them, the minorities. Them, the liberals. Them, the poor. Them, the homeless. Them, the people with disabilities. Them, the gays. We’ve gotten to where we’ve nearly themed ourselves to death. Them and them and them. But this is America. There is no them; there’s only us.” [Emphasis mine.]
For equal time, President Ronald Reagan said something similar. “I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.” [From Web site for Reagan Presidential Library.] [Emphasis mine.]
Although this point did not loom as large as the first (heroes) and the third (direction), it well describes the milieu in which these students grew up. Führer und Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler ensured his grip on power by dividing Germany into “us” and “them,” with anyone in the “them” camp becoming scapegoat for all that was wrong with their society.
As scapegoats were rounded up and annihilated, all who saw themselves as ‘not belonging,’ or in the imagery of Gerhard Feuerle, as ‘having my face stolen,’ were Other. Overnight. Irrevocably. And Others were not tolerated. The enemy list would soon work its way down to the smallest niches of Otherness, since murder of the Chief Others clearly had not solved Germany’s problems.
Something as simple as the sort of music one listened to, or the books one read, or the hairstyle girls chose, or boys’ appearing the least bit effeminate or non-athletic, or admiring art-math-science-music-poetry work “tainted” by the Jewishness of its creator – any of those things turned a person into an Other. Better not be born in Russia or a Slavic country like Alexander Schmorell and Nikolay Daniel Nikolaeff-Hamazaspian, especially if you preferred sculpting to military endeavors. The Otherness of those two? Oh.
I work very hard to keep this Substack non-political. That was the express wish of surviving White Rose family members and friends as they spoke with me. I promised. White Rose resistance represents neither CDU/CSU or SPD, neither Democratic nor Republican, neither Communist nor Federalist ideals. Their sole objective: Justice where there was none.
So hear me when I say that this is not a political statement. We must end the division. There’s only us. There are no “Them.”
Third point. Sam Waterston commented that the best direction he received regarding his Lincoln roles, regarding the immense responsibility of orating President Abraham Lincoln’s words, was this: Words are not proclaimed, but as thought and conceived.
If you’ve heard him deliver President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, you understand what he is saying without my explaining further. If you haven’t, here’s a recent clip from the Gettysburg Film Festival, where Waterston delivers that famed address. There’s a reason that the less-loud version that Waterston gives us is more powerful. It moves me to tears every single time I hear it.
The less-loud version grants us insight into Lincoln’s own struggle as he penned those gut-wrenching words. “As thought and conceived.”
President Lincoln did not write those words to stir people’s emotions; he thought the speech would be quickly forgotten. He did not think it would change the course of the war; and it did not. He did not seek to glorify himself; his words point us to the deaths of too many men, too many soldiers, fighting for a just cause.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. [Emphasis added by me. Text public domain, retrieved from Abraham Lincoln Online.]
The connection between Waterston’s comment and my work is significant. I do not “hear” White Rose voices in a theatrical setting. The leaflets they wrote were not speeches, were not intended as soapboxes, were not grievances to be aired at Festivus (I know, I know).
Those leaflets, for which they gave their lives!, came from the depths of anguish and sorrow over injustice. Whether Willi Graf’s nightmares from bestiality witnessed on the Russian front, or Alexander Schmorell’s Otherness, or Hans and Sophie Scholl’s awareness that personal freedoms had been lost, or Lilo Ramdohr’s innate sense that what National Socialism perpetrated was wrong, or Wilhelm Geyer’s early recognition that National Socialism was evil (1933), or the personal connection to Jewish family that Eugen Grimminger and Christoph Probst knew (wife Jenny and stepmother Elisabeth respectively), or Kurt Huber’s wrestling with matters of theodicy…
Whatever the reason for that anguish and sorrow, White Rose became the outlet for expression.
As Sam Waterston explained the “direction” concept that influenced his portrayals of President Lincoln, I suddenly could step back and “see” my White Rose work over the past thirty years. My work has annoyed German “scholars” – who stick to legend, go figure – because my histories are written as if I am sitting across a kitchen table from you, telling their stories. We’re drinking coffee, or tea, or cocoa, and you’re hearing and seeing these students blow your mind with courage and conviction few of us have.
You’re not hearing me. You’re hearing their voice, their witness. If I’ve done it right (and I hope I have), you’re able to experience their evolution as they grew into an understanding of what justice entailed. You see them being silly college kids, playing skat, skiing, dancing, having fun. While at the same time, contemplating how God – any deity, not a specific God – could permit such evil to happen to good people. And as they’re contemplating, their anger grows until they can no longer hold it in.
If I have done my job well, you are drawn along with them into this all-too-true story of flawed people who risked absolutely everything to do what was right. “As thought and conceived.” And it makes you damn uncomfortable. That’s the point. It made me uncomfortable first. Still does.
Sam Waterston’s words made me feel – perhaps for the first time – that my approach is not wrong. Yes, White Rose Histories, Volume I and II are footnoted to the hilt. My work so departs from the legend that proof is required.
But if I did my job right, you’re taken into their world. You can better visualize their surroundings. You can hear the concerts. You laugh with them, weep with them. What you “see” and “hear” provokes your ire, gets under your skin. You understand the danger of Gestapo moles. You admire the courage of the women in the group, who kicked the guys in the proverbial butt, made them quit whining and roll up their sleeves.
And on February 18, 1943, you will – along with me – wish that you could tell Sophie, “Don’t do it, don’t throw the leaflets over the balcony, go home!” And you cannot.
Thank you, Sam Waterston, for making me feel sane.
Announcement for end of May or June: I’ll take advantage of Substack’s podcast feature to record White Rose Histories, Volume I and II as audiobooks, starting with the second volume. If you’ve purchased either volume as digital download, you’ll automatically be added to that podcast as a subscriber. If you subscribe to that podcast, you’ll automatically be sent a 100% discount for the digital download.
This will give readers a chance to ask questions, comment-discuss, and most important to me, correct any errors you find in the books. I don’t care if it’s page numbering, or a mistranslation, or missing cite, if you see anything that is errata, please let us know!
Once the podcast is underway, the twofer will disappear. Audiobook will be added as an option to the publication page.
If you haven’t figured this out already: I appreciate every single reader of this Substack, paid or free, so very much. You make me feel like I’m not shouting into a void. You understand Why This Matters.
Tomorrow’s Substack will be for paid subscribers only. More on the topic of “White Rose as a symbol.”
© 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.