Women of the White Rose: Traute Lafrenz (part 2C - 2/18/1943-2/26/1943)
Historically, the initial White Rose arrests, first trial, and executions on 2/22/1943 have been told from Inge Scholl's carefully scripted viewpoint. This is how it appeared in Traute Lafrenz's eyes.
Although Hans and Sophie Scholl apparently stopped attending Prof. Huber’s 10 o’clock Leibniz lectures after the angry debates the week of February 12, Willi Graf and Traute Lafrenz would not miss them. It is not clear how much they knew of Huber’s political beliefs. But his lectures where he openly talked about theodicy, how a just deity could permit evil, nurtured them.
Still, their medical classes took precedence. On February 18, 1943, the two friends left Huber’s lecture a bit early, so they could make it to the medical campus on Nussbaum Strasse for Prof. Bumke’s psych class. Gisela Schertling would tell the Gestapo that Willi had been “accompanied by” Traute, as if they were a twosome.
Affairs of the heart were not on the minds of Traute and Willi when they spied the Scholl siblings. Willi asked Hans if he would be joining them for Bumke’s lecture. Hans said no.
The four friends made plans for later that afternoon, but the suitcase and satchel the siblings were carrying made Traute uneasy. Neither she nor Willi had the courage to ask what was in the satchel, much less the suitcase. Something was wrong. She could tell that Willi was as tense as she.
Once on board the streetcar, Traute asked Willi if he knew what was going on. Willi shrugged and professed ignorance.
Traute remembered sitting in Prof. Bumke’s lecture for “two excruciating hours.” She said that Willi usually fell asleep in class. “But today, he shifted back and forth restlessly.” After enduring the longest two hours of their lives, Traute and Willi parted ways. Willi had been ordered back to barracks. By now, rumors of the arrests were spreading, and soldier students had to return to Bergmannschule barracks. (Willi likely did not go, because the order resulted in confinement to barracks, and he was out and about by 3:15 pm.)
Traute took off for the university, running as fast as she could. She arrived just as police permitted one wave to students to exit the locked-down university. She heard bits and pieces of conversations. Doors were locked. Leaflets. They took two people away. These fragments scared her, as she believed she knew who had been arrested.
When she saw Monsieur Rousset, inference became knowledge. “Oui, oui, they took Hans away, et une jeune fille, petite et noire,” and he made a motion like Sophie’s hair. “Comme une Russe,” but he could not remember her name.
“I did not run any more,” Traute said. “I knew exactly what I had to do.”
Before she fulfilled her duty, she had lunch with Käthe. She had to be certain about the morning’s business. Everything Käthe told her confirmed what she had believed. “[Traute] was indignant about the entire incident,” Käthe said later. “She particularly could not believe that the Scholl siblings would have undertaken that type of political degeneracy.” Käthe’s audience consisted of a Gestapo agent. The “indignant” part rings true.
Evidently most of Traute’s Thursday consisted of warning everyone who could possibly be implicated in the affair. She was almost certainly the female student who stood watch outside the Scholls’ apartment and prevented Tilly Hahn from walking into a trap.
Although Gisela Schertling was among those taken into custody the morning of February 18, and although she immediately denounced many friends in the White Rose circle, she did not denounce Traute. That honor went to Hans Scholl. He told Agent Mahler that he had seen Traute in Willi Graf’s company. He had to have known that any friends he mentioned to the Gestapo would in turn be detained.
Sophie likewise fingered Traute, and her denunciation perhaps harmed Traute even more. She volunteered that she had seen Traute inside the university, adding the harmful information that Traute had given her a copy of the fourth leaflet in July 1942. It is clear from various Gestapo interrogations that the Scholl siblings encountered many people inside the university that morning. Contrary to legend and movies, the building was not empty.
When asked whom she saw in the university that morning, Sophie could have named any of her friends and acquaintances. She mentioned that she had seen a girl from Ulm, whose name she could not remember.
Unaware that she had been betrayed by friends, Traute continued to warn anyone remotely connected to the White Rose circle. Since she knew Josef Furtmeier rarely visited the university, she ensured he knew of the arrests. “The Philosopher” was able to destroy correspondence and notes related to the group. When the Gestapo discovered this fact, Traute justified herself by saying she had seen her actions “from a purely human point of view.”
Traute also did not know that Otl Aicher had been caught up in the police dragnet. He had gone to the Scholls’ apartment as agreed, planning to join them for lunch. He arrived before Traute stationed herself near their home, so had walked into the Gestapo search of the Scholls’ rooms.
When he was released from custody, he immediately left for Ulm to inform the Scholl family of the arrests. He had seen Hans Scholl at the Gestapo prison.
Traute had the same thought at almost exactly the same time. Before heading to the train station, she stopped by the Scholls’ apartment. The Gestapo was gone. She retrieved as much as she could carry of their personal effects, anything left behind by the investigating officers.
Otl arrived in Ulm first. Although he had seen Hans in prison, he underestimated the gravity of the situation. He assured the Scholl parents and Inge Scholl that Hans and Sophie were all right.
The Scholl parents were comforted by his news. Robert Scholl said, “If I had not received this soothing news from Aicher, I would have gone to Munich immediately to uncover the details.” Magdalena Scholl concurred. “Aicher as well had no idea what was going on. He told us he did not think the matter was very bad, which comforted us a lot.”
Then Traute showed up shortly thereafter, around 6 pm. Despite the tension between Hans and Traute, she remained a friend to the family.
The parents would not believe her tales of Hans and Sophie’s arrest in connection with leaflets thrown into the Lichthof or atrium. It was too implausible, especially after Otl’s visit. Traute’s additional information, that Hans and Sophie had been the students arrested on February 18, did nothing to move the Scholls from their conviction that Otl was right.
Magdalena Scholl later said that she was convinced “that Lafrenz knew very little about what had actually occurred.” Traute observed that the Scholl parents “thought it was impossible that Hans and Sophie concerned themselves with such things.” If only Liesel had been at home! Hans and Sophie had not been able to trust their parents and Inge.
Nevertheless, Traute stayed in Ulm with the Scholls. She intended to return on Monday.
The next day a very annoyed Wilhelm Geyer knocked on the door to the Scholls’ great apartment. Thursday February 18, he had been in Stuttgart showing a painting, The Guardian Angel. Hans was supposed to give him the key to the studio on Friday, but no one was home. He had returned several times, but neither Hans nor Sophie answered. Did the Scholl parents know what was going on?
At least, that is how he planned to start the conversation after the Scholls opened the door late Friday afternoon. Instead, to his surprise Traute Lafrenz stood before him. He asked the question, adding, ‘Are they perchance here?’
In a conversation later remembered as awkward, Traute and Geyer discussed the events at the university on the 18th. Geyer had heard about the arrests, but had not connected it to Hans and Sophie. It was true, Traute assured him. Impossible, said Geyer.
Traute persisted. The bad feeling Geyer had had his last dinner with the siblings washed over him. He knew Traute was right. Geyer then apologized to the Scholl parents, telling them that he was sorry that he could give them no hope for the lives of their children.
Even with that, Robert Scholl dismissed the matter as “not serious.” He advised Geyer they planned to go to Munich on Monday, stating that Hans always had such a romantic nature. Things would be fine.
Traute must have been able to talk a little sense into the Scholl parents after Geyer left. Or perhaps Geyer’s final words to them sank in. Not long after, Hans Hirzel stopped by. He did not know about the arrests, but he had known something bad was going to happen in Munich. He had warned Inge Scholl earlier in the week, had asked her to pass along a coded message to Hans or Sophie, or even to Otl Aicher. Inge had ignored Hans Hirzel, only delivering the message once it was too late.
The People’s Court did not advise the family about the trial date set for February 22, 1943. As they prepared for the 2-3 hour train trip, the Scholl family thought they were going to Munich simply to look into the arrests and begin strategizing. Traute and Werner Scholl – coincidentally in Ulm on leave from the Russian front – decided to take the earliest train out, handling what they could in advance of the Scholl parents’ arrival.
When Traute and Werner reached Munich, they learned the trial was starting shortly. The two hurried to the Justizpalast, which is close to the main train station. This was their worst nightmare. Werner seemed especially hard hit by the proceedings. Both of them knew the verdict had already been decided.
Unbeknownst to Traute, even as the trial proceeded, she was in danger herself. Gisela Schertling stopped at a nearby dairy the morning of February 22. Someone asked her what was happening with Hans and Sophie? What about Traute Lafrenz and Anneliese Graf (Willi’s sister)? Gisela had not denounced either woman. The question unsettled her, and she hurried away.
The Scholl parents arrived at the very end of the trial, just as Judge Freisler was reading the verdict and pronouncing the death sentence on Hans, Sophie, and Christl. Magdalena Scholl suffered a “nervous breakdown” as she realized the death sentence was for her children. Robert Scholl initially stood silent, in shock. Then he stormed the bench, angrily ranting that defense counsel had provided inadequate defense and that he wished to represent his children. Not only was it too late, but Freisler did not tolerate outbursts in his courtroom. The Scholls were escorted out.
Traute and Werner joined the parents outside the courtroom. They must have been as taken aback as Robert Scholl when a young attorney named Leo Samberger approached them and offered to help them navigate the legal system. Samberger had to have known that could be a career-ending move. He assisted Robert Scholl with the draft of a clemency petition, participated in the filing thereof, and before leaving, handed Robert Scholl his business card.
The prosecutor’s office did not notify the Scholl family or Leo Samberger about the happenings at Stadelheim prison. None of them knew the executions had already been scheduled. Robert Scholl assumed the clemency petition would wend its way through the legal system. He therefore phoned Samberger and asked him to join the family at Humplmayr’s, an upscale restaurant.
As they waited for their meal, Samberger drafted a clemency petition that Herta Probst could file the next day on behalf of Christl. He gave it to Robert Scholl to review, then chatted with friends at another table.
Those friends asked him if he had heard about the executions. The executions? ‘Those students, the one with the leaflets.’ Samberger was stunned. He could not give the Scholls that news. When he rejoined them for the meal, he never let on that their children were dead.
Still unaware of Hans and Sophie’s execution, the Scholl parents decided to return to Ulm after their dinner. Traute and Werner would stay in Munich, doing what they could. They accompanied Robert and Magdalena Scholl to the train station, as did Leo Samberger. Samberger could not bring himself to tell them even then about the executions. They were so distraught as it was.
After the Ulm-bound train departed the station, Samberger stayed with Werner and Traute, talking and talking some more, especially with Werner.
The next day, Werner and Traute went to Hans and Sophie’s apartment. It was clear that the Gestapo had been in a rush to prosecute (and execute). They had taken only the evidence that was necessary to convict the siblings, leaving behind mounds of evidence that implicated others. The hard-working duo uncovered rolled-up lists of names and addresses – more than 1000 – mixed in with Sophie’s toiletries, likely the recipients of leaflets in January and February. Every person on those lists was subject to the laws regarding reporting treasonous activity.
Werner and Traute discarded printer’s ink and other items that were bad, but relatively inconsequential. They took everything else to Traute’s former landlady at Lindwurm Strasse 13 – that room where first Hans had lived, then Traute, finally Gisela – and asked if they could use her furnace. She permitted them to incinerate everything that could implicate friends.
But the letters and diaries the Gestapo had overlooked? Those went back to the Scholl family in Ulm.
February 24, Werner and Traute joined the rest of the Scholl family at Hans and Sophie’s grave in Munich’s Perlacher Forest, behind the prison where the siblings had been executed. Otl Aicher was there too. No one present knew that the chaplain who presided over the funeral was likely a paid Gestapo mole. The transcripts contain evidence that anything confided to him ended up in the next interrogation.
On that day, that would not have made a difference. Hans and Sophie received a proper burial, with a Lutheran chaplain who said all the right words.
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 an excuse and taking their leave.
The very next morning, Traute Lafrenz was summoned for her first official interrogation. Her life would never be the same.
Next post: Traute Lafrenz, part 2D — 2/26/1943 – 4/18/1943.
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.