― Sophie Scholl
February 22, 1943- Three ringleaders of the resistance group 'The White Rose', based at Ludwig-Maximilian unversity in Munich were executed by guillotine at Stadelheim prison just a few hours after being given a summary trial for treason.
The crime of which Hans Scholl, 23, Sophie Scholl, 21, and Christoph Probst, 22 were accused?
Undermining the National Socialist regime through the distribution of inflammatory leaflets condemning the passivity of the German people in the face of Hitler's crimes, and advocating passive resistance and active sabotage of the war effort and National Socialist agenda.*
For many, many years, this group- Sophie in particular- have absorbed my admiration, interest, and affection with a great deal of intensity. They represent, for me, all that is admirable and heroic, all that is honest and loveable, as well as the genuine passion and cameraderie one often feels the lack of, here. From their example and writings- from their very seeking and confusions, I've learned more about the purpose, depth and signicance of life on earth than from nearly any other source. When I found myself living in Europe for several months last Spring, my greatest desire, naturally, was to make pilgrimage to Munich, and attempt to see this city as these courageous fellow-students had seen it.
The fierceness of the emotions roused during the days I wandered with Rita through Munich and Ulm, attempting to retrace the steps of the Scholls, was unsettling. I was haunted by a sense of physical and spiritual closeness to the student movement, awed to walk among streets and buildings which I'd scrutinised in photographs, dreamed of, and reconstructed in imagination for years. I was moved to tears as though the events of sixty years ago had taken place only yesterday. Those days in Munich were fraught with joy and anguish. I understand now why Catholics kneel before their saints. In homage, regret, and gratitude, my heart too weighed me to my knees. There was at times a strange, primitive desire to kiss the very cobbles of the streets. I seemed to encounter the students of the 1940's at every corner- every new sight, and my heart gave a great leap: 'They too saw this- walked by this arch, paused by this church, strode through this courtyard to their classrooms!'
It was with a sort of dread that I at last left this world of the living students and took the train across town to the prison and cemetery where they, and so many others of that generation, lost their lives. I was unprepared for the overwhelming physical proximity of these 'imaginary friends' of my childhood, and with their harsh end. When at last I found myself before the three crosses bordered in shrubbery, I was dumb with the ache and solemnity of the moment, kneeling beside this so dearly beloved little group, and encountering them irrevocably as physical entities as much as symbol.
And it came upon me with strangeness as I knelt there, trembling in tenderness and grief before the grave of my long cherished ideal, that here indeed lay the end of the story, the culmination of my years-long quest. Tears slid and stung- sixty years ago youth, integrity, and beauty were flung here faceless and bleeding, flung here carelessly as seeds, each in their own narrow furrow torn from the suffering German soil. In this twilit forest, Sophie was no longer the laughing, eager girl, the tree-climber, nature lover, the artist, brow wrinkled in concentration, who had led me like an older sister and patron saint through my young womanhood.
Hans, here, was a pitiful remnant of bone- gone was the tall and keen-eyed young man, fierce and piercing in his hawk-like intensity, his life and passion and thought.
Hans, here, was a pitiful remnant of bone- gone was the tall and keen-eyed young man, fierce and piercing in his hawk-like intensity, his life and passion and thought.
Christoph, gentle Chris, marveling at the mountains, carrying his baby son on his shoulders, cherishing his soft young wife, her belly round with his second child, was stripped here of motion, even of flesh.
Feckless Alex with his Russian songs and stories and his sketch pad- hair falling over his forehead, rakish smile clamped around his pipe, charm twinkling ephemerally even from photos- Alex here was nothing.
Earnest, conscientious Willi here was nothing.
Limping, brilliant Dr. Huber here was nothing.
The upheaved German soil had covered all here indiscriminately- the blood of these eager hearts, and, more terrible than blood, the merciless, anguished tears torn from the hearts which lingered after them.
And this was the end of the story.
I will be 22 in October, but Sophie, my darling Sophie, lies halted here forever at 21. And yet, 'The sun still shines.' The April sun trembles softly across the Perlacher-Friedholm, the pitiful mounds of soil lined up in neat rows along the silent earth.
This is the end of the story, and yet, it is a story without end.
This story cannot end, because what these students and their friends represented is not a thing which can be killed, which can wither away into nothingness in the darkness of a cemetery. Those who live ideas intensely- who make ideas the master of their bodies rather than servants of them- such as these, who never stooped to live merely as bodies cannot be reduced to mere bodies in death. To live one's life in the burning core of an idea is to live on as an idea eternally. To live the truth is to live without end within the truth.
Within the truth then, the White Rose lives timelessly. Sophie did not speak lightly when she declared in prison, 'God is my refuge into eternity'. I have come to this cemetery in my quest for these dear friends, and I have not found them, though at last, after so many years of yearning, I stand physically beside them. I have sought the living among the dead. They are not here. They are not here.
My heart is as light in this moment as it is broken. These young lives were discarded here like unwanted seed tossed into the war-torn earth, and look- the seeds have sprung up into life- look, my heart, the dry husks have burst out verdantly as flowers and fragrance- Oh, look, look! Because a little cluster of children laid down their lives in defiant love, un-terrified and self-forgetting love during years of terror and hatred, and now the world is in a tumult of blossoms- the world, the anguished old world is a-bloom with white roses.
My heart is as light in this moment as it is broken. These young lives were discarded here like unwanted seed tossed into the war-torn earth, and look- the seeds have sprung up into life- look, my heart, the dry husks have burst out verdantly as flowers and fragrance- Oh, look, look! Because a little cluster of children laid down their lives in defiant love, un-terrified and self-forgetting love during years of terror and hatred, and now the world is in a tumult of blossoms- the world, the anguished old world is a-bloom with white roses.
Whatever is fine in Germany, whatever is fine, and lovely, and noble in humanity- whatever is honorable, and whatever is strong and vital, I have found it here, and can carry it away with me, conscious of new life and endurance. And Sophie, Hans, Christoph, Alex, all you others who have shown me with such passion how to live and die in integrity, I have not forgotten- and I am grateful.
"Isn't it a riddle . . . and awe-inspiring, that everything is so beautiful? Despite the horror. Lately I've noticed something grand and mysterious peering through my sheer joy in all that is beautiful, a sense of its creator . . . Only man can be truly ugly, because he has the free will to estrange himself from this song of praise.
It often seems that he'll manage to drown out this hymn with his cannon thunder, curses and blasphemy. But during this past spring it has dawned upon me that he won't be able to do this. And so I want to try and throw myself on the side of the victor."
It often seems that he'll manage to drown out this hymn with his cannon thunder, curses and blasphemy. But during this past spring it has dawned upon me that he won't be able to do this. And so I want to try and throw myself on the side of the victor."
-Sophie Scholl
(*If you want to know more of the (magnificent) story of these young people, what they accomplished, and the deep faith and convictions which motivated, them, I recomment Hermann Vinke's biograpy 'The Short Life of Sophie Scholl', 'The White Rose' by Sophie's younger sister, Inge Scholl, and, certainly 'At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl' by Inge Jens.)
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