Peter Yorck von Wartenburg

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Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg (13 November 1904 – 8 August 1944) was a German jurist and a member of the German Resistance against Nazism.^[1] He studied law and politics in Bonn and Breslau from 1923 to 1926, gaining his doctorate in Breslau in 1927 and passing the civil service entrance examination for lawyers in Berlin in 1930.^[2] He married Marion Winter that same year.

Career

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After working as a lawyer, a legal consultant for the

of 9–10 November 1938, he set up a discussion group on the principles of a new Reich constitution.

He was called up as a reserve officer on the outbreak of war, transferring to an administrative post (Wirtschaftsstab Ost) assigned to the Armed Forces High Command in Berlin in 1942. In January 1940, he began to work closely with

, which met very often at Yorck’s home in Berlin-Lichterfelde. Yorck, who took part in all three of the circle’s conferences in Kreisau, supported a coup attempt to be launched with an assassination, unlike his friend Moltke.

When Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg began to speed up preparations for the coup in Berlin in September 1943, he and Yorck came into close contact. Designated as an undersecretary of state for a future Reich Chancellor, Yorck remained in the innermost circle of the conspirators until the very end. After the failed coup attempt, Yorck was arrested in the Bendlerblock in Berlin in the late evening of 20 July 1944, sentenced to death by the People’s Court on 8 August 1944, and executed the same day in Berlin-Plötzensee.

Quotes

"Dearly beloved child of my heart, we are probably standing at the end of our beautiful and rich life together. Because tomorrow the People's Court intends to stand in judgment on me and others. I hear that we have been expelled from the army. They can take the uniform from us, but not the spirit in which we acted. And in that I feel united our fathers and brothers and comrades. The fact that God ordained what has happened is part of his fathomless decrees, which I humbly accept. I believe myself to be pure in heart, yet driven by the feeling of guilt that weighs on all of us. I therefore confidently hope that I find a merciful judge in God."^[4][5]

See also

• List of members of the 20 July plot

References

External links

• Peter Yorck von Wartenburg in the German National Library catalogue
• Photograph of von Wartenburg before the Volksgerichtshof Archived 2019-02-11 at the Wayback Machine
• Biography: Marion Gräfin Yorck von Wartenburg

Countdown zum Untergang: Das lange Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs. (Dokumentäre) ZDF Info. (Teil 1. Sein Film des Prozeßes ist um 21 Minuten zu finden.)