Was Hans Scholl Willi Graf’s mentor?

Willi Graf knew what was right. What was fair. Injustice hurt him. Injustice made him angry and gave him nightmares.

Sep 03, 2024

Still from video of speech given in Munich on October 12, 2023. Video shot by Jennifer Rosenfeld. Still © 2024 Denise Heap.

Following is my speech given on October 12, 2023 at the Internationale Fachtagung anlässlich des 80. Todestages von Willi Graf, held in Munich, co-sponsored by the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising and the Weisse-Rose-Institut. German original of this speech was posted on August 30, 2024.

This is not a verbatim translation of the speech, although I hew closely to the original. However, where the German original assumed knowledge of facts regarding Willi Graf or Hans Scholl due to the nature of the conference’s participants, I clarified in the English version for a broader audience.

Original German version of this speech posted last week.

I was stunned when Michael Kaufmann asked me to speak on the topic, Was Hans Scholl Willi Graf’s mentor? After a few speechless minutes, I asked him, “Wha-at?” He replied that this thesis is now fashionable in Germany and that it is based on something Walter Jens wrote in 1984. Again, “Wha-at?”

Because in 1995, I sat with Inge Jens for hours. We subsequently corresponded off and on. If I had questions, Inge Jens was always ready to answer them. In all that time, she never hinted that Hans Scholl was Willi Graf’s mentor. I had read Walter Jens’ essay when I entered Willi’s letters and diary entries into my database. It seemed like an offhand statement to me, a throwaway.

To hear that this casual statement has become a cottage industry? That would-be scholars take this sentence as gospel, without questioning? I was flabbergasted.

Walter Jens’ sentence reads, somewhat abbreviated, “The older Willi Graf became, the more courageously he went his own way, in clear rejection of the Bund leaders and companions from Munich’s Siegfriedstrasse who were content with ‘inner emigration’ - together with Hans Scholl, him above all others. Hans Scholl, who became his mentor, his partner in literature and theology (Guardini, Haecker, and Muth, also Kurt Huber: they had the same teachers), his companion on the path from reflection to decisive action and, above all, his admired contemporary.” Jens used the Nazi word Bund for league, derisive of Willi Graf’s Siegfriedstrasse friends.

There are so many mistakes in that single, very long sentence. Willi Graf often noted that he read Romano Guardini. Hans Scholl did not read Guardini. Hans Scholl read Theodor Haecker and Carl Muth, but Willi Graf did not. Kurt Huber, though Catholic, did not like religion. He claimed that he was not welcome in religious circles. In the week before the arrests, Huber argued with Hans Scholl about religion. As a prerequisite for his agreement to work with Hans Scholl, Hans had to promise that clergy would not be involved and that the “White Rose” was not a religious organization.

This was not a conscious error on the part of Walter Jens, nor was the mistake made with malicious intent. It is just that in 1984 there were relatively few primary sources available. The Protokolle or Gestapo transcripts in particular - even if we must treat these documents cautiously - give us much better insight into the personalities and thoughts of this circle of friends.

Why should you believe me, why should you recognize my statements as true, as opposed to the statement of the better-known Dr. Walter Jens?

For me it started in 1967 in the 7th grade with a good German teacher. She told us about her youth as the daughter of a resistance fighter, how she hated her father because she wasn’t allowed to take part in League of German Girls activities, how she always had to be careful, because secret meetings often took place at their house. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she understood what her father had done. Her name was Marie-Louise Pieratt. Her father was Wolfgang von Gronau.

At university I studied mathematics and German, with a minor in education. My thesis focused on political humor as resistance, particularly the works of Ludwig Thoma, Frank Wedekind, and Simplicissimus.

As a Fulbright scholar, I studied that same subject at the University of Augsburg with Dr. Albrecht Weber. He emphasized how important it is to teach history as correctly and objectively as possible. Dr. Weber was open, kind-hearted, and insightful. He also “got” my bizarre sense of humor.

Although I am not Catholic, the good people of KHG Augsburg were my closest friends. When my sister suicided and I could not fly home, it was these friends and Dr. Weber who helped me process my grief. Or at least to begin the long process. I also went with them to the Carmelite cloister at Dachau. We sat together with the Mother Superior and talked at length about the Shoah, and about her work to preserve the memories of survivors. She was an incredible woman!

In 1994 I began researching the White Rose. In 1995 I spent three and a half months in Germany, interviewing family members and other scholars. I worked in archives, asked a thousand questions, and got 2000 answers. Inge Jens gave me many unpublished essays, and Anneliese Knoop-Graf generously sent me unpublished and out-of-print documents. The Geyer family opened their cupboard containing Wilhelm Geyer’s papers and let me read the originals of his published letters. I talked for days with Erich and Hertha Schmorell over asparagus and white wine. Fritz and Elisabeth Hartnagel gave me a entire afternoon and answered my questions, reminding me of the importance of not making stuff up. Later Elisabeth Hartnagel gave me the documents that Inge had collected, so that at least one person would have a copy of everything that Inge had suppressed, in case Inge destroyed those documents before her death.

For me, the White Rose families are people with whom I could laugh, cry, and talk. Although we spoke about serious things, they also told me the “unimportant” stories: Alexander and Limburger cheese. Willi in a tree, eating cherries. Lilo with the book that Sophie gave Alex, which Alex then immediately passed on to Lilo, “I don’t want it!” In September 2007, I visited Herta Probst for the last time. I told her that I would soon be speaking about Alexander Schmorell in Orenburg, Russia. “Tell them: Where Schurik was, there was always laughter! Nobody could laugh like Schurik!”

When I was back in the US, I started out by translating about 2 million words. Then I created a database and entered my primary sources - transcripts, diary entries, letters, oral histories, speeches and interviews - into the database. If you would like to know more about my goals, processes, and methodology, please give me your contact information afterwards and I will get back to you. Before I wrote a single word, I entered all that data into the database according to the methodology I had developed beforehand.

That is why I want to say clearly and unambiguously: Hans Scholl was not Willi Graf’s mentor. The two friends discussed religion. But in his interrogation on February 19, 1943, Willi Graf made it unmistakably clear that Hans Scholl was Lutheran. Hans showed great interest in the Catholic faith, said Willi Graf. That’s what they discussed. Hans asked questions of Willi Graf, not the other way around. It seems to me that Willi Graf was perhaps Hans Scholl’s mentor.

Since this speech is intended to address the connection between Hans Scholl and Willi Graf in matters of faith, I would like to briefly discuss Hans Scholl.

The Scholl family was divided on religious issues. On one side was Magdalena Scholl, a Diakonissin or deaconess, pietistic to the extreme. On the other side was Robert Scholl, an agnostic who apparently loved playing the role of devil’s advocate. Robert Scholl could be sarcastic and insolent, in the name of the “greater truth.” Or so he thought.

The Scholl children found themselves in a gaping void between piety and duplicity. At the same time that Robert Scholl denounced Hitler as the “scourge of God,” he was a willing servant of the Party. How else can one explain that he counted top Nazis in the city among his prestigious clients? Among them, the Finanzamt? Or that he cultivated friendships with top Nazis like Friedrich Mussgay and Ferdinand Dietrich?

The first was a Gestapo agent, SS-Obersturmbannführer, and eventually Gestapo chief in Stuttgart. Yes, that Friedrich Mussgay, who sentenced Jenny Grimminger’s sister to death in Riga through his expulsion order for all Jewish citizens of Stuttgart.

The second, Ferdinand Dietrich, was district leader of Öhringen’s NSDAP, a doctor, and an “alter Kämpfer” [old warrior] for the Party, who was solely responsible for the deaths of hundreds of mentally ill Germans, and Jews, in the district. His inflammatory writings were famous at the time.

Robert Scholl was good friends with these men, as well as with other high-ranking politicians of the NSDAP. According to his daughter Inge Scholl and his grandson Thomas Hartnagel, Mussgay and Dietrich were often at the Scholls’ home. Even after the execution of Hans and Sophie Scholl, Ferdinand Dietrich visited the Scholls in their large apartment on Münsterplatz to offer them assistance and to tell them that this time “Mussgay” could not help them.

That’s how Hans Scholl grew up. He wanted to please both parents. He went to church now and then, at Easter, for his mother’s sake. And he threw himself completely - but a little scornfully - into the Hitler “Club” to make his father happy. Hans Scholl quickly learned to write pious words to his mother and at the same time to speak scheinheilig, sanctimoniously with his father.

This split personality served Hans Scholl well in the military and at university. Like a chameleon, he was always able to accommodate his opinion to his conversation partners. This trait served him well not only politically and religiously, but also with regards to his goals and philosophy of life. Often, when I read Hans Scholl’s letters and diary entries, I wanted to tear my hair out because his words could be so servile.

As with his father, how else can one explain that Hans Scholl counted not only Traute Lafrenz among his so-called girlfriends, but also Ulla Claudias and Gisela Schertling? Ulla and Gisela? Ulla, whose father Hermann was one of the 88 German writers who signed the oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler in October 1933? On the one hand, Hans Scholl organized Haecker lectures. On the other hand, he enthusiastically went with Ulla to one of her father’s lectures. It can be assumed that both Theodor Haecker and Hermann Claudias thought that Hans Scholl agreed with their politics and worldview.

How should we understand this Hans Scholl? When I pose this question, I do not wish to belittle either his greatness or his work. Hans Scholl sacrificed his life for a cause, for an idea that was greater than himself. No ifs, ands, or buts. Neither I nor anyone else can or should take that away from him. We honor his memory. That’s the right thing to do.

To understand Hans Scholl’s beliefs, one must first recognize his frantic devotion to duty. Perhaps he misunderstood the Apostle Paul when he wrote, “To the Jews I became like a Jew, that I might win the Jews. ... To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.”

When Hans Scholl was with his father, he was a cynic. When he was with his mother, they talked about eternity, God, salvation, love, God, loyalty, home, God, always God. When he wrote a letter to Inge, they talked about skiing and buying books.

After spending days with Carl Muth, Hans Scholl wrote holy “God-letters,” in which he praised poverty, after apparently plagiarizing Muth’s Catholic-orienteed essay on poverty for Windlicht, the Scholls’ little intellectual circular. That is, Hans Scholl copied essential works and ideas from Carl Muth without citing the source. Shortly after he had declared himself to be a true Christian.

But when the Gestapo asked his friends about Hans Scholl’s religious affiliation, they all said he was Lutheran. Wilhelm Geyer noted that Hans and Sophie Scholl – both of them! - were Lutheran and thought it was possible that their sister Inge was considering converting to Catholicism. Otl Aicher reported that when he and Sophie debated religious matters, Sophie always took the Lutheran side of the argument. And that Sophie always won, especially when they talked about topics like purgatory. Sophie found that concept extremely implausible.

Traute told me that she was annoyed that Hans Scholl misquoted the Bible verse in the fourth leaflet. She had showed it to him. “Wherefore, I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.” The leaflet said Proverbs. Traute said, No! It was Ecclesiastes! Chapter 4, verse 2. Sometimes I wonder if Hans Scholl even owned a Bible. It seems to me that Christianity was something that Hans Scholl wore, like a uniform or a winter coat, totally dependent on the circumstances.

On the other side of this universe stands Willi Graf.

Willi had firm footing, deep friendships, and above all, horrific war experiences that informed his path to God and his will to resist.

When I read Willi Graf for the first time, I immediately recognized his way of “Catholic” thinking. Not only Willi Graf, but also Wilhelm Geyer, Katharina Schüddekopf, Otl Aicher, Josef Furtmeier, Alfred von Martin, Carl Muth, and Theodor Haecker – only Harald Dohrn stood outside that circle of White Rose friends who questioned their Catholic faith. Geyer said of Dohrn that he was more Catholic than the Pope himself. But even Dohrn found his home among people who often asked how and why.

I could talk all day about this Catholic subgroup of the White Rose, this subgroup that Willi Graf liked and the people he often hung out with. I find Wilhelm Geyer’s extraordinary courage admirable. Although he loved his wife Clara, his mother (also Clara), and his six children with all his heart, he could not remain silent. Early on, in 1933 or so, he disrupted a political rally – Geyer alone, by himself. When Streicher mocked him as the most dangerous artist in Germany, Geyer accepted the insult as high praise. In the Protokolle, when Gestapo agents and judge called him a fanatical Catholic, he replied, ‘Fanatic Catholic? Not at all. I am a good Catholic, and good Catholics are never fanatical.’

Katharina Schüddekopf was torn between two parents whom she loved. Her father was a staunch Nazi, her mother a deeply religious Catholic. For a long time, Käthe tried to be both. Ultimately, she understood that a devout Catholic could never be a Nazi.

Otl Aicher, who married Inge Scholl after the war, wrote about a conversation with Sophie Scholl. Sophie was thinking about suicide. At home with her family, her relationship with Fritz Hartnagel, the eternal loneliness from which she could never escape... and above all, she couldn’t even pray. God, the God of Saint Augustine, was too distant, too cold, too indifferent. Sophie Scholl felt that she was not worthy of being loved. Not by a man, not by her family, not by herself, and above all, not by God.

Otl told her the following:

Do you know the little God? The God who does not control history, who does not sit in judgment, who does not set his foot on his enemies’ necks? He exists, he does not care about kings or the powerful, nor about emperors or popes, nor about national victories, but about the poor, the hungry, the abandoned, the lonely, and the suffering, about all the little ones who are thrown on the compost heap of history. The whole world cannot be in greater need than one soul. And this God is with the suffering soul at the abyss of nothingness. ...

The great God, the God of trumpets and armies, the God of nations and collectives, did not appear in Galilee. That God, Jesus, was a God you could talk to. That’s what Otl told Sophie when she was considering suicide.

Wilhelm Geyer, Käthe Schüddekopf, Otl Aicher - these people, as well as fellow believers in their circle of friends, asked questions and questioned everything. In those dark days, they did not have the luxury of accepting anything at face value. Willi Graf was able to talk easily with these people - Wilhelm Geyer and Käthe Schüddekopf in particular, as well as Traute Lafrenz, who was always asking questions.

But - and here comes the big but: But in general, religion was not particularly important for this group of friends. Faith was. Religion not so much. As Traute Lafrenz told me, they were all spiritual, but by no means religious.

In this circle, only Willi Graf, Käthe Schüddekopf, and Wilhelm Geyer went to church regularly. There are no reports that would suggest that Hans and Sophie Scholl, Traute Lafrenz, Eugen Grimminger, Manfred Eickemeyer, or Kurt Huber ever went to church, whether Lutheran, Catholic, Buddhist, or agnostic, except maybe a few times at Easter. And these are the ones who at least left behind written documents on matters of faith.

The differences between Willi Graf and Hans Scholl could not be clearer. The distinctions are strong.

In 1933, Hans Scholl joined Hitler Youth. In 1933, Willi Graf read the words of Johannes Maassen: We seek a national honor that is miles removed from the wretched clay of excess and the gutter. This gutter is fast becoming the norm in daily life and opposes everything that does not worship the current government. We seek the complete existence of justice, the basis of the true State. We seek a gateway for the freedom of the Volk. Willi Graf and his friends decided to organize themselves as New Germany.

They chose this club precisely because the structure of New Germany allowed them to have fun and read the Bible. The others would have been either too religious, or not religious enough. The boys considered Hitler Youth, but rejected it. Walter Gombert chose as motto for the newly-formed club a Bible verse from the book of James: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, otherwise you deceive yourselves!” - shortened to “Be faithful and obedient.”

At the end of 1933, as Willi Graf and his friends considered the consequences of the Concordat, they vowed never to become members of Hitler Youth, despite what the Concordat said. As is well-known, Willi Graf deleted former friends from his address book when he learned they had joined Hitler Youth. At the end of 1933, when Hans Scholl heard that Catholic boys refused to join Hitler Youth, he and his Hitler Youth troop ambushed them and beat them up.

When Willi Graf and his friends set off on their great adventure throughout Germany in 1934, they dressed in the uniform and “knight’s badge” of New Germany. When Hans Scholl and his troop traveled to Sweden in 1936, they wore their Hitler Youth uniforms.

In 1935, Hans Scholl was flag bearer at the Reich Party Day Rally. In 1935, Willi Graf and eleven of his comrades marched behind the high school’s “flag decorated with gold tassels and pompoms” to the annual rally on the Field of Liberation - among thousands of Hitler Youth members, dragging their feet and annoying brown-clad boys.

According to Anneliese Knoop-Graf, her brother sought out students at the university in Bonn who not only read good literature or the Bible, but who also discussed resistance. Resistance, not inner emigration or Resistenz, passive forms of resistance, but resistance, Widerstand. Shortly afterwards, when Hans Scholl enrolled at the university in Munich, he found a nice student apartment, bought a lot of books, and asked his father to send more money.

I can hear you saying: But all of this was before 1941, when Hans Scholl became a true Christian! Talk about those times!

All right then.

Otl Aicher described conversations between Hans Scholl and Carl Muth as “argumentation and reflection, not eruptive emotion.” Otl said that Hans Scholl liked Carl Muth’s worldly manner. “Even when Muth became perspicuous and arrogant in his opposition, he always maintained the self-control of liberal manners [and] universal commitment.” According to Otl Aicher, “This was consistent with Hans’ rational humanism.”

Although Willi Graf was interested in religious matters, he rarely, if ever, read Muth’s Hochland. We only see him mention Hochland twice, in two letters to Marita Herfeldt. On February 2, 1943, he wrote, “I haven’t been able to find the Hochland volume yet.” Two weeks later, in the last letter before his arrest, he thanked Marita. “The ‘Brücke’ and Hochland volumes arrived, thank you very much for that.” If I missed another mention of Hochland, please let me know.

Willi Graf would not have found the rational humanism and liberal manners of Carl Muth and Hans Scholl particularly meaningful. He wanted something genuine, something lasting. And - it must be said - Willi Graf did not know Carl Muth, although he knew that Hans Scholl respected Carl Muth very much.

Hans Scholl could not quote a simple Bible verse correctly. Willi Graf said that his favorite Christmas present in 1936 was a complete copy of the Bible “with everything in it.” Hans Scholl discussed biblical things, he read books about the Bible, not the Bible itself. This can be clearly seen when Carl Muth showed the Scholl siblings a book about the Shroud of Turin. Sophie Scholl wanted to see the face of God in that shroud. Hans Scholl wanted to know more about it, so he read the book.

For Hans Scholl, the Holy Bible, that is, the Luther Bible, was merely great literature. I never see anywhere that Hans Scholl writes that he read the Bible with friends or for himself. In stark contrast, consider Willi Graf. For Willi, reading the Bible was something important, if not sacred. He read it alone in his student dorm, he read it with Fritz Leist and Emil Martin. He told Anneliese that she should read the Bible and that even Goethe was a Bible reader.

Towards the end of his life, Willi Graf was not satisfied with the passive resistance of the White Rose friends. At all costs, he wished to practice active resistance, to take part in resistance efforts around Pater Delp. For that reason, he traveled to Lenggries during the last week of his freedom. He wanted Johannes Maassen to put him in contact with Pater Delp. When he could not meet with Maassen, he visited Professor Huber - together with Wolf Jaeger. Willi Graf asked Huber which building in Berlin he should bomb to achieve the greatest effect.

In contrast, Hans Scholl was never capable of active resistance. I believe that this was the reason why, in the last month of White Rose work, Willi Graf became close friends with Alexander Schmorell and Traute Lafrenz, as well as with Werner Scholl when they were in Russia.

Was Willi Graf sinless? Not at all! If he were standing here before us, he would tell us about his shortcomings and failures, the ways in which he let his friends - and himself - down.

Willi Graf was just like us – like me, like Jennifer, like Michael, like you. As my father would say of himself, he had feet of clay up to his hips.

But Willi Graf knew what was right. What was fair. Injustice hurt him. Injustice made him angry and gave him nightmares.

Micah 6:8 says, “He has told you, oh man, what is good, and what the Lord demands of you: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

We honor Wilhelm Josef Graf today for his resolve to live according to his faith and to die for what was just. Especially as he often stood alone, without support from family, church, or friends. Nevertheless, he did what was right, he loved what was good and just, and he walked his path until death humbly, before his God.

V’imru Amein. And let the people say, Amen.

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