Sophie Scholl

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For the 2005 German film, see Sophie Scholl – The Final Days.
See also: Hans and Sophie Scholl

Sophie Scholl
Execution by guillotine
Resting placeCemetery at Perlacher Forst, Munich, Germany
48°05′50″N 11°35′58″E / 48.09734°N 11.59949°E / 48.09734; 11.59949
NationalityGerman
EducationLudwig Maximilian University of Munich
Occupation(s)Student, political activist
Parents
Relatives

Sophia Magdalena Scholl[a] (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943) was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany.[1][2]

She was convicted of high

anti-Nazi resistance
work.

Early life

Scholl was the daughter of Magdalena (née Müller) and

Forchtenberg am Kocher in the Free People's State of Württemberg
at the time of her birth. She was the fourth of six children:

  1. Inge Aicher-Scholl (1917–1998)[3][4][5]
  2. Hans Scholl (1918–1943)
  3. Elisabeth Hartnagel-Scholl (27 February 1920 – 28 February 2020), married Sophie's long-term boyfriend, Fritz Hartnagel[6][7]
  4. Sophie Scholl (1921–1943)
  5. Werner Scholl (1922–1944) missing in action and presumed dead in June 1944
  6. Thilde Scholl (1925–1926)

Scholl was brought up in the

Lutheran church. She entered junior or grade school at the age of seven, learned easily, and had a carefree childhood. In 1930, the family moved to Ludwigsburg and then two years later to Ulm
where her father had a business consulting office.

The Town Hall in Forchtenberg, the birthplace of Sophie Scholl

In 1932, Scholl began attending a secondary school for girls. At the age of 12, she chose to join the female segment of Hitler Youth,

Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls), as did most of her classmates. Her initial enthusiasm gradually gave way to criticism. She was aware of the dissenting political views of her father, friends, and some teachers. Her own brother Hans, who once eagerly participated in the Hitler Youth program, became entirely disillusioned with the Nazi Party.[8] Political attitude had become an essential criterion in her choice of friends. The arrest of her brothers and friends in 1937 for participating in the German Youth Movement
left a strong impression on her.

She had a talent for drawing and painting and for the first time, came into contact with a few so-called "degenerate" artists. An avid reader, she developed a growing interest in philosophy and theology. The Scholl children all had a deep interest in art, and befriended many artists of the time, particularly controversial ones who stood against National Socialism and explored such themes in their work. One such artist, Otl Aicher, helped Sophie learn to sketch and helped her edit her drawings. He later married her sister Inge.[9]

At the age of 16, Sophie was first arrested by the Gestapo. This came after her brother Hans was discovered to be active in an anti-Hitler Youth group called Deutsche Jungenschaft vom 1.11.1929, (dj.1.11). The Gestapo arrested Hans at his military base and other security agents arrested siblings Inge, Werner, and Sophie at their home shortly after. Sophie was released later the same day, while Inge and Werner were jailed for a week. Hans spent a full three weeks in prison where he underwent intense questioning. He was only released after his cavalry officer intervened. This experience further solidified Sophie's anti-Nazi convictions.[9]

In Spring 1940, she graduated from secondary school, where the subject of her essay was "

passive resistance
.

After her six months in the National Labor Service, in May 1942, she enrolled at the

University of Munich as a student of biology and philosophy.[10]
Her brother Hans, who was studying medicine at the same institution, introduced her to his friends. Although this group of friends eventually was known for their political views, they initially were drawn together by a shared love of art, music, literature, philosophy, and theology. Hiking in the mountains, skiing, and swimming were also of importance to them. They often attended concerts, plays, and lectures together.

In Munich, Scholl met a number of artists, writers, and philosophers, particularly Carl Muth and Theodor Haecker, who were important contacts for her. The question they pondered the most was how the individual must act under a dictatorship. During the summer vacation in 1942, Scholl had to do war service in a metallurgical plant in Ulm. At the same time, her father was serving time in prison for having made a critical remark to an employee about Adolf Hitler.[11]

Origins of the White Rose

Main article: White Rose

Between 1940 and 1941, Scholl's brother, Hans Scholl, a former member of the Hitler Youth, began questioning the principles and policies of the Nazi regime.

National Socialism,[13]
calling themselves the White Rose.

The activities of the White Rose started in June 1942. From end of June until mid July 1942, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell wrote the first four leaflets. Quoting extensively from the Bible, Aristotle, and Novalis, as well as Goethe and Schiller, the iconic poets of German bourgeoisie, they appealed to what they considered the German intelligentsia, believing that these people would be easily convinced by the same arguments that also motivated the authors themselves. These leaflets were left in telephone books in public telephone booths, mailed to professors and students, and taken by courier to other universities for distribution.[14]

Sophie is believed to have first learned about the White Rose in July 1942, but Fritz Hartnagel remembers her asking him in May 1942 if he could get her a pass to buy a duplicating machine (impossible to get in Nazi Germany without a signed and countersigned form),

SS
were much smaller.

Arrest and execution

On 18 February 1943, Sophie and Hans Scholl went to the Ludwig Maximilian University to leave flyers out for the students to read. The Scholls brought a suitcase full of leaflets to the university main building, and hurriedly dropped stacks of copies in the empty corridors for students to find when they left the lecture rooms. Leaving before the lectures had ended, the Scholls noticed that there were some left-over copies in the suitcase and decided to distribute them. Sophie flung the last remaining leaflets from the top floor down into the atrium. This spontaneous action was observed by the university maintenance man,

Nazi Party in 1937.[16]

Hans and Sophie Scholl were taken into the custody of the Gestapo. A draft of a seventh pamphlet, written by Christoph Probst, was found in the possession of Hans Scholl at the time of his arrest by the Gestapo. While Sophie Scholl was able to hide incriminating evidence in an empty classroom shortly before she was captured, Hans tried to destroy the draft of the last leaflet by tearing it apart and trying to swallow it.[15] The Gestapo recovered enough of it to read what it said, and, when pressed, Hans gave the name of the author, Christoph Probst. In his second interrogation, he stated: "The piece of paper that I tore up following my arrest this morning originated with Christoph Probst... All other persons with the exception of Probst are in my opinion not guilty."[17] Christoph Probst was captured on February 20, 1943.

The main Gestapo interrogator was

Robert Mohr
, who initially thought Sophie was innocent. However, after Hans had confessed, Sophie assumed full responsibility in an attempt to protect other members of the White Rose.

In the People's Court before Judge Roland Freisler on 22 February 1943, Scholl was recorded as saying these words:

Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did.[18]

No testimony was allowed for the defendants; this was their only defense.[19]

The grave of Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst, in the Perlacher Friedhof, next to the Stadelheim prison in Munich

On 22 February 1943, Scholl, her brother, Hans, and their friend, Christoph Probst, were found guilty of treason and condemned to death. They were all beheaded by guillotine by executioner

executed at 5 pm, while Hans was executed at 5:02 pm and Christoph was executed at 5:05 pm.[15] The execution was supervised by Walter Roemer [de
], the enforcement chief of the Munich district court. Prison officials were impressed by the condemned prisoners' bravery, and let them smoke cigarettes together before they were executed.

Sophie's last known words are disputed, although Else Gebel remembers the last words Sophie said to her as:

How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause... It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives. What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt.[18][20][21]

As for her last words, they were most likely either "God, my refuge into eternity." or "The sun still shines."[22][15]

Stalingrad in January 1943, but did not return to Germany before Sophie was executed. In October 1945, he married Sophie's sister Elisabeth.[6]

Legacy

After her death, a copy of the sixth leaflet was smuggled out of Germany through Scandinavia to England by German jurist

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, where it was used by the Allied Forces. In mid-1943, the Royal Air Force dropped millions of propaganda copies of the tract over Germany, now retitled The Manifesto of the Students of Munich.[23]

Playwright Lillian Garrett-Groag said in Newsday on 22 February 1993, that "It is possibly the most spectacular moment of resistance that I can think of in the twentieth century ... The fact that five little kids, in the mouth of the wolf, where it really counted, had the tremendous courage to do what they did, is spectacular to me. I know that the world is better for them having been there, but I do not know why."[24]

In the same issue of Newsday,

Holocaust historian Jud Newborn observed that "You cannot really measure the effect of this kind of resistance in whether or not X number of bridges were blown up or a regime fell ... The White Rose really has a more symbolic value, but that's a very important value."[24]

Bust of Sophie Scholl

On 22 February 2003, a bust of Scholl was placed by the government of

Walhalla temple in her honour. She was the fifth[b] woman to receive that honor.[25][26]

The Geschwister-Scholl-Institut ("Scholl Siblings Institute") for Political Science at the

Radio Free Europe building close to the city's Englischer Garten
.

Many local schools as well as countless streets and squares in Germany, and also Austria, have been named after Scholl and her brother.

In 2003, Germans were invited by television broadcaster

Goethe, Gutenberg, Bismarck, Willy Brandt, and Albert Einstein. If the votes of young viewers alone had been counted, Sophie and Hans Scholl would have been ranked first. Several years earlier, readers of Brigitte, a German magazine for women, voted Scholl "the greatest woman of the twentieth century".[27]

On 9 May 2014, Google depicted Scholl for its Google Doodle on the occasion of what would have been her 93rd birthday.[28]

In April 2021, the German Ministry of Finance issued a commemorative sterling silver €20 coin celebrating the 100th anniversary of Scholl's birth.[29]

In popular culture

Film and television

In the 1970s and 1980s, there were three film accounts of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose resistance. The first TV film Der Pedell [de] (1971) focused on the university maintenance man Jakob Schmid, who denounced Scholl and the other White Rose members. The TV film was produced for the West German ZDF.[30] Percy Adlon's Fünf letzte Tage (Five Last Days, 1982) presented Lena Stolze as Scholl in her last days from the point of view of her cellmate Else Gebel. Stolze repeated the role in Michael Verhoeven's Die Weiße Rose (The White Rose, 1982). In an interview, Stolze said that playing the role was "an honour".[31]

In February 2005, a film about Scholl's last days,

Berlin Film Festival
.

The German TV docudrama Frauen die Geschichte machten – Sophie Scholl was broadcast in 2013. Sophie Scholl was played by Liv Lisa Fries.

She was portrayed by Victoria Chilap in the documentary movie Death of a Nation in 2018.[32]

In literature

In February 2009, The History Press published Sophie Scholl: The Real Story of the Woman who Defied Hitler by Frank McDonough.[33][34]

In February 2010, Carl Hanser Verlag released Sophie Scholl: A Biography (in German), by Barbara Beuys.[35]

In theatre

American playwright Lillian Garrett-Groag's play The White Rose features Scholl as a major character.

We Will Not Be Silent, a dramatization by David Meyers of Scholl's imprisonment and interrogation, premiered at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia in July, 2017.[36][37][38]

In later life Whitney Seymour, his wife Catryna, and their daughters Tryntje and Gabriel, co-wrote and produced Stars in the Dark Sky, a one-act play about Hans and Sophie Scholl and their role in the White Rose resistance group in Nazi Germany in the 1940s. The play, which took around five years to write, was released in 2008 (when Seymour was 85) and had five performances off-Broadway.

In music

George Donaldson
, a Scottish folk singer wrote a song called "The White Rose" on an album titled the same, about Sophie and the White Rose movement.

The English punk band Zatopeks released an eponymous love song for Sophie Scholl on their debut album (2005).[39][40]

Mickey 3D, a French rock band, wrote a song called "La Rose Blanche" on an album titled Sebolavy (2016).

American rock band Sheer Mag recorded a song called "(Say Goodbye to) Sophie Scholl" on its 2017 debut album Need to Feel Your Love.[41]

Reg Meuross, a British folk singer, released "For Sophie" on his album Faraway People in 2017.[42]

Social media

Under the title @ichbinsophiescholl the German broadcasters Südwestrundfunk and Bayerische Rundfunk began in May 2021 an Instagram project to commemorate Scholl's 100th birthday. The last months of Scholl's life are featured on Instagram posts and stories styled as if Scholl herself were posting them. The actress Luna Wedler plays Sophie Scholl and illustrates the last year of her life in the style of a modern digital influencer.[43][44]

Further reading

See also

Notes

  1. ^ German: [zoˈfiː makdaˈleːna ˈʃɔl] ⓘ
  2. ^ After: Maria Theresa (1811/1812), Countess Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg (1817), Catherine the Great (1821), Karolina Gerhardinger (1998); before: Edith Stein (2009), Käthe Kollwitz (2019). See full list.

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-8195-6086-5
    .
  2. ^ Lisciotto, Carmelo (2007). "Sophie Scholl". Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
  3. ^ "Inge Aicher-Scholl". 6 September 1998. Archived from the original on 31 December 2007. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
  4. ^ "Inge Scholl: 'Die Weiße Rose'" (in German). Weisse-Rose-Studien. Archived from the original on 12 October 2007. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
  5. ^ "Obituaries". Newsday. 6 September 1998. p. A.51.
  6. ^ a b Ullrich, Volker (8 December 2005). "Politisches Buch: Denke an mich in Deinem Gebet". Die Zeit (in German). Retrieved 23 February 2017.
  7. ^ "Widerstandskämpfer Scholl: Letzte Schwester gestorben". BR24. 1 March 2020. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-1-55652-961-0
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-1-85168-536-3
    .
  10. ISBN 978-0-87486-029-0
    . 'Sophie was at last able to join her brother in Munich and begin reading biology and philosophy at Munich University'.
  11. ISBN 978-0-87486-029-0
    .
  12. ^ a b "Nazis arrest White Rose resistance leaders". History.com. A&E Television Networks (published 5 November 2009). 17 February 2021. Retrieved 20 February 2022.
  13. ^ "The White Rose Leaflets – Revolt & Resistance". www.holocaustresearchproject.org. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  14. ^
    S2CID 201771219
    .
  15. ^
    OCLC 1007750099
    .
  16. ^ Schmid, Jakob. Gestapo Interrogation Transcripts: Willi Graf, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl, and Sophie Scholl. ZC13267, Volumes 1–16. Schmaus. 18 February 1943. E-Document.
  17. ^ Staff, CWRS (19 February 1943). "Second interrogation of Hans Scholl". White Rose History: January 1933 - October 1943. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
  18. ^ a b Simkin, John (January 2016). "Sophie Scholl". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
  19. ISBN 978-1-55652-961-0
    .
  20. ^ Burns, Margie. "Sophie Scholl and the White Rose". The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
  21. ^ Else Gebel (Q23765594). "So ein herrlicher sonniger Tag, und ich muss gehen". www.mythoselser.de. Retrieved 27 May 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  22. S2CID 201765330
    .
  23. ISBN 978-1-55652-961-0
    .
  24. ^ a b Keeler, Bob; Ewich, Heidi (22 February 1993). "Anti-Nazi Movement Still Inspires Germans recall rare courage of 'White Rose'". Newsday. p. 13.
  25. ^ Schallenberg, Jörg (22 February 2003). "Ein neues Gesicht für Walhalla". taz archiv (in German). No. 6987. taz.de. Retrieved 27 February 2022. Heute kommt nun eine fünfte dazu, um deren Aufnahme lange gerungen wurde: Sophie Scholl wird im Rahmen einer feierlichen Zeremonie am Samstag um 11 Uhr in die Walhalla einziehen.
  26. ^ "Sophie Scholl in der "Walhalla"". Der Standard (in German). derstandard.at. 22 February 2003. Retrieved 27 February 2022. Sie ist erst die fünfte Frau, deren Büste unter rund 130 Büsten von Persönlichkeiten in der Ruhmeshalle am Donauufer aufgestellt wurde.
  27. OCLC 988847522
    .
  28. ^ "Sophie Scholl's 93rd Birthday". www.google.com. Retrieved 22 November 2017.
  29. ^ "Germany to honor anti-Nazi hero Sophie Scholl with coin | DW | 12.08.2020". Deutsche Welle. 8 December 2020. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
  30. ^ Der Pedell. In: IMDb.
  31. ^ Jentsch, Julia; Stolze, Lena (March 2005). ""Es war uns eine Ehre, Sophie Scholl zu sein"" ["It was an honour for me to be Sophie Scholl"]. Brigitte (Interview) (in German). Retrieved 21 March 2016.
  32. ^ Death of a Nation, retrieved 30 June 2020
  33. ISBN 978-0-7524-4675-2
    .
  34. ^ Evans, Richard J. (9 April 2009). "Sophie Scholl: The Real Story of the Woman who Defied Hitler". Times Higher Education. p. 50. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
  35. ISBN 978-3-446-23505-2
    . Retrieved 21 March 2016.
  36. ^ "Contemporary American Theater Festival Announces 2017 Summer Season". American Theatre. Theatre Communications Group. 10 March 2017. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  37. ^ Marks, Peter (11 July 2017). "A theater festival in the bucolic countryside, but boiling underneath". Washington Post. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  38. ^ McGuire, Colin (27 July 2017). "CATF: 'We Will Not Be Silent'". The Frederick News-Post. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  39. ^ "Zatopeks – Ain't Nobody Left But Us (album review ) | Sputnikmusic". www.sputnikmusic.com. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
  40. ^ "Serious Snark: "Ain't Nobody Left But Us" by Zatopeks – Serious Review". serioussnark.blogspot.com. 28 July 2011. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
  41. ^ "Need to Feel Your Love | Bandcamp". bandcamp.com. Retrieved 13 July 2017.
  42. ^ "Song Commission – Sophie Scholl #TheWhiteRose".
  43. ^ "Ich bin Sophie Scholl: Instagram-Projekt von SWR und BR" (in German). Swr.de. Retrieved 9 May 2022.
  44. ^ Hupertz, Heike (23 March 2021). "Sophie Scholl ist jetzt bei Instagram". Faz.net. Retrieved 9 May 2022.

External links

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