Die Weiße Rose

The White Rose was an anti-Nazi student resistance group centered at Ludwig-Maximilian Universitaet, the university which I'll be attending in a few weeks. Today we watched the German-language 2004 film Sophie Scholl: die letzen Tage (the last days), which documents the experience of Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst as they faced arrest and execution by the Nazi regime. (Yes: I live on one of several streets in the StuSta named for the members of White Rose--Christoph Probst crosses Willi Graf in the center of the StuSta, another member.)

The White Rose wrote 6 leaflets in the time frame from June 1942 to February 1943, quoting from Schiller, the Bible, what have you, to make an argument against the Nazis, and the organization was centered around the distribution of these leaflets. The photo to the left shows the engraved leaflets that lie on the ground before the main university building in now Geschwister-Scholl-Platz (the Siblings Scholl). The Sixth Leaflet was the deadly one. Sophie and her brother Hans were distributing leaflets on the hallways to be found as students were leaving their lectures. Sophie still had leaflets left just seconds before classes got out, so, in a famous and deadly move, she went up to the third level to throw the remaining leaflets out of the suitcase into the atrium, pictured to the right (oh, what a spine-chilling moment!)--with the Hausmeister watching. They were arrested, interrogated, and put to death by guillotine.

Below: a bust of Sophie Scholl to the right of the atrium, and a memorial to the White Rose group on the left of the atrium.

"Es lebe die Freiheit" (long live freedom) were the last words of Hans Scholl.

Zum Andenken an:
Sophie Scholl

Hans Scholl
Christoph Probst
Alexander Schmorell
Willi Graf
Kurt Huber