Unser Name
Unser Wohnheim ist nach den Geschwistern Hans und Sophie Scholl benannt, die zum Kreis der „Weißen Rose“ gehörten, einer studentischen Widerstandsgruppe in München im 2. Weltkrieg gegen das verbrecherische Hitler-Regime.
Hans und Sophie Scholl sowie fünf Mitstreiter – Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Kurt Huber, Willi Graf und Hans Leipelt – mussten ihren Widerstand mit dem Leben bezahlen. Mehrere andere Freunde erhielten hohe Zuchthausstrafen.
Der Name des Wohnheims soll allezeit an das mutige Beispiel der Geschwister Scholl und ihrer Freunde von der Widerstandsgruppe „Weißen Rose“ erinnern und alle mahnen, immer und überall auf der Welt für Freiheit und Recht, für Frieden und Völkerverständigung einzutreten.
Our Name
Our dormitory is named after the siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, who were members of the „White Rose.” The „White Rose” was a student resistance group in Munich that fought against the criminal Hitler regime during World War II.
Hans and Sophie Scholl and five comrades-in-arms—Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Kurt Huber, Willi Graf and Hans Leipelt—paid for their brave resistance with their lives. Several other friends were CONVICTED to long prison SENTENCES.
The name of the dormitory shall always BE A REMINDER of the courageous Scholl siblings and their friends from the „White Rose.” THE NAME SHALL admonish everyone to always stand up for freedom, peace and human rights ALL OVER THE WORLD—just like HANS AND SOPHIE SCHOLL.
The Scholl Siblings
Portraits of Hans and Sophie Scholl
Hans and Sophie Scholl were two of the six children of Robert and Magdalena Scholl. Their parents were liberal-minded—Robert was a pacifist and Magdalena was religious. They taught their children to stand up for their convictions. Their upbringing along Christian liberal values must have had a significant influence on why they rejected the Nazi regime.
Above Portraits of Hans and Sophie Scholl
Like her older siblings, Inge and Hans, Sophie was initially enthusiastic about the communal ideals propagated by the National Socialists. The Scholl children were forced to join the Hitler Youth (HJ) and the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), and at first they had a positive attitude toward both. Their initial positive mindset caused some arguments with their dissenting parents. As time went by, the children increasingly discovered contradictions between the party-controlled propaganda of the National Socialists and their own free thinking. In the HJ and the BDM, the Scholl siblings subsequently caused conflicts that cost them their leadership positions.
The Scholl siblings, especially Sophie, and their friends were influenced by the works of the Catholic publicist Theodor Haecker, who was no longer allowed to publish under Nazi rule. The progressive works of Haecker and publicist Carl Muth, as well as the lectures of the non-conformist philosophy professor Kurt Huber, were frequently discussed in their circle of friends.
Until their arrest, Hans and Sophie studied at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU). Hans studied medicine from 1939, Sophie biology and philosophy from 1942. Because of their medical studies, Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf and their friends were deployed as medics on the war front. As „auxiliary doctors,” the young medical students were directly confronted with and shaped by the brutality of war.
„White Rose”
above: Members of the „White Rose” in Munich Haidhausen (from left to right): Hubert Furtwängler (no resistance fighter), Hans Scholl, Raymund Samiller, Sophie Scholl (ON the fence) and Alexander Schmorell.
The „White Rose” is the name of a student resistance group that stemmed from catholic and youth movement philosophies against Hitler’s National Socialist regime. Starting in the summer of 1942, they distributed leaflets in Munich criticizing the Nazi dictatorship and calling for an end to the war. Hans and Sophie Scholl belonged to the inner circle of the White Rose, along with Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Kurt Huber, Willi Graf and Hans Leipelt. Over time, more members joined the resistance group in other German cities as well. They even found another like-minded person in the philosophy professor Kurt Huber, who taught at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and joined the resistance group in the summer of 1942.
The Leaflets
Due to the Hitler regime’s suppression of opinion, the university no longer offered any space for open and critical discussion. Intellectual debates could only take place in a protected and private environment. The „White Rose” was forced to meet in private reading evenings, where they initially read books banned by the Nazi regime and discussed them. By July 1942, the group felt the need to act. Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell secretly began to compose and send out four leaflets under the title „White Rose Leaflets.”
With the help of friends in other cities—Ulm, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Saarbrücken, Hamburg and Berlin—the „White Rose” leaflets were secretly distributed beyond Munich.
However, the possession and distribution of anti-regime ideology was strictly forbidden under National Socialism, and citizens were obliged to report pamphlets of this kind to the police. The first distributed pamphlets were reported by about one third of the approximately 100 recipients.
After their return from medical service in Russia, Alexander Schmorell and Hans Scholl were even more determined to resist. By the end of 1942, Sophie Scholl, Willi Graf, Christoph Probst and Kurt Huber also joined in the active production and distribution of the pamphlets.
In January 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad, which would later prove to be a turning point in World War II, ended in a catastrophic defeat for the German Wehrmacht. Of the original 330,000 soldiers of the 6th Army, more than two-thirds had fallen. On the Russian side, more than a million people died in and around Stalingrad.
For the „White Rose,” this was the catalyst for their fifth and sixth leaflets, which they wrote together in January and February 1943, now under the pseudonym „Resistance Movement in Germany.” With the help of a new mimeograph machine, they produced about 6,000 copies of both new pamphlets. During the war, paper, envelopes and stamps were rationed, and the purchase of larger quantities made the buyer suspicious. The students were risking their lives by producing and mailing the leaflets.
But the resistance group did not only try to defy the Hitler regime with leaflets. Hans Scholl, Willi Graf and Alexander Schmorell wrote the slogans „Down with Hitler” and „Freedom” on the walls of their university and other buildings with tar paint on several nights in February 1943.
unten links und mitte: das 5. Flugblatt der „Widerstandsbewegung in Deutschland” BArch, R 3018 _/_ 18431
unten rechts: das 6. Flugblatt der „Widerstandsbewegung in Deutschland” BArch, R 3018_ / _18431
unten: das 5. Flugblatt der „Widerstandsbewegung in Deutschland”
BArch, R 3018⁄18431
unten: das 6. Flugblatt der „Widerstandsbewegung in Deutschland”
BArch, R 3018⁄18431
Arrests, show trials, death sentences
On February 18, 1943 at about 11 A.M., the Scholl siblings laid out the sixth leaflet in front of the lecture halls in the main building of the LMU and dropped the remaining sheets into the building’s atrium. While doing so, they were observed and detained by janitor Jakob Schmid. Both were immediately arrested by the Gestapo. At Hans Scholl’s home, the police found a handwritten leaflet draft by Christoph Probst torn into small snippets, who was then also arrested the following day.
Sophie and Hans Scholl were questioned individually. Sophie confessed that she wanted „nothing to do with National Socialism.” When she was told in the interrogation on February 19, 1943, at 4 A.M. that her brother had confessed, she too made a confession.
The siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl, played by Lena Stolze & Wulf Kessler in the film „The White Rose” (1982), are arrested by the Gestapo
Copyright: CCC Filmkunst GmbH / Sentana Film
Roland Freisler, the President of the so-called „People’s Court,” made his way to Munich from Berlin to swiftly deal with the arrested students on February 22, 1943. Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst were sentenced to death and executed by guillotine on the very same day in the Munich Stadelheim Prison. Hans Scholl called out „Long live freedom” as his last words at the gallows.
Just a few days after the execution of Hans and Sophie Scholl and Cristoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell and Kurt Huber were arrested. They were also sentenced to death by the „People’s Court” on April 19, 1943 in the second trial against the „White Rose.” During this trial, Huber courageously opposed Hitler’s so-called „Executioner” Freisler, who refused to show any mercy. On July 13, Kurt Huber and Alexander Schmorell were executed by guillotine. Willi Graf was also executed on October 12, after the Gestapo failed to prove his connection to any Hilter regime opposition organizations.
The remaining friend and resistant group members were investigated and arrested until the end of February, 1943. The family members of the arrested and/or executed were classified as sharing responsibility for the „crime” of the „White Rose” members, as ordered by Heinrich Himmler.
During the second „White Rose” trial in Munich on April 19, 1943, 11 further individuals were charged of helping distribute the pamphlets. The majority of the defendants were sentenced to imprisonment or hard labor. On July 13, a third trial charged 4 more people, and a fourth trial on April 3, 1994 followed in Saarbrücken. The fifth and final trial on October 13, 1994 in Donauwörth charged 7 further defendants, one of which was Hans Leipelt, who was sentenced to death and executed on January 29, 1945 in the Munich Stadelheim prison.
What was the „White Rose’s” Goal?
With the „White Rose leaflets” (1st to 4th leaflet), the „leaflets of the resistance movement in Germany” (5th and 6th leaflet), the resistance group tried to mobilize the academic youth—and all Germans—against the criminal Hitler dictatorship. They did not achieve this goal, yet their sacrifices were not in vain. To this day, they are shining examples of how people can bravely and selflessly stand up for freedom and peace even in the darkest of times.
Above: Ground memorial for the „White Rose” in front of the main entrance of the LMU at Geschwister-Scholl-Platz.
Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during World War II, said the following about the „White Rose” in 1946:
„In Germany there lived an opposition which belongs to the noblest and greatest that has been produced in the political history of nations. These people fought without help from within and without—driven solely by the restlessness of conscience. As long as they lived, they were invisible to us because they had to disguise themselves. But in the dead, the resistance has become visible. These dead cannot justify everything that happened in Germany. But their deeds and sacrifices are the indestructible foundation of the new reconstruction.”
Further Literature
You can find more information and descriptions of the background to the „White Rose” resistance group on the following websites:
Federal Agency for Civic Education
Or in the following literature:
The White Rose
Published by the White Rose Foundation, Gentner Straße 13, 80805 Munich, 3rd edition.
This brochure (87 pages), published in several languages, is also available at the White Rose Memorial next to the Lichthof of the University of Munich.
Barbara Beuys, Sophie Scholl- Biography, insel Taschenbuch 4049, Berlin 2011
ISBN: 978−3−458−35749−0
Barbara Leisner, „I would do it again just the same” Sophie Scholl.
List Taschenbuch Verlag, 3rd edition, 2000, ISBN 3−612−65059−9
Rudolf Lill (ed.), New Research on the White Rose
Portraits of the Resistance, 1st edition 1993, modified edition 1999,
UVK Universitätsverlag Konstanz GmbH, Constance 1999
ISSN 0943–903 X, ISBN 3−87940−634−0
Inge Scholl, The White Rose
Fischer Paperback Publishing House, 9th edition, 2001, ISBN 3−596−11802−6
Hermann Vinke, The short life of Sophie Scholl
Ravensburger publishing house, first edition: 1986, ISBN: 3−473−54208−3
