It's February 22, sixty-nine years after Christoph Probst, Hans Scholl, and Sophie Scholl were convicted of treason in Germany's Volksgericht and promptly beheaded. While much about that day has been fairy-taled beyond recognition, one element of the legend has basis in fact.
Namely, as Hans Scholl was being led to his death, he shouted Long live freedom!
Now, he did not shout it loudly enough for the whole prison to hear. And he did not shout it after sharing a cigarette with Christl and Sophie. And he did not shout it after shedding a tear for an unnamed 'girlfriend' of any sort.
But his final words - appropriately enough - reminded the executioner, prison chaplain, and witnesses to his death that the friends of the White Rose were giving their lives for the notion that "freedom of the individual" was worth fighting for. Three leaflets had specifically mentioned their obsession with this personal freedom that had been taken from them by Hitler and his regime.
Showing posts with label Sophie Scholl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sophie Scholl. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Friday, February 19, 2010
The new Sophie Scholl biography
I have only seen "hype" surrounding the new Sophie bio. And remain terribly unimpressed.
Above all else, I am truly tired of the money-making machine that is "Scholl" in Germany. From early postwar days, the Scholls learned how to turn their children, siblings, and cousins into Big Dollars, milking the McCloy/Marshall Fund for millions of dollars. Hiding behind Hans and Sophie Scholl to mask their own Nazi pasts.
I will NOT be impressed with any Scholl biography - whether written by German, American, or Israeli, unless and until someone actually demands ~ and I mean DEMANDS ~ total, unfettered, complete access to the thousands of Scholl documents that remain censored and off limits at IfZ headquarters in Munich.
And unless and until that same courageous biographer goes one step further and searches for archives that reveal the financial transactions involved when Scholls moved to the great house on Muensterplatz, where a Jewish family had lived prior to Kristallnacht.
Above all else, I am truly tired of the money-making machine that is "Scholl" in Germany. From early postwar days, the Scholls learned how to turn their children, siblings, and cousins into Big Dollars, milking the McCloy/Marshall Fund for millions of dollars. Hiding behind Hans and Sophie Scholl to mask their own Nazi pasts.
I will NOT be impressed with any Scholl biography - whether written by German, American, or Israeli, unless and until someone actually demands ~ and I mean DEMANDS ~ total, unfettered, complete access to the thousands of Scholl documents that remain censored and off limits at IfZ headquarters in Munich.
And unless and until that same courageous biographer goes one step further and searches for archives that reveal the financial transactions involved when Scholls moved to the great house on Muensterplatz, where a Jewish family had lived prior to Kristallnacht.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
White Rose Holy Wars
Come November, the faithful gather in Provo or Salt Lake City. They have studiously prepared for this moment. Much learning and nightly vigils undergird the assembly. This battle consumes the waking (and often dream-filled) nights of many passionate Latter-Day Saints.
I am, of course, speaking about the annual BYU-Utes football game, a holy war to end all holy wars.
Despite its comical nickname, religion hardly plays a role in the festivities. Rather, students paint themselves red or blue, and wrap one another's campuses in graffiti'd taunts. Sure, there's plenty of teasing about who is more Mormon than the other. The coaches and players milk the holy-rolling imagery for all it's worth. And usually the game lives up to its hype, with last-minute finishes and gloating good enough to last a year. A good time is had by all.
Less funny, with no hint of a good time, are the holy wars that have afflicted White Rose "scholarship" in recent years. What used to be simple and annoying misuse of their story has turned into full-fledged abuse. Previously, we dealt with laymen who distorted the heroism of students and
I am, of course, speaking about the annual BYU-Utes football game, a holy war to end all holy wars.
Despite its comical nickname, religion hardly plays a role in the festivities. Rather, students paint themselves red or blue, and wrap one another's campuses in graffiti'd taunts. Sure, there's plenty of teasing about who is more Mormon than the other. The coaches and players milk the holy-rolling imagery for all it's worth. And usually the game lives up to its hype, with last-minute finishes and gloating good enough to last a year. A good time is had by all.
Less funny, with no hint of a good time, are the holy wars that have afflicted White Rose "scholarship" in recent years. What used to be simple and annoying misuse of their story has turned into full-fledged abuse. Previously, we dealt with laymen who distorted the heroism of students and
Friday, August 28, 2009
Chapter One: Roses at Noon (the creative nonfiction novel about the White Rose)
CHAPTER ONE
May 1, 1942
It is so cold today. Cold and snowing. I wonder if I am making the biggest mistake of my life. Yesterday I footed numbers in Daddy’s office, checked his arithmetic to keep his clients happy. He had the heat turned up. Even Inge laughed now and then.
But today, today. The signs flashed by, Mering, Nannhofen. I told myself over and over, Sophie, you have waited two years to be in Munich with Hans. With Hans! I will admit it out loud. It was great fun seeing him waving to me from the platform. His arm around Traute, that casual romance that gives him the very breath he breathes. She looked the picture of elegance, every hair in place, her shoes matching the skirt she wore. I really should not like her, you know. But there is something so un-Nazi about her, we are at once kindred spirits.
May 1, 1942
It is so cold today. Cold and snowing. I wonder if I am making the biggest mistake of my life. Yesterday I footed numbers in Daddy’s office, checked his arithmetic to keep his clients happy. He had the heat turned up. Even Inge laughed now and then.
But today, today. The signs flashed by, Mering, Nannhofen. I told myself over and over, Sophie, you have waited two years to be in Munich with Hans. With Hans! I will admit it out loud. It was great fun seeing him waving to me from the platform. His arm around Traute, that casual romance that gives him the very breath he breathes. She looked the picture of elegance, every hair in place, her shoes matching the skirt she wore. I really should not like her, you know. But there is something so un-Nazi about her, we are at once kindred spirits.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Just the Facts, Ma'am
I'm one of the lucky few who has been taught by excellent teachers from the very beginning. No other component of education ranks as high as the women and men who, underpaid and undersupplied, stand in front of classrooms day after day. Somehow, each year I managed to be assigned to yet another person who would have been honored as Teacher of the Year, were life completely fair.
Except for my third grade teacher. Poor thing, she had to take over our class barely six weeks into the new school year, assuming the wooden desk of one of those venerated educators. And she was no Mrs. T. She did not understand how to challenge us, motivate us to think out loud, like Mrs. T did. She mistook mischief for badness, sass for impudence.
The new person did not take us outside to explore wildflowers, or sit us down in small groups to work on assignments. Instead, she hung bad handwriting samples on the bulletin board to encourage classmates to mock poor cursive. And my Ps and Qs always, but always, took front and center of her disdain.
Whether naturally lazy or just ill-equipped, this woman could not teach. Yet I took two things away from her class that I do indeed remember to this day. First, she demonstrated the power of reading aloud. When she ran out of things to say, she would pick up a book, say Charlotte's Web, perch on a stool, and read to us for the rest of the day. I still enjoy hearing words spoken, words crafted to sit on a white page, but spoken instead. It's magic, that rhythm. No mistake that mysticism often invokes chants uttered, not sung.
And her second gift to me? Something she never intended as such. When she got angry, she would mete out fact-writing as punishment. The greater the offense, the more facts you had to write down. It didn't matter what, as long that Big Chief tablet contained nice neat lists. Of facts.
She didn't realize that whenever I pulled an encyclopedia off the shelf, or went down the hall to the library, I was in heaven. There is so much to know. And the more you learn, the more you know, the bigger you realize this old world is. That hunger is hardly satisfied by feeding on the fruit of knowledge. You go from writing "Texas is the very best state in the United States" (an acceptable third grade fact in Houston), to comprehending how it gained independence, to its flora and fauna, to the surrounding states, to Valley Forge. And before you know it, you wind up studying overseas, still fascinated by the people and cultures and trees and all that make this planet ours.
And before you know it, you wind up searching for the truth about a group of college kids who were beheaded for daring to speak the truth about Hitler.
The usual dust cover summary of the White Rose will tell you that they were a group of friends at the University of Munich, who committed to resist Hitler and began to do so by writing leaflets calling for the overthrow of the regime. That on February 18, 1943, two of them (Hans and Sophie Scholl) threw leaflets over the balcony of the main university building that housed the lecture halls and classrooms for philosophy and the humanities. That the janitor saw them and had them arrested. That they, along with Christoph Probst, were tried and beheaded on February 22, 1943. That fourteen others were tried on April 19, and four more on July 13. In all, six were murdered, and eleven served prison sentences.
The dust jacket version of their story leads the casual reader to believe that these wonderful young students were near saints. One extant edition of letters highlights innocent love affairs, sexless liaisons without even a breath of a kiss. They are ascribed purity of heart, purity of mind, and above all, purity of soul. Their all too real spiritual struggles jump off the page and dominate the telling.
But this pretty terrible third grade teacher inadvertently taught me to chase rabbits. You never know. You can end up in Wonderland with Alice, at tea with Bugs, or pursuing the science of burrowing animals. Chasing rabbits will at least get you off dead center.
I learned for starters that the literature about them is all wrong. Yes, there are bits and pieces of it that ring true, but not nearly enough. These wonderful young students were that same mix of good and bad that you and I are. When they fell in love, it was with hormones raging, riddled with angst and guilt and desire. Pure passion.
They fought our battles too. Christoph's demon was his clinical depression, knowing that his father had died of the same disease, by his own hand. He found solace in a solid woman, whom he finally married after the birth of their second child. His family hobnobbed with the premiere banned artists. Emil Nolde painted a portrait of Christoph and his sister.
Willi Graf decided very young to distance himself from Hitler's hordes. He marked through names of friends who joined Hitler Youth, leaving his address book a stark reminder of how few were courageous. When Willi was 15, he and 11 friends marched alone in a throng of several hundred thousand Hitler Youth boys, their lack of proper attire and proper flag a thumb in the eye of the city fathers. Assigned to a medical unit on the Russian front, he witnessed unbelievable bestiality by his "comrades". His nightmares ended only with his execution.
These kids coped with drug addiction, sexual addiction, and stupid jealousies. They wrote love letters, sketched scenes from their hometowns, and went skiing over New Year's. Sophie loved the Variety Club, Hubert started a string quartet, Alex sculpted a bust of Beethoven. Several excelled at fencing, one was allegedly a petty thief, a couple played piano, and they all devoured every banned book they could find.
They had their mentors too. Carl Muth, friend of Hans Jonas, instructed them how to find answers to theological questions on their own. Wilhelm Geyer (whom Julius Streicher named the most dangerous artist in Germany) taught Sophie how to paint and Alex how to make stencils. Eugen Grimminger funded their efforts with roughly the equivalent of $50,000 in real money. And a regular army guy, Commander Buehl, managed to outwit the Gestapo and protected several who were in his Student Company.
Some had Jewish family members. Christoph's beloved stepmother Lisl was Jewish, as was Eugen Grimminger's wife Jenny. Most had neighbors they had seen destroyed, financially or physically. They differed from their classmates by perceiving the Nazi noose as an outrage that needed righting, as illegal acts against human beings. And the ones who saw Warsaw? Well, no words can describe the fury that possessed them from that day on.
They didn't come close to overthrowing Hitler. They painted anti-Nazi slogans up and down the main streets of Munich, "seventy times," the Gestapo screamed. Though the tar-based paint kept their graffiti visible long after their deaths, no one rushed out to topple the regime just because they proclaimed that Hitler was a mass murderer. And while a few were sorry that such a pretty young girl had to die, most people expressed the sentiments that someone overheard in class, words that only deepened his anguished sorrow. "They should have strung 'em up in front of the university," two students opined.
So why tell their story, when all they did was for nothing? Why do I fight this battle to get the real story out there, when people seem happier with the feel-good version?
The answer is the same to both questions. They did not die for nothing. Sophie's boyfriend back-tracked on his original plans to raise chickens. Instead, he became one of Germany's most respected, ethical judges. Often Fritz Hartnagel represented the sole voice of justice in a court where too many Nazis were not disbarred. He is gravely ill, and I offer a prayer, a mi sh'berach for his health.
Traute Lafrenz came to the States and has worked hard to make our world safer, healthier, more compassionate. Anneliese Graf took to heart her brother's admonition to keep the torch lit. She has worked tirelessly in the field of education.
These people have in turn inspired others. And all of us recognize our limits, our shortcomings, our very humanness. There is something at once bracing and comforting in knowing that no matter how often we fail, we are capable of such great good.
Even you. Even me.
(c) 2001 Ruth Sachs. All rights reserved.
Except for my third grade teacher. Poor thing, she had to take over our class barely six weeks into the new school year, assuming the wooden desk of one of those venerated educators. And she was no Mrs. T. She did not understand how to challenge us, motivate us to think out loud, like Mrs. T did. She mistook mischief for badness, sass for impudence.
The new person did not take us outside to explore wildflowers, or sit us down in small groups to work on assignments. Instead, she hung bad handwriting samples on the bulletin board to encourage classmates to mock poor cursive. And my Ps and Qs always, but always, took front and center of her disdain.
Whether naturally lazy or just ill-equipped, this woman could not teach. Yet I took two things away from her class that I do indeed remember to this day. First, she demonstrated the power of reading aloud. When she ran out of things to say, she would pick up a book, say Charlotte's Web, perch on a stool, and read to us for the rest of the day. I still enjoy hearing words spoken, words crafted to sit on a white page, but spoken instead. It's magic, that rhythm. No mistake that mysticism often invokes chants uttered, not sung.
And her second gift to me? Something she never intended as such. When she got angry, she would mete out fact-writing as punishment. The greater the offense, the more facts you had to write down. It didn't matter what, as long that Big Chief tablet contained nice neat lists. Of facts.
She didn't realize that whenever I pulled an encyclopedia off the shelf, or went down the hall to the library, I was in heaven. There is so much to know. And the more you learn, the more you know, the bigger you realize this old world is. That hunger is hardly satisfied by feeding on the fruit of knowledge. You go from writing "Texas is the very best state in the United States" (an acceptable third grade fact in Houston), to comprehending how it gained independence, to its flora and fauna, to the surrounding states, to Valley Forge. And before you know it, you wind up studying overseas, still fascinated by the people and cultures and trees and all that make this planet ours.
And before you know it, you wind up searching for the truth about a group of college kids who were beheaded for daring to speak the truth about Hitler.
The usual dust cover summary of the White Rose will tell you that they were a group of friends at the University of Munich, who committed to resist Hitler and began to do so by writing leaflets calling for the overthrow of the regime. That on February 18, 1943, two of them (Hans and Sophie Scholl) threw leaflets over the balcony of the main university building that housed the lecture halls and classrooms for philosophy and the humanities. That the janitor saw them and had them arrested. That they, along with Christoph Probst, were tried and beheaded on February 22, 1943. That fourteen others were tried on April 19, and four more on July 13. In all, six were murdered, and eleven served prison sentences.
The dust jacket version of their story leads the casual reader to believe that these wonderful young students were near saints. One extant edition of letters highlights innocent love affairs, sexless liaisons without even a breath of a kiss. They are ascribed purity of heart, purity of mind, and above all, purity of soul. Their all too real spiritual struggles jump off the page and dominate the telling.
But this pretty terrible third grade teacher inadvertently taught me to chase rabbits. You never know. You can end up in Wonderland with Alice, at tea with Bugs, or pursuing the science of burrowing animals. Chasing rabbits will at least get you off dead center.
I learned for starters that the literature about them is all wrong. Yes, there are bits and pieces of it that ring true, but not nearly enough. These wonderful young students were that same mix of good and bad that you and I are. When they fell in love, it was with hormones raging, riddled with angst and guilt and desire. Pure passion.
They fought our battles too. Christoph's demon was his clinical depression, knowing that his father had died of the same disease, by his own hand. He found solace in a solid woman, whom he finally married after the birth of their second child. His family hobnobbed with the premiere banned artists. Emil Nolde painted a portrait of Christoph and his sister.
Willi Graf decided very young to distance himself from Hitler's hordes. He marked through names of friends who joined Hitler Youth, leaving his address book a stark reminder of how few were courageous. When Willi was 15, he and 11 friends marched alone in a throng of several hundred thousand Hitler Youth boys, their lack of proper attire and proper flag a thumb in the eye of the city fathers. Assigned to a medical unit on the Russian front, he witnessed unbelievable bestiality by his "comrades". His nightmares ended only with his execution.
These kids coped with drug addiction, sexual addiction, and stupid jealousies. They wrote love letters, sketched scenes from their hometowns, and went skiing over New Year's. Sophie loved the Variety Club, Hubert started a string quartet, Alex sculpted a bust of Beethoven. Several excelled at fencing, one was allegedly a petty thief, a couple played piano, and they all devoured every banned book they could find.
They had their mentors too. Carl Muth, friend of Hans Jonas, instructed them how to find answers to theological questions on their own. Wilhelm Geyer (whom Julius Streicher named the most dangerous artist in Germany) taught Sophie how to paint and Alex how to make stencils. Eugen Grimminger funded their efforts with roughly the equivalent of $50,000 in real money. And a regular army guy, Commander Buehl, managed to outwit the Gestapo and protected several who were in his Student Company.
Some had Jewish family members. Christoph's beloved stepmother Lisl was Jewish, as was Eugen Grimminger's wife Jenny. Most had neighbors they had seen destroyed, financially or physically. They differed from their classmates by perceiving the Nazi noose as an outrage that needed righting, as illegal acts against human beings. And the ones who saw Warsaw? Well, no words can describe the fury that possessed them from that day on.
They didn't come close to overthrowing Hitler. They painted anti-Nazi slogans up and down the main streets of Munich, "seventy times," the Gestapo screamed. Though the tar-based paint kept their graffiti visible long after their deaths, no one rushed out to topple the regime just because they proclaimed that Hitler was a mass murderer. And while a few were sorry that such a pretty young girl had to die, most people expressed the sentiments that someone overheard in class, words that only deepened his anguished sorrow. "They should have strung 'em up in front of the university," two students opined.
So why tell their story, when all they did was for nothing? Why do I fight this battle to get the real story out there, when people seem happier with the feel-good version?
The answer is the same to both questions. They did not die for nothing. Sophie's boyfriend back-tracked on his original plans to raise chickens. Instead, he became one of Germany's most respected, ethical judges. Often Fritz Hartnagel represented the sole voice of justice in a court where too many Nazis were not disbarred. He is gravely ill, and I offer a prayer, a mi sh'berach for his health.
Traute Lafrenz came to the States and has worked hard to make our world safer, healthier, more compassionate. Anneliese Graf took to heart her brother's admonition to keep the torch lit. She has worked tirelessly in the field of education.
These people have in turn inspired others. And all of us recognize our limits, our shortcomings, our very humanness. There is something at once bracing and comforting in knowing that no matter how often we fail, we are capable of such great good.
Even you. Even me.
(c) 2001 Ruth Sachs. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from ROSES AT NOON, nonfiction novel about the White Rose (by Ruth Hanna Sachs)
May 1, 1942
It is so cold today. Cold and snowing. I wonder if I am making the biggest mistake of my life. Yesterday I footed numbers in Daddy’s office, checked his arithmetic to keep his clients happy. He had the heat turned up. Even Inge laughed now and then.
But today, today. The signs flashed by, Mering, Nannhofen. I told myself over and over, Sophie, you have waited two years to be in Munich with Hans. With Hans!
I will admit it out loud. It was great fun seeing him waving to me from the platform. His arm around Traute, that casual romance that gives him the very breath he breathes. She looked the picture of elegance, every hair in place, her shoes matching the skirt she wore. I really should not like her, you know. But there is something so un-Nazi about her, we are at once kindred spirits.
We rode the streetcar out to Dr. Muth’s. If Hans had not told me volumes about this Catholic scholar before, if I had not met him myself a few months ago, I would have packed my bags and headed home. Home to Ulm, where that heated office burns me with its boring nothingness, and we all agree on politics. But in the time it took Dr. Muth to put on tea, I did not know myself.
Hans had warned me about the professor’s penchant for penetrating masks. I thought I wore mine well. You know what I mean. That Sophie mask that tells the world I am in control, that I know what I want, when and where. But with a few words, Dr. Muth rips it off, ruthlessly, like you rip a bandage off a child.
We were talking about this and that. Knowing that Dr. Muth concurs with our conclusions about, about Hitler, I courageously talked about our need to do something. You know I have felt this way a long time now. We jabber and prattle about how awful that man is. Daddy even got arrested for calling him the divine scourge on Germany.
But none of us does anything about it. We talk, and the more the cheap wine flows, the grander our schemes. So I casually mentioned that opinion, feeling a little bolstered by Hans’ presence. And Dr. Muth fixed those blue eyes, blue eyes of lightning, not of sky, directly on me. ‘And, Fräulein Scholl, what basis do you find in the Bible for what you propose?’
Traute rescued me by steering the discussion to the magazine Dr. Muth publishes, or used to publish till the Nazis shut him down. But I know he has not forgotten the question. I will have to find an answer for him.
Hans, my dear dense brother, soon caught on to Traute’s defense. ‘Sophie, let’s celebrate your birthday at my place tonight. Should we invite all our friends, or would that be too much for you?’
And with that deft maneuver, we were out his garden gate, back on the street.
Funny, but I had nearly forgotten the cake Mama had baked, and the bottle of wine Daddy had donated. I would have preferred waiting till tomorrow, when Fritz is here. But I could not spend one more minute in that house, with that question hanging over me.
I persuaded Hans to keep the party small. He knows these people, and I feel like I should too, the way he talks about them when he comes home. But all at once, I stood overwhelmed.
Overwhelmed by the swastikas on every house. Munich… The very best of our country has been violated, raped by men in brown. Venetian beauty defiled by shrines to criminals. The artists I cherish, the Noldes and Geyers who paint with color so vibrant, they make the world sing, they are burned and banned. In their place, hideous murals sully grand edifices.
Hans and Traute have learned to cope with the devastation. When we passed Hitler’s House of Modern Art, Hans whispered in my ear, ‘Soph, you like the wienie palace?’ I had heard that joke before, but seeing it firsthand, I erupted into giggles. First time I felt good all day. This Parthenon with columns that, yes!, were a tribute to proud Bavarian sausages. At best.
They left me alone in his room for an hour or two. The Blue Horses that survived Hans’ own arrest a few years ago comforted me strangely. I resisted the urge to hang the picture straighter. I must have slept, lulled to sleep by the aroma of a lone jasmine in an airless room. For it was nearly dark when Hans and Traute returned, bearing food.
‘We invited Christl and Alex,’ Hans said, waiting for my reaction. I could not think of two people I wanted to meet more.
Alexander Schmorell arrived first, doffing his beret and kissing my hand. Before the second sentence, I found myself calling him Schurik like everyone else, blessing him with the Russian name that connected him to his homeland. And separated him from the insanity of our Volk.
And I don’t have to tell you that for half a second, I could not even remember Fritz’s name. Schurik embodied everything I have wanted Fritz to be. He made me laugh, he made me forget that I was being demure, he made me feel like a lady, every bit as pulled-together as Traute.
When Christl showed up, the other three reacted with an emotion I have never experienced. This tall, lanky farm boy folded himself into the room. It was like their backbone had straightened or their vision re-focused. Christoph Probst, this Christl, brought pictures of his babies, news of his wife, that village decency that knows little of goose-stepping or Sieg Heils.
He also got us going on a game he had conjured up on the way to the party. We tried to stump each other on famous literary quotes. Sounds boring, I know, yet it was anything but. Of course, someone had to quote Novalis, and I think Hans was the culprit. He likes Novalis’ view of going to the edge of the pit before finding the way home. And we debated Goethe, a trivial debate to be sure, but not completely without merit. Can someone who never lived a single day of misery really write? I say no. Goethe lovers find themselves forced to defend the indefensible.
I enjoyed being among friends who read banned literature. There are not many places in Germany these days where one would dare quote from Heine or Stefan George or Spinoza. But in this room, not to quote our greatest poets and thinkers was unthinkable. Traute assured me she would introduce me to the booksellers who stocked these good books.
And I cannot tell you what it did for me to see Hans among these people. You know how he has those mood swings that make him impossible to love. I can never forget how badly he treated Lisa Remppis, my best friend. She tolerated his ups and downs far longer than any woman should, and he still trifled with her feelings for him. I think he only wanted her when she finally had enough. Some stupid nonsense about writing her name out in bread crumbs when he was in jail for, well for.... But by then, she had called it quits.
I don’t have to tell you about Rose Nägele. One of the dearest women our family has known, hard worker too, bright girl. Did Hans’ sexual addiction start with Rose, or was that the first we knew of it? I wish I knew. But he never should have hurt her like he did.
He seems to have learned from those failed courtships. He and Traute cuddled off and on, teased each other like friends do, yet it is clear that he loves her deeply. Things are different with him and Traute. Maybe he has finally found someone who loves him with all those faults he usually hides so well. She knows every wart and kisses them into diamonds.
In the middle of our lighthearted fun and scholarly debates, Hans dropped a bombshell on us. He dramatically pulled a piece of paper from his hip pocket and began to read. Words about a madman who spreads lies till they become truth. Not till they are believed as truth, like we define Goebbels’ pathetic and provocative propaganda. But until they become truth. The more he read, the more you could see the sheer terror on our faces. Terror at the reality of the world portrayed in that poem.
He sat down, quite satisfied with himself. And none of us knew who wrote the text. I thought he had. My brother is articulate and passionate about his writing, and words like that flow from his pen with no effort at all.
But Gottfried Keller had written it, well over a hundred years ago. Schurik immediately devised a plan for forcing every German to read it. ‘We will rent planes and drop millions of these from the skies on every city in Germany.’
And though they joked with him about the extravagance of his idea, threatening to put it all to his rich father’s account, no one contradicted him. I found that extraordinary, but said nothing.
Someone (and it was not Hans) remembered that we were here to celebrate my birthday. A little early, to be sure, but the cake would not keep another eight days.
And dear Schurik, he who has stolen my heart, suggested we head down to the river. We dug through the mounds of junk in Hans’ desk drawers till we found twine ‘to cool the wine the Russian way,’ Schurik said with a mysterious smile. And Traute managed to find five things that held liquid—I dare not call them cups or glasses—and four forks and a spoon for the cake. I think part of the strength of their relationship is that she does not try to organize Hans’ life.
We had the city almost entirely to ourselves. Our Luftwaffe has been so merciless in its bombings of the English that we fear the day retaliation begins. It has not started yet, but everyone lives behind walls of black curtains. The air raid shelters are often better stocked than our own kitchens.
Hans’ apartment in the Mandl Strasse lies next to Munich’s English Gardens. We walked that street, and I fingered the cold cement wall that divides Schwabing from the Gardens. Schwabing, heart of the university district, home to artists and actors alike, draws its life from the Gardens. In this patch of earth, German efficiency is buried among dense shrubs and wonderful forests. I understand why Hans’ letters home spoke most often about his time in these Gardens, walking in the rain, breathing the last remnant of pure air in a place so brownly defiled.
A great harvest moon hung over the river. Christl wished out loud that his family friend, Emil Nolde, could see this yellow orb and paint it. I tried not to express my astonishment that Christl actually knew someone whose work I studied and imitated. I must have been bad at disguising my surprise, because Schurik mentioned that Nolde had painted a portrait of Christl and his sister Angelika. No wonder Hans spent as little time as possible in Ulm. These people fed his soul.
Oh, and the twine! Schurik tied it around the bottle and dragged it in the icy river. The feel of doing something distinctly Russian must have ignited the passions he cannot hide for long. Because we sang his songs of the Volga, melodies swaying in moonlit birch trees and steppes that never end, tunes no Bach-fed brain could ever sing. We sang his songs that speak of death, and hardship, and the pain of living, all tinged with silver and gold and horizons sparkling with dew. All in the darkest, richest, minor keys on earth, a darkness and a richness banned from Aryan ears as too Jewish.
We found a level place next to the river, a river that hardly compares to the great rivers of Ulm—the Iller and the Danube. This Isar flows dirty, more a canal than a river. In fact, in places only the canal that parallels the river is navigable. But if you must have a city, you should have a river, and the Isar is better than nothing at all.
The hilarity of Christl’s game segued into muted discussion no less intense than the debates of Hans’ room. I am the only one of the group not studying medicine. Over cake and wine, after the embarrassment of toasts in my honor, we talked about the internships they had recently completed.
Schurik explained for my benefit his distaste for medicine. His father, a well-known physician in Munich, more or less forced him to study. He wants to be a sculptor, but that matches neither his father’s nor the government’s view of what is good for young men to do. The least detestable alternative was to acquiesce to his father’s desire, since that also meant a near-exemption from active duty in Hitler’s army. But after the war, he wanted to pursue the things he cherished: sculpting, painting, and piano. And he wanted to go home to Russia.
Hans lapsed into his melodramatic style of story-telling to describe his work at Schrobenhausen. He had treated frost-bite victims from the winter’s devastation in Russia. He must have forgotten that my Fritz is headed to the Russian front tomorrow, because he described the fingerless hands in gory detail. But he ended with the observation that if he had ever doubted his love of medicine, the internship had restored the passion. For he saw that healing was something God let him do. He could not undo all the evils our country inflicted, but he could heal, one person at a time. And after the war, he could do even more.
Traute nodded vigorously as he spoke. Her permission to study medicine was likely granted due to her father’s rank in the National Socialist Party, since we women are expected to be reproductive units, with minimal education wasted on us. When it was her turn, she whispered that after the war she wanted to be the best doctor in either Munich or Hamburg (her hometown), if you-know-who did not pass laws that kept her from practicing. Without her saying a word, we knew how absurd, yet how necessary, it was for her to whisper those sentiments at midnight, under a harvest moon, in a deserted city.
Even I noticed that Christl was being quiet. I thought perhaps he had fallen asleep, since he does have a newborn at home. But Schurik knew his friend better. ‘Christl, Christl,’ he shook Christl by the knee. ‘What are you thinking? What do you want from life?’
When Christl looked up, the tears were streaming down his cheeks. ‘Listen to us,’ he nearly shouted, caring little whether Nazi mole heard him or not. ‘You all know what Manfred tells us is going on in Poland. They are slaughtering Jews, murdering innocent children. And we sit here and talk of medicine and art. After the war, after the war, we say. Not just you. Me too. I am guilty too.
‘But what am I going to tell my children? That their daddy was too much of a coward to do anything? That their daddy did not love them enough? After the war, after the war. Well, listen to me. After the war, the rest of the nations will have the right to say, You Heines, you Jerries, you damn fools, why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you resist?’
I know I did not breathe for the longest time. The cold night grew colder still. Resist. He had said the word. Resist.
(and this isn't even the good part... there's more!)
(c) Ruth Hanna Sachs
It is so cold today. Cold and snowing. I wonder if I am making the biggest mistake of my life. Yesterday I footed numbers in Daddy’s office, checked his arithmetic to keep his clients happy. He had the heat turned up. Even Inge laughed now and then.
But today, today. The signs flashed by, Mering, Nannhofen. I told myself over and over, Sophie, you have waited two years to be in Munich with Hans. With Hans!
I will admit it out loud. It was great fun seeing him waving to me from the platform. His arm around Traute, that casual romance that gives him the very breath he breathes. She looked the picture of elegance, every hair in place, her shoes matching the skirt she wore. I really should not like her, you know. But there is something so un-Nazi about her, we are at once kindred spirits.
We rode the streetcar out to Dr. Muth’s. If Hans had not told me volumes about this Catholic scholar before, if I had not met him myself a few months ago, I would have packed my bags and headed home. Home to Ulm, where that heated office burns me with its boring nothingness, and we all agree on politics. But in the time it took Dr. Muth to put on tea, I did not know myself.
Hans had warned me about the professor’s penchant for penetrating masks. I thought I wore mine well. You know what I mean. That Sophie mask that tells the world I am in control, that I know what I want, when and where. But with a few words, Dr. Muth rips it off, ruthlessly, like you rip a bandage off a child.
We were talking about this and that. Knowing that Dr. Muth concurs with our conclusions about, about Hitler, I courageously talked about our need to do something. You know I have felt this way a long time now. We jabber and prattle about how awful that man is. Daddy even got arrested for calling him the divine scourge on Germany.
But none of us does anything about it. We talk, and the more the cheap wine flows, the grander our schemes. So I casually mentioned that opinion, feeling a little bolstered by Hans’ presence. And Dr. Muth fixed those blue eyes, blue eyes of lightning, not of sky, directly on me. ‘And, Fräulein Scholl, what basis do you find in the Bible for what you propose?’
Traute rescued me by steering the discussion to the magazine Dr. Muth publishes, or used to publish till the Nazis shut him down. But I know he has not forgotten the question. I will have to find an answer for him.
Hans, my dear dense brother, soon caught on to Traute’s defense. ‘Sophie, let’s celebrate your birthday at my place tonight. Should we invite all our friends, or would that be too much for you?’
And with that deft maneuver, we were out his garden gate, back on the street.
Funny, but I had nearly forgotten the cake Mama had baked, and the bottle of wine Daddy had donated. I would have preferred waiting till tomorrow, when Fritz is here. But I could not spend one more minute in that house, with that question hanging over me.
I persuaded Hans to keep the party small. He knows these people, and I feel like I should too, the way he talks about them when he comes home. But all at once, I stood overwhelmed.
Overwhelmed by the swastikas on every house. Munich… The very best of our country has been violated, raped by men in brown. Venetian beauty defiled by shrines to criminals. The artists I cherish, the Noldes and Geyers who paint with color so vibrant, they make the world sing, they are burned and banned. In their place, hideous murals sully grand edifices.
Hans and Traute have learned to cope with the devastation. When we passed Hitler’s House of Modern Art, Hans whispered in my ear, ‘Soph, you like the wienie palace?’ I had heard that joke before, but seeing it firsthand, I erupted into giggles. First time I felt good all day. This Parthenon with columns that, yes!, were a tribute to proud Bavarian sausages. At best.
They left me alone in his room for an hour or two. The Blue Horses that survived Hans’ own arrest a few years ago comforted me strangely. I resisted the urge to hang the picture straighter. I must have slept, lulled to sleep by the aroma of a lone jasmine in an airless room. For it was nearly dark when Hans and Traute returned, bearing food.
‘We invited Christl and Alex,’ Hans said, waiting for my reaction. I could not think of two people I wanted to meet more.
Alexander Schmorell arrived first, doffing his beret and kissing my hand. Before the second sentence, I found myself calling him Schurik like everyone else, blessing him with the Russian name that connected him to his homeland. And separated him from the insanity of our Volk.
And I don’t have to tell you that for half a second, I could not even remember Fritz’s name. Schurik embodied everything I have wanted Fritz to be. He made me laugh, he made me forget that I was being demure, he made me feel like a lady, every bit as pulled-together as Traute.
When Christl showed up, the other three reacted with an emotion I have never experienced. This tall, lanky farm boy folded himself into the room. It was like their backbone had straightened or their vision re-focused. Christoph Probst, this Christl, brought pictures of his babies, news of his wife, that village decency that knows little of goose-stepping or Sieg Heils.
He also got us going on a game he had conjured up on the way to the party. We tried to stump each other on famous literary quotes. Sounds boring, I know, yet it was anything but. Of course, someone had to quote Novalis, and I think Hans was the culprit. He likes Novalis’ view of going to the edge of the pit before finding the way home. And we debated Goethe, a trivial debate to be sure, but not completely without merit. Can someone who never lived a single day of misery really write? I say no. Goethe lovers find themselves forced to defend the indefensible.
I enjoyed being among friends who read banned literature. There are not many places in Germany these days where one would dare quote from Heine or Stefan George or Spinoza. But in this room, not to quote our greatest poets and thinkers was unthinkable. Traute assured me she would introduce me to the booksellers who stocked these good books.
And I cannot tell you what it did for me to see Hans among these people. You know how he has those mood swings that make him impossible to love. I can never forget how badly he treated Lisa Remppis, my best friend. She tolerated his ups and downs far longer than any woman should, and he still trifled with her feelings for him. I think he only wanted her when she finally had enough. Some stupid nonsense about writing her name out in bread crumbs when he was in jail for, well for.... But by then, she had called it quits.
I don’t have to tell you about Rose Nägele. One of the dearest women our family has known, hard worker too, bright girl. Did Hans’ sexual addiction start with Rose, or was that the first we knew of it? I wish I knew. But he never should have hurt her like he did.
He seems to have learned from those failed courtships. He and Traute cuddled off and on, teased each other like friends do, yet it is clear that he loves her deeply. Things are different with him and Traute. Maybe he has finally found someone who loves him with all those faults he usually hides so well. She knows every wart and kisses them into diamonds.
In the middle of our lighthearted fun and scholarly debates, Hans dropped a bombshell on us. He dramatically pulled a piece of paper from his hip pocket and began to read. Words about a madman who spreads lies till they become truth. Not till they are believed as truth, like we define Goebbels’ pathetic and provocative propaganda. But until they become truth. The more he read, the more you could see the sheer terror on our faces. Terror at the reality of the world portrayed in that poem.
He sat down, quite satisfied with himself. And none of us knew who wrote the text. I thought he had. My brother is articulate and passionate about his writing, and words like that flow from his pen with no effort at all.
But Gottfried Keller had written it, well over a hundred years ago. Schurik immediately devised a plan for forcing every German to read it. ‘We will rent planes and drop millions of these from the skies on every city in Germany.’
And though they joked with him about the extravagance of his idea, threatening to put it all to his rich father’s account, no one contradicted him. I found that extraordinary, but said nothing.
Someone (and it was not Hans) remembered that we were here to celebrate my birthday. A little early, to be sure, but the cake would not keep another eight days.
And dear Schurik, he who has stolen my heart, suggested we head down to the river. We dug through the mounds of junk in Hans’ desk drawers till we found twine ‘to cool the wine the Russian way,’ Schurik said with a mysterious smile. And Traute managed to find five things that held liquid—I dare not call them cups or glasses—and four forks and a spoon for the cake. I think part of the strength of their relationship is that she does not try to organize Hans’ life.
We had the city almost entirely to ourselves. Our Luftwaffe has been so merciless in its bombings of the English that we fear the day retaliation begins. It has not started yet, but everyone lives behind walls of black curtains. The air raid shelters are often better stocked than our own kitchens.
Hans’ apartment in the Mandl Strasse lies next to Munich’s English Gardens. We walked that street, and I fingered the cold cement wall that divides Schwabing from the Gardens. Schwabing, heart of the university district, home to artists and actors alike, draws its life from the Gardens. In this patch of earth, German efficiency is buried among dense shrubs and wonderful forests. I understand why Hans’ letters home spoke most often about his time in these Gardens, walking in the rain, breathing the last remnant of pure air in a place so brownly defiled.
A great harvest moon hung over the river. Christl wished out loud that his family friend, Emil Nolde, could see this yellow orb and paint it. I tried not to express my astonishment that Christl actually knew someone whose work I studied and imitated. I must have been bad at disguising my surprise, because Schurik mentioned that Nolde had painted a portrait of Christl and his sister Angelika. No wonder Hans spent as little time as possible in Ulm. These people fed his soul.
Oh, and the twine! Schurik tied it around the bottle and dragged it in the icy river. The feel of doing something distinctly Russian must have ignited the passions he cannot hide for long. Because we sang his songs of the Volga, melodies swaying in moonlit birch trees and steppes that never end, tunes no Bach-fed brain could ever sing. We sang his songs that speak of death, and hardship, and the pain of living, all tinged with silver and gold and horizons sparkling with dew. All in the darkest, richest, minor keys on earth, a darkness and a richness banned from Aryan ears as too Jewish.
We found a level place next to the river, a river that hardly compares to the great rivers of Ulm—the Iller and the Danube. This Isar flows dirty, more a canal than a river. In fact, in places only the canal that parallels the river is navigable. But if you must have a city, you should have a river, and the Isar is better than nothing at all.
The hilarity of Christl’s game segued into muted discussion no less intense than the debates of Hans’ room. I am the only one of the group not studying medicine. Over cake and wine, after the embarrassment of toasts in my honor, we talked about the internships they had recently completed.
Schurik explained for my benefit his distaste for medicine. His father, a well-known physician in Munich, more or less forced him to study. He wants to be a sculptor, but that matches neither his father’s nor the government’s view of what is good for young men to do. The least detestable alternative was to acquiesce to his father’s desire, since that also meant a near-exemption from active duty in Hitler’s army. But after the war, he wanted to pursue the things he cherished: sculpting, painting, and piano. And he wanted to go home to Russia.
Hans lapsed into his melodramatic style of story-telling to describe his work at Schrobenhausen. He had treated frost-bite victims from the winter’s devastation in Russia. He must have forgotten that my Fritz is headed to the Russian front tomorrow, because he described the fingerless hands in gory detail. But he ended with the observation that if he had ever doubted his love of medicine, the internship had restored the passion. For he saw that healing was something God let him do. He could not undo all the evils our country inflicted, but he could heal, one person at a time. And after the war, he could do even more.
Traute nodded vigorously as he spoke. Her permission to study medicine was likely granted due to her father’s rank in the National Socialist Party, since we women are expected to be reproductive units, with minimal education wasted on us. When it was her turn, she whispered that after the war she wanted to be the best doctor in either Munich or Hamburg (her hometown), if you-know-who did not pass laws that kept her from practicing. Without her saying a word, we knew how absurd, yet how necessary, it was for her to whisper those sentiments at midnight, under a harvest moon, in a deserted city.
Even I noticed that Christl was being quiet. I thought perhaps he had fallen asleep, since he does have a newborn at home. But Schurik knew his friend better. ‘Christl, Christl,’ he shook Christl by the knee. ‘What are you thinking? What do you want from life?’
When Christl looked up, the tears were streaming down his cheeks. ‘Listen to us,’ he nearly shouted, caring little whether Nazi mole heard him or not. ‘You all know what Manfred tells us is going on in Poland. They are slaughtering Jews, murdering innocent children. And we sit here and talk of medicine and art. After the war, after the war, we say. Not just you. Me too. I am guilty too.
‘But what am I going to tell my children? That their daddy was too much of a coward to do anything? That their daddy did not love them enough? After the war, after the war. Well, listen to me. After the war, the rest of the nations will have the right to say, You Heines, you Jerries, you damn fools, why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you resist?’
I know I did not breathe for the longest time. The cold night grew colder still. Resist. He had said the word. Resist.
(and this isn't even the good part... there's more!)
(c) Ruth Hanna Sachs
Thursday, June 25, 2009
History: January through December 2005
November 7, 2005
One of my "guilty pleasures" is the Thursday night show on CBS, Without a Trace. It's got some of the best writing on TV. If they would just make Sam Spade less of a doormat, it could start winning Emmys.
But I had forgotten how gripping I found last season's cliffhanger until the new season got underway in September. In case you missed it: A young woman ~ very, very reminiscent of Sophie Scholl ~ shot and killed a known genocidal general outside his consulate. She had always been a "good girl," good grades, good reputation, good works.
Yet after she found out about the millions this man had slaughtered, and after she realized that the American government would do nothing to stop him ~ he was an ally, after all ~ she took matters into her own hands and shot him.
In May as in September, the script made me wonder what the difference was between that young woman, who was arrested for obviously breaking the law, and Sophie, Traute, Kaethe, and the other young women of the White Rose. Sophie famously told Susanne Hirzel that if she had a gun and saw Hitler walking down the street, she would not hesitate to kill him.
We deem Sophie a heroine. If you believe the hype surrounding the new Sophie Scholl mythos in Germany, German parents want their daughters to grow up to be Sophie.
But do we really? Do we really want our daughters to take on tyrants with a pistol, to sacrifice their lives for a just cause? Or is it merely hype? Hype that makes us feel better about "those" days without doing a damn thing about our days?
What IS the "ethics of resistance," the ethics of treason? When is it right to break the law in the name of rightness and justice, and when is it not? Who gets to decide? Is history the final arbiter? Or can we know right here, right now that our actions ~ our illegal actions ~ answer to a higher law?
These musings only intensified upon the death of Rosa Parks, another "Sophie" ~ and interestingly, about Sophie's age in real time ~ who risked death by sitting in a bus. Before she acted, others who had acted had been murdered by policemen for doing the exact same thing. Ethics of treason, ethics of "criminal" acts to right wrongs...
I don't have the answer to my own questions. But if we are to "get" the White Rose story and understand Sophie's resistance, Willi's backbone, Traute's defiance, Schurik's passion, Kaethe's small courage, then we need to think about why we deem them heroes. Whom do we wish today's youth to emulate, and why?
On a different note: Thanks to Armin Ziegler, I have a copy of the new book of letters written by and between Sophie Scholl and Fritz Hartnagel. Look for my review of the book on our White Rose Web site.
It's a vast improvement over prior Scholl-centric documents, but there are still a few disappointing gaps that remain unaddressed. However, if it's a turning point in the Scholl/Hartnagel relationship to White Rose research, I greet it (and them) with open arms.
September 12, 2005
Making some progress, slow and steady, on Volume III of the White Rose History. However, that research has opened a completely unexpected line of work.
Part of Volume III includes tracing what happened to surviving White Rose members or their families after the war. I may not be a Scholl fan, but the Oct. 1943-May 1945 timeline does include Elisabeth, Fritz, Werner, yes, and even Inge. The appendix to Volume III is a "Hall of Fame and Shame," what became of each person.
While chasing rabbits regarding Scholls, I fell into a Wonderland hole that will either generate a Volume IV, or a completely separate work altogether. For once you start looking at anything in Germany postwar, you have to deal with Americans and Brits who shaped and molded contemporary German society.
Suddenly, Inge's ability to create a White Rose legend that enjoyed widespread official support ~ not merely from German authority figures, but also legitimized by the occupying Powers That Be ~ began to make sense. The Allies seemed to have been less interested in genuine de-Nazification, and more intent on re-education. It was more important to have good stories told by compliant story-tellers than it was to underwrite scholarship and reward those who had actually resisted Hitler.
Compliance, not conviction, was the postwar watchword.
It's been more than a bit disillusioning. I guess any time we delve past the carefully constructed facade and examine "politics" for its true goals and aims, we are bound and determined to become a little cynical. Volume IV (with a working title of "American News and World Report") is no exception.
Oh well. Sometimes we have to be sure we really want to ask our questions. Because we may not particularly care for the answers when they come.
July 28, 2005
It is with genuine sadness that I must report the death of Dr. Erich Schmorell. Received an email from the Russian "Schmorell biographer," Dr. Igor Chramow. He said that our friend ~ whose memory is truly for a blessing ~ died on July 15.
For many years, Dr. Schmorell and the Probst family were the only ones with backbone enough to stand up to Inge Scholl. They paid dearly for their courage, being shunned by official White Rose people, all but ignored by German scholarship. They resigned from the White Rose Foundation (Weisse-Rose-Stiftung) in protest, and no one paid them any heed.
But like their more famous relatives Alex Schmorell and Christoph Probst, they did what was right, regardless of consequences. For that, I honor them, and on this day especially a man and his wife whom we cherished deeply. I can never eat asparagus without thinking of their tremendous hospitality and openness.
July 13, 2005
Has it really been almost three months since I added to this journal? So much for resolutions...
When I wrote on April 27, I had just returned from speaking out at Sonoma State University, a very pleasant experience indeed. Their students were attentive and asked excellent questions. I knew they'd actually listened when one young woman raised her hand and wondered aloud how they had kept track of all the money that Eugen Grimminger raised on their behalf. Hmm, a business/history major, perhaps?
Especially gratifying when Dr. Goodman's call for Darfur Relief after the lecture was met with significant positive response from those same students. That is the effect that the telling of the White Rose story should have.
A month later, I got to speak at the annual dinner of the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Fulbright Association. I feel "connected" to this group, having Fulbrighted in 1977. Great fun to meet a recent graduate who was heading out on her Fulbright experience to Venezuela in a couple of months, along with a young German student about to return home.
During the Q&A, I talked about the topics the students and the adults who learned from them debated and discussed. The "White Rose" was not homogeneous, neither religiously nor politically. Their debates were fiery, impassioned. As most good debates are. But with tremendous respect for the 'opponent.'
Among the topics I described was one that truly consumed the students in Munich, namely the separation of church and state. In general, they believed that Germany needed separation of church and state, that lack of same was part of the reason Hitler had come to power and stayed in power, once there. What "separation of church and state" looked like was a different matter.
Initially, the subject matter stirred up a very interesting conversation among the Fulbrighters assembled. Which was not surprising, considering the presence of a German Fulbrighter and several who ~ like me ~ had studied in Germany. We know how Germany continues to struggle with this question, how it remains divisive among the populace who chafe under church tax, and clerics who like guaranteed state funding (instead of depending on voluntary individual contributions) and the power that comes with it.
[I did not mention this at the dinner, but in the late 1970s, one of my good friends in Augsburg along with eleven of his fellow students were kicked out of the University of Augsburg's school of theology for questioning ~ not opposing, merely questioning ~ the validity of church tax, infant baptism, and celibacy of the priesthood. They pointed out that not one of those three "doctrines" was part of Catholic theology for the first 300 years of the existence of the Catholic church. No matter. The Bishop of Augsburg unceremoniously kicked them out of the school of theology anyway.]
The wonderful spirited discussion was completely and totally ruined by a Viennese woman who had lived in Vienna during WW2. That is, under the Nazis. She claimed ~ in the whiny voice that characterizes so many people like her ~ that there indeed had been separation of church and state during the Third Reich, because the entire Roman Catholic Church had courageously stood against the Nazis.
After recovering from the shock of hearing what is essentially Holocaust denial of a different sort ~ not denying that the Shoah happened, but rewriting its history nonetheless ~ I told her that I must respectfully disagree with her, because history itself did not support her claim. She would not stop. She kept interrupting people who had additional questions or comments. Not once or twice, but three or four times. Always that whiny voice, always saying that the entire Catholic church had resisted Hitler.
At one point, I commented that indeed, there had been courageous priests and clerics, both Catholic and Lutheran, who had resisted Hitler, and that they had paid dearly. But that they were the exception and not the norm. She would not stop, so finally I said, "Bitte schweigen Sie!" (please be quiet) in the most authoritative German I could muster. She stopped, finally, but the damage had been done.
Her type of whiny outburst seems to occur wherever people gather to consider the horrors of the Holocaust. Elderly Germans show up at synagogues and Jewish organizations, disrupting the Q&A of Holocaust lecture series every single time with a "weeeee didn't knoooow" or something similar. Like this woman ~ whose outburst was more ridiculous because she is a Fulbrighter, for crying out loud, a supposedly educated woman ~ they generally add a "you were not there and I was so I know and you don't" when the speaker was born after 1945. As if that entitles them to rewrite history.
I frankly don't know how to handle this sort of verbal revisionism. I'm trying to learn how to deal with it, because its very frequency of occurrence demands that I do. Anyone reading this who has suggestions, post a comment here, please!
Sadly, people like this Viennese Fulbrighter often obscure the real progress that is being made ~ slowly, but it's there ~ in public German discourse about the Shoah. Most of the real work is being done by the younger generation, by young adults not unlike the White Rose students. They are not afraid to open locked trunks in attics or dust off documents buried in closed archives. They shame their forebears, a shame that is healthy and will in the end be Germany's redemption.
That experience prompted me to write a short essay entitled Papal Fallibility, included in this blog as a separate entry. Comments are welcome. Death threats? Not so much.
April 27, 2005
It feels good to come up for air now that Volume II of my White Rose History is shipping. Knew that "the" database had lots of information in it, but never dreamed just how much until I started writing.
Fact-checking was a bear this time around. Volume II is even more controversial than Volume I (and you thought that stirred up a hornet's nest ~ ha!, it's child's play compared to Volume II!). But controversial in a good way.
Because these students and the adults who learned from them really shine. Yes, they do dumb things. They wouldn't be human if they didn't. And yes, they make some hurtful mistakes that cost many others their freedom, such as Hans Scholl's inclusion of Gisela Schertling in group activities despite knowing her Nazi attitudes, and her subsequent betrayal of nearly everyone.
And I had to write about the rift after February 9. That's easier to put in a timeline than it was to narrate in this book, especially since the consequences of that rift were much greater than I had understood before. It was such a painful parting of the ways. And it leaves us with the question of how we do and should react when a "movement" we align ourselves with takes on a direction we don't like. How they handled it (badly) opens the door for discussion about what we should do in the same case. Not quite sure there are easy answers for this question.
I'm sure there will be a number of people who really, really won't like this book, because there are no sacred cows, no taboos. If we are to honor these people, we must honor them as they were, not as we wish them to be. Sometimes it's hard to let go of the halo and pedestal ~ harder for us than for the people perched atop that pedestal, wearing that halo, you know?
We continue to call for an end to German censorship, for an end to closed archives and blocked (and missing) transcripts. Our ongoing work in that area moves at a snail's pace. Watch this Web site ~ along with the Center for White Rose Studies site ~ for more information about that.
Please keep talking to us, especially as you read the histories. What moves you? Did anything in their lives speak directly to you? It's a powerful story when the legend is removed. We want to hear how it affected you.
Back to work. Miles to go before I sleep!
One of my "guilty pleasures" is the Thursday night show on CBS, Without a Trace. It's got some of the best writing on TV. If they would just make Sam Spade less of a doormat, it could start winning Emmys.
But I had forgotten how gripping I found last season's cliffhanger until the new season got underway in September. In case you missed it: A young woman ~ very, very reminiscent of Sophie Scholl ~ shot and killed a known genocidal general outside his consulate. She had always been a "good girl," good grades, good reputation, good works.
Yet after she found out about the millions this man had slaughtered, and after she realized that the American government would do nothing to stop him ~ he was an ally, after all ~ she took matters into her own hands and shot him.
In May as in September, the script made me wonder what the difference was between that young woman, who was arrested for obviously breaking the law, and Sophie, Traute, Kaethe, and the other young women of the White Rose. Sophie famously told Susanne Hirzel that if she had a gun and saw Hitler walking down the street, she would not hesitate to kill him.
We deem Sophie a heroine. If you believe the hype surrounding the new Sophie Scholl mythos in Germany, German parents want their daughters to grow up to be Sophie.
But do we really? Do we really want our daughters to take on tyrants with a pistol, to sacrifice their lives for a just cause? Or is it merely hype? Hype that makes us feel better about "those" days without doing a damn thing about our days?
What IS the "ethics of resistance," the ethics of treason? When is it right to break the law in the name of rightness and justice, and when is it not? Who gets to decide? Is history the final arbiter? Or can we know right here, right now that our actions ~ our illegal actions ~ answer to a higher law?
These musings only intensified upon the death of Rosa Parks, another "Sophie" ~ and interestingly, about Sophie's age in real time ~ who risked death by sitting in a bus. Before she acted, others who had acted had been murdered by policemen for doing the exact same thing. Ethics of treason, ethics of "criminal" acts to right wrongs...
I don't have the answer to my own questions. But if we are to "get" the White Rose story and understand Sophie's resistance, Willi's backbone, Traute's defiance, Schurik's passion, Kaethe's small courage, then we need to think about why we deem them heroes. Whom do we wish today's youth to emulate, and why?
On a different note: Thanks to Armin Ziegler, I have a copy of the new book of letters written by and between Sophie Scholl and Fritz Hartnagel. Look for my review of the book on our White Rose Web site.
It's a vast improvement over prior Scholl-centric documents, but there are still a few disappointing gaps that remain unaddressed. However, if it's a turning point in the Scholl/Hartnagel relationship to White Rose research, I greet it (and them) with open arms.
September 12, 2005
Making some progress, slow and steady, on Volume III of the White Rose History. However, that research has opened a completely unexpected line of work.
Part of Volume III includes tracing what happened to surviving White Rose members or their families after the war. I may not be a Scholl fan, but the Oct. 1943-May 1945 timeline does include Elisabeth, Fritz, Werner, yes, and even Inge. The appendix to Volume III is a "Hall of Fame and Shame," what became of each person.
While chasing rabbits regarding Scholls, I fell into a Wonderland hole that will either generate a Volume IV, or a completely separate work altogether. For once you start looking at anything in Germany postwar, you have to deal with Americans and Brits who shaped and molded contemporary German society.
Suddenly, Inge's ability to create a White Rose legend that enjoyed widespread official support ~ not merely from German authority figures, but also legitimized by the occupying Powers That Be ~ began to make sense. The Allies seemed to have been less interested in genuine de-Nazification, and more intent on re-education. It was more important to have good stories told by compliant story-tellers than it was to underwrite scholarship and reward those who had actually resisted Hitler.
Compliance, not conviction, was the postwar watchword.
It's been more than a bit disillusioning. I guess any time we delve past the carefully constructed facade and examine "politics" for its true goals and aims, we are bound and determined to become a little cynical. Volume IV (with a working title of "American News and World Report") is no exception.
Oh well. Sometimes we have to be sure we really want to ask our questions. Because we may not particularly care for the answers when they come.
July 28, 2005
It is with genuine sadness that I must report the death of Dr. Erich Schmorell. Received an email from the Russian "Schmorell biographer," Dr. Igor Chramow. He said that our friend ~ whose memory is truly for a blessing ~ died on July 15.
For many years, Dr. Schmorell and the Probst family were the only ones with backbone enough to stand up to Inge Scholl. They paid dearly for their courage, being shunned by official White Rose people, all but ignored by German scholarship. They resigned from the White Rose Foundation (Weisse-Rose-Stiftung) in protest, and no one paid them any heed.
But like their more famous relatives Alex Schmorell and Christoph Probst, they did what was right, regardless of consequences. For that, I honor them, and on this day especially a man and his wife whom we cherished deeply. I can never eat asparagus without thinking of their tremendous hospitality and openness.
July 13, 2005
Has it really been almost three months since I added to this journal? So much for resolutions...
When I wrote on April 27, I had just returned from speaking out at Sonoma State University, a very pleasant experience indeed. Their students were attentive and asked excellent questions. I knew they'd actually listened when one young woman raised her hand and wondered aloud how they had kept track of all the money that Eugen Grimminger raised on their behalf. Hmm, a business/history major, perhaps?
Especially gratifying when Dr. Goodman's call for Darfur Relief after the lecture was met with significant positive response from those same students. That is the effect that the telling of the White Rose story should have.
A month later, I got to speak at the annual dinner of the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Fulbright Association. I feel "connected" to this group, having Fulbrighted in 1977. Great fun to meet a recent graduate who was heading out on her Fulbright experience to Venezuela in a couple of months, along with a young German student about to return home.
During the Q&A, I talked about the topics the students and the adults who learned from them debated and discussed. The "White Rose" was not homogeneous, neither religiously nor politically. Their debates were fiery, impassioned. As most good debates are. But with tremendous respect for the 'opponent.'
Among the topics I described was one that truly consumed the students in Munich, namely the separation of church and state. In general, they believed that Germany needed separation of church and state, that lack of same was part of the reason Hitler had come to power and stayed in power, once there. What "separation of church and state" looked like was a different matter.
Initially, the subject matter stirred up a very interesting conversation among the Fulbrighters assembled. Which was not surprising, considering the presence of a German Fulbrighter and several who ~ like me ~ had studied in Germany. We know how Germany continues to struggle with this question, how it remains divisive among the populace who chafe under church tax, and clerics who like guaranteed state funding (instead of depending on voluntary individual contributions) and the power that comes with it.
[I did not mention this at the dinner, but in the late 1970s, one of my good friends in Augsburg along with eleven of his fellow students were kicked out of the University of Augsburg's school of theology for questioning ~ not opposing, merely questioning ~ the validity of church tax, infant baptism, and celibacy of the priesthood. They pointed out that not one of those three "doctrines" was part of Catholic theology for the first 300 years of the existence of the Catholic church. No matter. The Bishop of Augsburg unceremoniously kicked them out of the school of theology anyway.]
The wonderful spirited discussion was completely and totally ruined by a Viennese woman who had lived in Vienna during WW2. That is, under the Nazis. She claimed ~ in the whiny voice that characterizes so many people like her ~ that there indeed had been separation of church and state during the Third Reich, because the entire Roman Catholic Church had courageously stood against the Nazis.
After recovering from the shock of hearing what is essentially Holocaust denial of a different sort ~ not denying that the Shoah happened, but rewriting its history nonetheless ~ I told her that I must respectfully disagree with her, because history itself did not support her claim. She would not stop. She kept interrupting people who had additional questions or comments. Not once or twice, but three or four times. Always that whiny voice, always saying that the entire Catholic church had resisted Hitler.
At one point, I commented that indeed, there had been courageous priests and clerics, both Catholic and Lutheran, who had resisted Hitler, and that they had paid dearly. But that they were the exception and not the norm. She would not stop, so finally I said, "Bitte schweigen Sie!" (please be quiet) in the most authoritative German I could muster. She stopped, finally, but the damage had been done.
Her type of whiny outburst seems to occur wherever people gather to consider the horrors of the Holocaust. Elderly Germans show up at synagogues and Jewish organizations, disrupting the Q&A of Holocaust lecture series every single time with a "weeeee didn't knoooow" or something similar. Like this woman ~ whose outburst was more ridiculous because she is a Fulbrighter, for crying out loud, a supposedly educated woman ~ they generally add a "you were not there and I was so I know and you don't" when the speaker was born after 1945. As if that entitles them to rewrite history.
I frankly don't know how to handle this sort of verbal revisionism. I'm trying to learn how to deal with it, because its very frequency of occurrence demands that I do. Anyone reading this who has suggestions, post a comment here, please!
Sadly, people like this Viennese Fulbrighter often obscure the real progress that is being made ~ slowly, but it's there ~ in public German discourse about the Shoah. Most of the real work is being done by the younger generation, by young adults not unlike the White Rose students. They are not afraid to open locked trunks in attics or dust off documents buried in closed archives. They shame their forebears, a shame that is healthy and will in the end be Germany's redemption.
That experience prompted me to write a short essay entitled Papal Fallibility, included in this blog as a separate entry. Comments are welcome. Death threats? Not so much.
April 27, 2005
It feels good to come up for air now that Volume II of my White Rose History is shipping. Knew that "the" database had lots of information in it, but never dreamed just how much until I started writing.
Fact-checking was a bear this time around. Volume II is even more controversial than Volume I (and you thought that stirred up a hornet's nest ~ ha!, it's child's play compared to Volume II!). But controversial in a good way.
Because these students and the adults who learned from them really shine. Yes, they do dumb things. They wouldn't be human if they didn't. And yes, they make some hurtful mistakes that cost many others their freedom, such as Hans Scholl's inclusion of Gisela Schertling in group activities despite knowing her Nazi attitudes, and her subsequent betrayal of nearly everyone.
And I had to write about the rift after February 9. That's easier to put in a timeline than it was to narrate in this book, especially since the consequences of that rift were much greater than I had understood before. It was such a painful parting of the ways. And it leaves us with the question of how we do and should react when a "movement" we align ourselves with takes on a direction we don't like. How they handled it (badly) opens the door for discussion about what we should do in the same case. Not quite sure there are easy answers for this question.
I'm sure there will be a number of people who really, really won't like this book, because there are no sacred cows, no taboos. If we are to honor these people, we must honor them as they were, not as we wish them to be. Sometimes it's hard to let go of the halo and pedestal ~ harder for us than for the people perched atop that pedestal, wearing that halo, you know?
We continue to call for an end to German censorship, for an end to closed archives and blocked (and missing) transcripts. Our ongoing work in that area moves at a snail's pace. Watch this Web site ~ along with the Center for White Rose Studies site ~ for more information about that.
Please keep talking to us, especially as you read the histories. What moves you? Did anything in their lives speak directly to you? It's a powerful story when the legend is removed. We want to hear how it affected you.
Back to work. Miles to go before I sleep!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
