Courageous Hearts: Women and the Anti-Hitler Plot of 1944 [1 ed.] 9781571818539, 1571818537

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COURAGEOUS HEARTS

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COURAGEOUS HEARTS Women and the Anti-Hitler Plot of 1944

Dorothee von Meding Translated by

Michael Balfour and

Volker R. Berghahn

Berghahn Books NEW YORK ¢ OXFORD

Published in 1997 by

Berghahn Books Editorial offices: 150 Broadway, New York, NY 10038, USA 3, NewTec Place, Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RE, UK

© 1997, 2008 English-language edition, Berghahn Books Translated from the German by Michael Balfour and Volker R. Berghahn Reprinted in 2008 © 1992 German-language edition, Wolf Jobst Siedler: Verlag GmbH, Berlin Originally published as Mit dem Mut des Herzens. Die Frauen des 20. Juli All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berghahn Books.

The publication of this work was supported by funds from Inter Nationes, Bonn.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Meding, Dorothee von, 1946[Mit dem Mut des Herzens. English]

Courageous hearts : women and the anti-Hitler plot of 1944 / Dorothee von Meding ; translated by Michael Balfour and Volker R.

Berghahn.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-57181-853-7 (alk. paper). -- ISBN 1-57181-879-0 (alk.

paper)

1. Women--Germany--Biography. 2. Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945“Assassination attempt, 1944 (July 20) 3. Anti-Nazi movement—Germany. 4. Germany~-Potitics and gaovernment--1933-1945.

1B] 97-9732

Il. Title.

DD256.3.M3613 1997 943 .086'092'2--dc21

CIP

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed in the United States on acid-free paper.

CONTENTS

DOE Foreword Klemens von Klemperer vi Introduction Eleven Women — Eleven Stories x

1. Emmi Bonhoeffer 1

2. Elisabeth Freytag von Loringhoven 30

3. Brigitte Gerstenmaier 41

4. Countess Margarethe von Hardenberg 51

5. Freya von Moltke 67 6. Rosemarie Reichwein 83

7. Marion Yorck von Wartenburg 104 8. Charlotte von der Schulenburg 116

9. Barbara von Haeften 143

10. Clarita von Trott zu Solz 166

Afterword 205 Glossary 209

11. Countess Nina Schenk von Stauffenberg 184

FOREWORD

4 DE T hejust history of the German Resistance in the Third Reich is not a story of men. No doubt men were the ones who hatched the plans and prepared and executed the assassination plot against Hitler. Nevertheless, in my own studies of the subject I have rarely encountered a conspirator who did not need and rely on his family — on his father, mother, sister, brother, and especially on his wife, who stood by him and offered him understanding and support. Without some consideration of the conspirators’ family backgrounds and, above all, the part played by their wives, our picture of them will remain woefully unfinished. Yet it is precisely this dimension of the history of the Widerstand that hitherto has not been explored sufficiently.

This book, a series of interviews with eleven women of the Resistance, will help correct this deficiency. It should be said here that these women speak not merely as companions of the men, but as resisters in their own right. They played a distinct and impor-

tant part in the conspiracy against the regime of terror, and their life therefore was not merely life with the German Widerstand, as Marion Yorck von Wartenburg once aptly expressed it, but life in the German Widerstand. The part played by the women in the Resistance of course varied in form and intensity. Certainly the “women of the 20th of July’

included in this volume did not match in their conspiratorial engagement those of the Communist and radical socialist underground, such as, for instance, Hilde Meisel (alias Hilda Monte).' Persisting in co-ordinating exile and resistance, she paid with her life when, in the spring of 1945, she was caught while trying to cross the German-Swiss border as a courier and, attempting to get

Foreword | vii

away, was shot by a German frontier guard. The ‘women of the 20th of July’, like their husbands, came as a rule from upper middle class or aristocratic backgrounds, and were no revolutionary activists. They were in no way geared to conspiratorial ways, neither temperamentally nor politically. When, however, over the course of time and in view of the unfolding events they found opposition close to inevitable, they embarked upon and followed this course without wavering. Could we therefore blame them for not having recognised in

time the threat that came from National Socialism? We must understand that the way into resistance is anything but routine since it inevitably involves a serious violation of the law — albeit in

the name of a higher law — and treason, and moreover that it is

bound to call for martyrdom. No one would opt for this road lightheartedly. But when they, the women as well as the men, were

brought to the point of resistance, it was for them a question of conscience rather than of some set political prescription or ideology. Life in the German Widerstand was, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, a matter of ‘responsible action’. Nevertheless it would be mistaken to see resistance in the light of heroic transfiguration. This we certainly learn from the accounts of the women who speak to us in this volume. Even the word ‘Widerstand’, so Freya von Moltke reminds us, was not used by her and her friends. One wanted simply to survive in decency. The women

did not constantly move in the underground; as a matter of fact, they conspired in broad daylight, partly of course because of their husbands’ official positions. The interviews with the women thus take us into the everyday life of the Widerstand, in which — apart from concerns about the fatherland — sociability and zest for life had their place. At any rate, they say, they were not afraid, perhaps because they were convinced of that ‘inner necessity’ for action of which Emmi Bonhoeffer spoke. Besides, one was so young ...

Some of the wives were more, others less initiated into the secrets of the conspiracy. But in any case there was a spontaneous division of labour among husbands and wives. Even though now in retrospect the wives have a way of playing down their part, we

should not ignore the importance of their collaboration. Thus Adam von Trott’s decision to marry Clarita Tiefenbacher was from

the very start conditioned by the awareness that she understood what was ‘most important’ for him and that she was prepared to help him ‘to fight for it’.2 As for the clandestine meetings of Helmuth James von Moltke’s so-called Kreisau Circle, although Freya,

viii | Foreword

his widow and Marion Yorck von Wartenburg now all too modestly protest that their part was restricted to listening in, the very fact of having been initiated into the plans constituted a form of complicity and was therefore punishable by death. Besides, the hostesses at those meetings, whether Freya or Marion or Barbara von Borsig, took care of much more than just room and board for those who attended; through the liveliest debates they fostered an atmosphere of cordiality and friendship. Furthermore, given wartime extended separations from their husbands, the wives bore the whole burden of holding together their families and attending to the children. It is regrettable that many of the women of the Resistance were no longer able to contribute to this volume. Among them I especially include the ‘Matriarch of Conspiracy’ Ruth von Kleist-Retzow’ — a quintessential Prussian, who nolens, volens was drawn into resistance by virtue of her kinship with some of the main conspirators and her friendship with Dietrich Bonhoeffer — and ‘Lixi’ Roloff née von Alvensleben, who fearlessly outwitted the guards of the Berlin Lehrter-Strafse prison in order to reach her inmate friends. Similarly, I think of Annedore Leber, wife of Julius Leber, Social Democratic member of the Kreisau Circle; she stood by his side faithfully during the long years that he spent in concentration camps. In his last letter, written from the Gestapo hell in the PrinzAlbrecht-Strafse in Berlin, he gave expression to his feeling of ‘infinite pride’ in her and in her ‘strength and bearing’ .* The purpose of this volume is not to convey new research data on the events of 20 July 1944. In this respect the documents accessible to us have been, if not wholly exhausted, sufficiently researched,

and the prehistory of the attempt, the obstacles in its way, the courage and the mistakes committed, and indeed the whole tragedy of failure have been repeatedly explored. But this book, in its own way, should contribute to the understanding of this last, desperate attempt to stand up to the Third Reich and thus to save the honour of Germany. Now the testimony of the women, hitherto unavailable to us, reveals the circumstances that made the German ‘Revolt of Conscience’ necessary. The initial hope as well as the bur-

den of the bitter disappointment about the failure were carried by both the men and the women. Thus the men could rely, as Peter Yorck von Wartenburg repeatedly emphasised in his letters, on a ‘togetherness’ (Zweisamkeit) with their wives, for better and for worse and in life and in death. ‘All the texts we love’, so wrote Helmuth von Moltke to Freya, ‘are in my heart and in yours.”

Foreword | ix

While their husbands were executed, most of the wives were confined to prisons or concentration camps in accordance with Sippenhaft, the practice of punishing the families of the condemned. Thereafter it became their responsibility to care for their families and to give new shape to their lives. First of all they had to retrieve their children, who had been carried off under false names. In the

end, though, each one of the women, even though in wholly changed conditions, found a place for herself in society in which she could serve the common good. This was not easy for any of them, but without exception they all succeeded — courageously and with dignity and without resentment — and thus remained true to the ideals for which their husbands had given their lives. Klemens von Klemperer

Notes 1. See Annedore Leber, Das Gewissen steht auf, Berlin 1960, pp. 17ff. 2. Quoted in: Clarita von Trott zu Solz, Adam von Trott zu Solz, Reinbek 1958, p. 193. 3. See Jane Pejsa, Matriarch of Conspiracy, Minneapolis 1991. 4. Dorothea Beck and Wilfried Schoeller, Julius Leber, Munich 1976, p. 302. 5. In: Helmuth J. von Moltke, Letzte Briefe aus dem Geftingnis Tegel, Berlin 1963, p. 60.

INTRODUCTION Eleven Women — Eleven Stories

ODE

T hispolitical book isframework only marginally with the historical of theconcerned German Widerstand and withand its

tangible facts and contexts. Instead the focus is on the human beings who took part in the anti-Nazi resistance; it is also raises questions of the participants’ inner lives and of how they experienced and coped with their ordeals. It thus tells personal stories insofar as they can be retrieved from memory. For us, 20 July 1944 has become a ‘historic’ day. For the women who appear in this book it is a very personal date. Emmi Bonhoef-

fer, Elisabeth Freytag von Loringhoven, Brigitte Gerstenmaier, Margarethe von Hardenberg, Freya von Moltke, Rosemarie Reichwein, Marion Yorck von Wartenburg, Charlotte von der Schulen-

burg, Barbara von Haeften, Clarita von Trott zu Solz and Nina Schenk von Stauffenberg were prepared to talk to me about this day, its preconditions and consequences; about 20 July 1944, which — far beyond its actual course — is related with the memory of the

German Resistance and merely found its clearest expression in Stauffenberg’s Attentat and the attempt to stage a coup d’état. For the women interviewed here, 20 July has yet another side.

It is the day that changed everything. Their husbands were arrested, tortured and executed. Their children were abducted and given false names. The women themselves were locked up, often in solitary confinement. Not all of them had been asked by their husbands whether they were prepared to make this sacrifice; not all of them had even been interested in politics. However, they saw themselves primarily as the wives of men whom they loved.

Introduction | xi

This is how they describe it to this day, and perhaps it is for this reason that their role has long been underestimated. Still, it should not be forgotten that some of those men would not have taken the final step, i.e. to conspire against the government that they served, had it not been for their wives’ support. Every one of

them had been brought up under those monarchist or outdated military notions of honour that turned the decision to launch the coup and the Attentat into a conflict of faith and conscience. The validity of the oath and of the Christian moral doctrine of ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s’ and of ‘My kingdom is not of this

world’ have since been lost. Today, few understand why many hesitated for so long.

However, the role of the women was not confined simply to encouraging their husbands, to giving them spiritual support. They were co-workers and confidantes, secretaries and discussion partners; and last but not least they were protectors of their families. They had the obligation to survive, if only for the sake of their children. In doing so, they dedicated their subsequent lives to the political activities of their husbands.

The questions that I put to my interviewees are questions relating to their hopes, to their everyday anxieties, to life under the threat of the Gestapo. What did they know? What did their own resistance consist in? Where did they find the courage to live a ‘double life’? How did they manage to preserve the semblance of normality? How did they stand up, every day, to the ideolog-

ical rift that ran through their families and keep secret their knowledge of their husbands’ ‘high treason’? The women who appear in this book had to build a new life after 1945; they had to

learn a profession and begin a life of their own with their children. To a certain extent they, too, were victims of 20 July, often to

an even greater degree than they realised. None of the widows ever remarried. When I began to research the women of 20 July, I occasionally encountered scepticism. To this day the circle of conspirators is

being reproached for having pursued aims that were not truly democratic. There is also the argument that this part of the German Widerstand has in the meantime lost its interest. Today, scholars are primarily concerned with the so-called ‘small-scale resistance’, with the covert and spontaneous gestures of the many. What, the question continues, did the women of 20 July contribute to the resistance against Hitler? In the final analysis their stories would merely serve a renewed hero worship.

xii | Introduction

The conversations reprinted here demonstrate that this verdict can no longer be upheld in this way. However, it should be added that this book does not see 20 July merely as an endeavour of the military resistance. I am referring here not merely to the collaboration between the Kreisau Circle and the military officers who prepared the Attentat and the coup d’état; at the centre of the book are those men and women who belonged to the Confessing Church and similar, if smaller and less conspicuous, groups voicing their opposition. The wives of the plotters no doubt belong here. They, too, were part of the Widerstand; they were willing to hold on and help, intellectually and practically, with the decisive major move. In this process many divergent motivations came together: traditional-conservative motivations met with Social Democratic, reli-

gious, as well as military, capitalist and socialist ones. Many surprising coalitions were forged. However, all participants delib-

erately opted against ‘small-scale resistance’, which, they believed, would have been risky for them and would have failed to make a fundamental impact. Thus Dietrich Bonhoeffer is said to have once remarked, when

his friend Bethge openly refused to raise his arm in the Hitler salute: ‘IT will not sell myself that cheaply.’ And his brother Klaus is reported to have fallen into a fit of rage when his wife began to

‘agitate’ at the grocer’s and — as early as 1942 - openly talked about Auschwitz and the extermination of the Jews. A dictatorship, he added, was like a snake whose head had to be cut off.

The Political in the Private Sphere The resistance of the women of 20 July was different from that of

the men, and for a variety of reasons. It was less conspicuous, more covert and more ‘private’, shaped by the then prevalent ideas of gender roles. The question of how far the women belonged to the Widerstand should thus be expressed in different terms than those for their husbands. The women were not involved in active ‘resistance’ in the strict

sense. And yet they kept clear of Nazism, its ideology and its organisations. As one of my interviewees, who as a young secre-

tary to Henning von Treskow undertook conspiratorial office work, put it: “Hitler made no impression on me whatsoever.’ The

resistance of these women was completely unpretentious; they could not be seduced by Nazism and were very different from the

Introduction | xiii

many frenzied people who can be seen in contemporary newsreels. In this sense they were the appropriate partners of their antiNazi husbands. The following quotation by Erich Fromm, which specifically refers to 20 July, captures this kind of opposition well: Let us consider the word ‘Widerstand’ for a moment. You have to have achieved character in order to be resistant, antagonistic, antipathetic. It is then more difficult to be deceived, to be impressed; on the contrary, you are, if necessary, even capable of protest, rejection, indignation ... Only when people bring themselves to look behind the rational arguments, when they do not listen to what the Fiihrer has to say, but to how he says it; if they look at his face and his gestures and at the man in his entirety — only then will they discover this man’s true character.'

What Fromm describes here is very much a private and personal type of Widerstand and certainly not a political one in the strict sense. It involves an inner maturity and a capacity to make judgements as a citizen, and this is why it also comprises the special opportunities for women. It might be objected that this notion

of resistance depoliticises it and turns it into something purely personal and private. However, perhaps it is this that constitutes the peculiar greatness of the opposition that was centred around 20 July: it was a type of Widerstand that turned out to be political through the evolution of individual life trajectories, adding a subjective element to the military, diplomatic and constitutional preparations for the attempt to overthrow Nazism. Further confirmation of this interpretation may be found in the fact that this was how the conspirators themselves saw it. They

testified that the moral strength of their wives and confidantes made it easier for them to bear the risks of their activities and to wage the struggle against Hitler. Since all overt opposition had ceased after 1933, the men of the Widerstand all too quickly look to

us like individual heroes; they appear as very courageous and heroic and, indeed, larger-than-life people. In taking this view it is easy to overlook the moments of doubt that these men experienced — in the Kreisau Circle no less than in the military resistance. Time

and again they were in danger of lapsing into despondency and despair. If they persisted, this was due not least to the support they received from their wives. As innumerable letters demonstrate and as one of them wrote to his wife: ‘When you are back to instill in me a nonchalance against this nonsense, it will hopefully soon bother

me much less ...’ And in another letter we find the following

xiv | Introduction

extract: ‘My dear haven of peace, where else can your squire find peace, if not with you and your sons? What on earth do people do who lack all this? Where do they have their roots?”

Family Backgrounds and Self-Perceptions The women whom I interviewed enjoyed privileged positions as girls and young women thanks to their origins and social status. Most of them came from the urban bourgeoisie, but through their husbands developed close links with the latter’s aristocratic and frequently agrarian family clans. Combining the advantages of an urban setting with the firm roots of rural life, their lifestyle and social situation give the impression of security and stability. In

their thoughts, actions and experiences they operated before wider horizons than many other women who came from the same social stratum. Without exception they came from families that upheld the traditional ideals of bourgeois Bildung. This is what they continued to adhere to, even after (and influenced by historical developments) they had long since left behind the world of ideas of their parents.

Thanks to their education and training they grew into women who were unwavering about the decisions they had made without having lost their capacity for self-criticism. After 1933 they were sufficiently flexible to shape and cope with the double life they were living. They were not much influenced by public opinion;

nor were they deterred by the thought that they would be left behind alone if the Gestapo ever uncovered the secret plans of their husbands. In this respect they opted for the ‘upright gait’. These were the factors that shaped their daily lives and shaped the special risks they had taken. For all women, the war increased

and complicated the work that the household and family demanded of them. But, as far as the women of 20 July are concerned, we must add to this the need to maintain a facade of normality not only vis-a-vis the general public and the ‘street’, but also vis-a-vis their immediate family — and even their own chil-

dren. Under no circumstances were the latter supposed to suffer because of their parents’ double life. This was all the more important with regard to the question of membership in the Nazi youth

organisations, which became inescapable from a certain age onward. The children had to be protected in two respects in par-

ticular: against Nazi propaganda on the one hand, and against

Introduction | xv

repressions on the other, to which they would have been exposed from their peers if they had been prevented from participating in youth events and the various ways in which any government tries to integrate young people. This amounted to very hard work pedagogically, since the younger children in particular had to be pre-

vented from making indiscreet remarks to their friends or at school. Time and again the interviews yielded a simple, but significant observation: ‘Daily life was onerous.’

Resistance in Conscious Passivity A generation whose immediate political experiences have been shaped by the conditions of democracy will always find it difficult to grasp the totalitarian pressures of a dictatorship. Those who live under a system that guarantees at least the possibility for developing one’s full potential, will have difficulty visualising the ubiquitous restrictions on all human activities that a totalitarian state imposes and that, as a consequence, deform the human beings living under it. Could this be the reason why the efforts that led to 20 July are increasingly taken for granted, the annual commemorations notwithstanding? And could this also be the reason why the contribution of the women of the Widerstand is underestimated?

A dictatorship is a time of opportunism, of not wanting to know, of looking away. By contrast, it is also a time of resolute action and of making fresh and careful judgements every day about good and evil for those who — in whatever way — find themselves at loggerheads with the government. As a rule this includes

the experience of isolation. One cannot converse with the agents of the regime; it quickly becomes obvious that the same language is not spoken and that there is no way of communicating. The men were later able to overcome their isolation in groups such as the Kreisau Circle. Their wives had only themselves and a few friends to rely on at best. Every movement, every word had to be carefully considered. This was true of the huge state and military bureaucracies and equally in daily life, where the subtle mechanisms of repression, suspicion and surveillance frequently operated even more metcilessly.

This narrow terrain where the public and private spheres met was also the territory on which the Widerstand of the women came into its own. They did not try to opt out. Later, after the failure of

xvi | Introduction

the Attentat, they bore the chicaneries to which they were subjected and demanded that the authorities provide them with infor-

mation on the whereabouts of their husbands. This meant that they were insisting on a kind of rule of law, even though it was almost absurd to expect anything like it from the Nazis. Their civil courage gained them permission to see their husbands in prison, and one of the women even challenged Freisler with the accusa-

tion that her husband had been tortured. How much of this was the result of conscious decisions? Not much at first, but by the end, everything. The resistance of the men began to take shape in part during the 1930s and early 1940s after the German defeat in the Battle of Britain and after the invasion of Soviet Union had ground to a halt; meanwhile, the women too moved more and more into an oppositional stance. They were not always asked to do so, but they quickly came to realise that their husbands or superiors were about to commit high treason and supported them in their decision. If the women emphasise today that this did not really involve a clear decision on their part,

it is indicative of an attitude that aimed neither at political activism nor passivity, but at something somewhere in the middle. Basically the women had no other choice, and in this respect their

feelings were no different from those of their husbands. This is why one of my interviewees replied, when asked why her husband had joined the Widerstand: ‘Freedom of choice is rather a limited thing.’ Her actions, she added, had been the outcome of inner

compulsions to which all personal interests had been subordinated as a matter of course. Both the men and women renounced the achievement of individual happiness because ‘the conditions for it just did not exist’.

Thus they turned against the regime with the same determination, energy and self-discipline with which they had worked for the state up to that point. A Prussian sense of duty to serve the state gradually became a duty to resist, and this was true for the women as well as the men.

The Risks of Knowledge The weighty role of the women is particularly remarkable if we take into account that few of them were informed about the evolution, planning and aims of the coup. Although they were aware of many

details, most of them knew very little — in fact, almost nothing.

Introduction | xvii

Those who were directly involved as secretaries knew about certain highly explosive details. Margarethe von Hardenberg, for example, copied the ‘Valkyrie’ plans on her typewriter. These orders had a seemingly neutral wording, but they began with the sentence: ‘Our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, is dead.’ Others, such as Freya von Moltke and Marion von Yorck, were informed to a certain degree. They knew

most of the members of the Kreisau Circle and as a rule participated in the discussions that took place in their homes. But even more so than their husbands they knew no more than tiny aspects and fragments of the larger context and of the political plans. One of the women put it thus: ‘I knew the theme, but not its substance.’ Anyone who had certain information was initiated into the con-

spiracy, and anyone who merely knew about Nazi crimes was already in serious danger. After all, those who participated in antigovernment measures, if only indirectly, or did not reveal them to

the authorities were under threat of the death penalty. It is very revealing of the time that one of the interviewees remarked how her

husband despaired that he could not prevent her from learning of Nazi crimes, such as the extermination of the Jews and of Auschwitz. This knowledge alone could have been life threatening. Furthermore, statements such as these demonstrate how far the actors in the so-called conspiracy — the men as well as the women —

had to isolate themselves and thus experienced growing loneliness. If knowing certain things could mean death, the mere exchange of information, even among friends, becomes dangerous. The women of the Widerstand created a counter-world to fascism, a completely different ‘order’ for their husbands and their children.

The tolerance and enlightened ideas that they practised in their families created a kind of bulwark against the destructive and all pervasive power mechanisms of a totalitarian society. This bulwark time and again helped the men of 20 July to gain distance from the inhumane world that the government legitimated, a world to which — as we all know — one can become accustomed. As one of the men wrote to his wife: ‘You must come soon so that all may be on an even keel again.’ Perhaps these women represented the last generation that had no doubts about their role within the family.

Fear, Hatred and the Imagination Nowadays fear of major catastrophes provides a basis for political pacifism. And more generally, anxieties that are collectively

xviii | Introduction

formulated and individually experienced are commonly seen as an impetus for political activism or at least for protest. The attitude of the women of 20 July was fundamentally different in this respect. Every day they were exposed to a real threat, and to this day fear, it seems, is therefore not an issue for them: ‘If we had begun to have fear, we would have been doomed.’ Giving more room to anxieties, fears and nightmares than to actual opportunities for action leads to powerlessness; one abandons whatever space still exists to voice one’s opposition — no matter how confined this space may be under a dictatorship. As another interviewee put it: ‘Fear, no, I never felt fear.’ There

was just no time for it. Time was used instead to scrutinise, in a spirit of alertness and self-control, all steps and actions in terms of

the dangers they might pose. If you are always prepared for a police search and have known for years that you are under observation, you learn to respond very quickly, with precision and in full consciousness. This may be another reason why fear provides no warning signals in this situation. Yet we should not start from the assumption that the women of 20 July did not know fear. One of them reports that she was as terrified as a rabbit and that she wished there had been an honourable way out of her participation in the preparations for the coup. No less astonishing is the frequent response that they did not feel hatred for Hitler, ‘not even after they had murdered my husband’. How is this possible? It should be noted that the question: ‘Did you hate Hitler?’ was put in a somewhat crude and leading fashion and may have triggered a denial. Imbued with Christian and humanistic values, the women regard hatred as taboo to this

day. Furthermore, they saw Hitler less as a person than as the ‘executor of evil’ (as Hans-Bernd von Haeften put it before the People’s Court) or as the ‘Anti-Christ’ (as Helmuth James von Moltke phrased it). Perhaps this, too, has made it more difficult to feel hatred towards Hitler as a person. Very few women reacted to Hitler with aggressive thoughts or spoke openly of hatred. The women lived and acted as if their many small humanitarian and often seemingly banal actions, that were nevertheless ille-

gal and dangerous, were not punishable. They behaved as if nothing could happen. This behaviour of ‘as if’ — as if there existed no dictatorship with its machinery of destruction — is a kind of constructive self-deception that made it possible for the men and women of 20 July to regard their resistance as something perfectly normal. Anyone who develops this sense will, at times, be

Introduction | xix

surrounded by an aura of unassailability that can act as additional camouflage. If women, in line with their role perceptions of the time, were unable to act as autonomous subjects or if they were prohibited from even assuming this role, then what was usually open to them was to act out their desires through fantasies. However, the women of the Widerstand could hardly afford to design plans that were unrealistic and based merely on such fantasies. It remained their priority to concentrate on what was immediate and essential. Yet some of the women searched for their own ‘fantastic’ solu-

tions. For a brief moment, one of them fantasises that she has become the murderess of Hitler after seducing his followers. Very tangibly — and not in mythologically stylised images such as the story of Judith and Holofernes — she maps out a possible strategy.

Another woman, desperately worried about her tortured husband, even resorts to the ancient motif of proposing to sacrifice one of her children in place of her husband. However, she immediately rejects this idea because she has the overwhelming feeling of being ‘bound by her hands and feet’, of being powerless and above all bound to her children by responsibility and love. What went on inside these women who said farewell to their husbands in the days just prior to the Attentat, in the knowledge of their possible death — standing by the train, the streetcar or in front

of the house? One of them hoped that he would make it; it was a

hope uttered ‘into a vacuum’, for they all had few illusions. Another woman said that she always knew the chances of success to be fifty-fifty, and yet she always believed in the ‘good fifty’. Explicitly or implicitly this appears to have been the attitude of all the women. Only in this way were they able to succeed in encouraging both their husbands and themselves and in not turning the farewell into a moment of high drama. Most of them never saw their husbands again. Those women who were not arrested faced the greatest pressure only later, when their husbands were still in hiding to escape the revenge of the Nazis or when they were imprisoned. One of

the women called it ‘high time’ because it was also a period of high intensity. Now they could, and indeed had to, demonstrate all their skills for ‘mastering things’: their intelligence, their presence of mind and their cunning. They felt responsible for the lives of their husbands. They moved heaven and earth to obtain a visit-

ing permit; they allowed files to disappear or smuggled secret messages into prison. It was news that did not speak of love but

xx | Introduction

contained vital information, for instance about those who had already been killed and could therefore be implicated without

danger during the interrogations and tortures that were euphemistically called ‘intensive cross-examinations’. Using great sensitivity, they succeeded in deciphering the coded messages from their husbands, who were under surveillance, and in warning friends. It was their ability to communicate, their knowledge of people, that the women now used against their enemies with strategic precision. They calculated and predicted the latters’ reaction clearly; they used their loyalty and in this way established a wide-ranging network in which they acted as bridges between the outside world and their husbands and others who were in prison. Two of them described themselves as downright ‘cold-blooded’ when they met their imprisoned husbands because this was the only way they were able to organise and discuss everything. One of them was even directed by the Nazis to broach with her husband which method of execution he would like best. However, in the final analysis it was not cold-bloodedness, even if the women termed it thus in almost self-accusatory terms. Are we not dealing instead with a psychic mechanism that provided protection against traumatisation — a mechanism to preserve one’s ability to think and act? The women achieved this by compartmentalising their feelings in ways that were necessary for their survival. This reflects an inner strength that must be highlighted here because the slightly ironic and deadpan tone of the interviews tends to play down, with female modesty, the exertions of those months. Time and again the direct life-risking participation of the men in the Attentat and coup has been seen as a sacrifice in comparison

to which the activities of the women look rather unassuming, ordinary and self-evident. The women had to survive for the sake

of their children. Was there a gendered division of labour even here among the political resistance to Hitler? Both sides made sacrifices. But what did the sacrifice of the women consist of? Many of the men did not initiate their wives into their dangerous activities in order not to endanger their lives. Quite a number

of the women were very depressed that they knew so little and surmised so much. If a person is not included in the life of his or her partner, this implies that he or she remains excluded as an equal partner. This in turn raises the question of trust, even if the men’s decision to keep their wives in ignorance amounted to loving protection. The sacrifice of the women consisted of the fact that they grasped this intuitively and interpreted it accordingly; that

Introduction | xxi

they subordinated themselves to the imperative of secrecy; that they trusted their husbands and ‘unknowingly’ not only accepted the implications of the men’s self-confident activities, but also bore these implications jointly with their husbands. It appears that other personal psychic needs were not even allowed to enter the picture

and thus must not even be contemplated today. As one of the women put it so simply: “The times did not lend themselves to it.’ There is no doubt that some of the women would have had the intellectual wherewithal for a substantive contribution to the Attentat and to the political planning that was going on. Yet, as one of them remarked: ‘We left the Widerstand to the men.’ They wanted

to avoid everything that might have ‘disturbed’ the complicated preparations for the coup. Taking second place in this respect must be seen as a conscious decision to facilitate the common goal and transcends the women’s love for their husbands. Rather they acted politically within their own sphere and thus found their own spe-

cial form of resistance. In this respect they stand apart from the political practices of, for instance, those women who belonged to the ‘Red Orchestra’ and who integrated themselves into the active resistance of their husbands. These women are frequently mentioned by the interviewees with much admiration for their sacrifice and courage. Yet, ever so cautiously they also allude to the fact that anyone, such as those other women, who became actively involved had to pay for it with their lives. In the end it was a jumble of irreconcilable motives. First of all

there was the vital interest, which meant that they wanted to get their husbands back rather than salvaging Germany’s honour. Secondly, they were prepared to do their duty on a division-oflabour basis, and this included the notion that on ‘X Day’ the women would remain behind on their own and care for the fam-

ily. Finally, there was the impulse (that could not be put into action) of wanting to influence the course of history, of taking the Attentat or at least its preparation into one’s own hands. Many of the wives of the ‘conspirators’ were arrested and put in solitary confinement by the Gestapo after 20 July. Some of them had learned just prior to their arrest that their husbands had been

executed and their children taken away. They now had to cope with the shock of the failed coup, the loss of their husbands and the worries about their children. Two of the women moreover reported deep feelings of guilt relating to the arrest of their parents. What depressed them was that their parents — despite being declared opponents of Nazism — had not been privy to the secret

xxii | Introduction

and had not been informed about the plot. Being isolated was experienced as a special punishment, and some women were at the end of their tethers. Others accepted their isolation as something to which they had to submit themselves. In the interviews they drew comparisons with a nunnery, because their loneliness, despite all the hardship, made it easier for them to be alone with their emotions. And as one of them put it with regard to the daily prison routine and the slow-moving days: ‘You get organised.’ And the women did cut a path through these pressures, then as well as today. They succeeded in giving their lives a remarkable, almost joyous composure — in spite of everything.

The Aftermath After the end of the Third Reich the women not infrequently experienced periods of renewed humiliations, though of a very differ-

ent kind. It sounds incredible, but in fact some of them had to undergo de-Nazification because they had once been members of the Nazi Women’s League, to mention but one example. The reaction of the authorities to their pension claims was equally degrading. Post-war Germany’s bureaucrats unearthed a law according to which a civil servant could receive a pension only if he or she had not been found guilty of a ‘crime’. It should be emphasised

that this principle was initially applied to the Attentat against a mass murderer — a reflection of the prejudices that prevailed against

the men and women of 20 July for a long time, even well into the 1950s, and that proved as persistent as they are dismaying. Thus the daughter of one of those executed was called a ‘poor traitor’s child’ during her primary school years. In light of such reactions it

is hardly surprising that some of the women revealed that they were loathe to say who they were after 1945. The fear of being eyed with suspicion by their neighbours was evidently not without justification and in some cases even went so far as to complicate the publication of these interviews. The partial retreat that followed from this prejudice extended to the rest of the family. The widows found it difficult to talk about

their experiences, especially with their children. Some of them added self-critically that they promoted a hero worship at first. Others remained totally passive. At first glance these appear to be

two divergent pedagogical attitudes; but in fact they were no more than the two sides of the same coin: even later on they did

Introduction | xxiii

not tell their children a great deal. Instead photographs played an important role. These were shown to the children and frequently the widows also read out loud passages from their husbands’ let-

ters. However, they were rarely able to talk about the events, about their experiences, and about the time before and after 20 July. They were afraid of demanding too much of their children, of alienating them, and they hoped that the children would one day be able to undertake all this themselves. A frequently used justification was that the children should be free to discover, and work through, the circumstances of the loss of their fathers. Moreover, the widows may have been afraid that they might be overwhelmed by their own emotions. It is possible that the children themselves instinctively sensed the danger that their mothers might ‘fall apart’, for often they did not ask any questions either. Another reason for the reticence may have been related to the fear on the part of the mothers that their children might not understand them. For children the first response to the loss of the father tends to be: ‘He has left; didn’t he love us enough? He has left us.’ Other fathers had been killed at the front. How were the mothers

supposed to explain to their children that their fathers had sacrificed themselves as rebels, conspirators, assassins? It is revealing that many of the children married among these families. Was this due to problems of coping similar to their own? They often found it difficult to deal with the fact that their fathers were idolised in public. Now the children are grown up and have

children of their own. The widows find it easier to talk to their grandchildren, and this has opened up fresh possibilities for the

whole family.

The Difficulty of Remembering This is a book that tries to recount memories of our recent past, and yet, in another way, it thematises forgetting. To this day none of the interviewees has gone public with a similarly detailed written document about herself. This is due not just to reticence, modesty or shyness. As one of the women put it: ‘You would have to go through the hell of memory once again before you could identify your memories or even publish them.’ This is why we have to rely on what is still alive within, and accessible to, them. In the first instance we must treat these interviews in exactly the same way in which the women summarised

xxiv | Introduction

their experiences, and present those parts they wished to see published — forty-five years later. It is their undoubtedly subjec-

tive truth. We also have to ‘read’ what they have omitted; we owe them this much. However, we need not take, for example, their descriptions of solitary confinement quite as soberly as they were given — at times almost dutifully so. Rather we may also wonder how they endured all that their memories merely allude

to or express between the lines: to survive and not to become paralysed, not to stand still in sorrow and humiliation. Some of them contemplated suicide despite their Christian faith. In such moments thinking of the children provided protection and a bridge to life. The scars from this period are deep to this day — 20 July has marked these women. Maybe it is also for this reason that they had put up an “ethical parasol’ around their emotional lives. They tend to speak in large moral images designed to protect their personalities. Thus they speak of Germany’s honour that is supposed to be restored. A certain eloquence notwithstanding, the dominant feature is their speechlessness. Many things just cannot be conveyed.

We have to accept these omissions, even if they occasionally provoke objections. As the French historian Pierre Chaunu wrote: ‘IT believed for a long time that memory was to enable us to remember. I know now that it is designed above all to enable us to forget.’? What these women meant to their husbands is movingly expressed in a letter from Helmuth James von Moltke to his wife. This is why I quote it here as an example of the final thoughts that the men of 20 July had of their women:* And now, dear heart, I come to you. I have not mentioned you anywhere because you, my love, occupy a wholly different place from all the others. For you are not a means employed by God to make me who [ am, rather you are myself. You are my 13th Chapter of the

First Letter to the Corinthians. Without this Chapter no human being is human. Without you I would have accepted love as a gift, as I accepted it from Mami, for instance, thankful, happy, grateful as one is for the sun that warms one. But without you, my love, I would not have had charity. I don’t even say that I love you: that

wouldn’t be right. Rather you are that part of me that, alone, I would lack. It is good that I lack it; for if I had as you have it, this greatest of all gifts, my love, I could not have done a lot of things. I would have found it impossible to maintain consistency in some

things. I could not have watched the suffering I had to see, and much else. Only together do we constitute a human being. We are, as I wrote a few days ago, symbolically, created as one. That is true,

Introduction | xxv

literally true. Therefore, my love, Iam certain that you will not lose me on this earth, not fora moment. And we were allowed finally to

symbolise this fact by our shared Holy Communion, which will have been my last.... Dear Heart, my life is finished and I can say of myself, he died in the fullness of years and of life’s experience. That doesn’t alter the fact that I would gladly accompany you a little further on this earth.

But then I would need a new task from God. The task for which God made me is done; if he has another task for me, we shall hear of it. Therefore by all means continue your efforts to save my life if I survive this day. Perhaps there is another task....

Dorothee von Meding Frankfurt/Main 1992/96

Notes 1. Hans-Jiirgen Schulz, Der 20. July, Stuttgart 1974, p. 14. 2. Helmuth James von Moltke, Briefe an Freya, Munich 1988, p. 594. 3. Pierre Chaunu et al., Das Leben mit Geschichte, Frankfurt 1989. 4. Helmuth James von Moltke, Letters to Freya, New York 1990, pp. 411f.

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Chapter One

EMMI BONHOEFFER

LE EB mmi Bonhoeffer was Her bornfather in 1905, youngest child in a family of seven. wasthe thesecond well-known historian

and political commentator Hans Delbrtick who also served as a member of the Reichstag from 1909 to 1917. He presided over a circle of Berlin intellectuals modelled on the famous MittwochsGesellschaft. Among its members were the Protestant theologians Ernst Troeltsch and Adolf von Harnack and the historian Friedrich Meinecke. Her mother Lina, née Thiersch, was a granddaughter of the famous chemist Justus von Liebig. Emmi was strongly influenced by her family and neighbours in the Berlin suburb of Grunewald. Harnack, her uncle, was one of

the founders of critical Bible exegesis; his daughter Agnes von Zahn was her first and deeply revered teacher. Close neighbourhood friends of Emmi’s included Brigitte (Tutti) Fischer and Suse Lissauer, who as Jews were later forced to emigrate. The Bonhoeffer family also lived nearby. The Bonhoeffer twins Dietrich and Sabine were close childhood friends, as were their older siblings Christel and Klaus, Emmi’s future husband. Her intimate circle

also included her brother Justus Delbriick and Hans von Dohnanyi, who, in close co-operation with Colonel Hans Oster later tried to organise the military resistance. Hans von Dohnanyi and Christel Bonhoeffer were married in 1925, followed by Gerhard Leibholz and Sabine Bonhoeffer in 1926 and Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer and Grete von Dohnanyi in 1930. Gerhard Leibholz, because

of his Jewish ancestry, emigrated to England with his wife Sabine Bonhoeffer in the 1930s. Rtidiger Schleicher, Ursula Bonhoeffer’s husband and a high-ranking civil servant in the Air Ministry who abhorred Nazism, intervened on behalf of Jews and concentration

2 | Courageous Hearts

camp inmates, and the rooms of his Institut ftir Luftrecht became a meeting place for opponents of the regime. Emmi Delbriick and Klaus Bonhoeffer were married in 1930. From the mid-1930s Klaus Bonhoeffer worked as chief legal adviser to Lufthansa Airlines. When Otto John joined the legal department,

he quickly got to know and value him as a courageous co-conspirator. He hoped to draw the various factions of the Widerstand into the formation of a democratic constitutional as soon as the plot had succeeded. They therefore made contact with former trade union leaders such as Wilhelm Leuschner, Jakob Kaiser and Hermann Maass. Through Emmi’ s cousin, Ernst von Harnack, a Social Democrat, they gained access to other leaders of the social-

ist resistance, primarily Julius Leber. They all discussed plans, including the introduction of a constitutional monarchy with Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia as its head. Klaus Bonhoeffer also participated as a civilian in the conspiratorial activities of Hans von Dohnanyi who worked for the Abwehr, the military counter-intelligence organisation under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Dohnanyi in turn asked Dietrich Bonhoeffer to mobilise his ecumenical contacts with British church leaders to discover from Churchill under which conditions Germany could expect to obtain peace with the Allies in the wake of a successful putsch. In 1942, Dohnanyi brought Emmi’s brother Justus Delbrtick into the Abwehr and the circle of like-minded anti-Nazis. Christel and Hans von Dohnanyi were arrested on 5 April 1943, together with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Thenceforth Klaus’s resistance activity was in jeopardy. In the face of the escalating catastrophe he found the caution that he had to show increasingly intolerable. Thus Stauffenberg avoided risky contacts with Klaus Bonhoeffer when he prepared the ‘Valkyrie’ operation in the winter of 1943, while using the latter’s links with the Social Democrat resistance movement. Otto John, for example, arranged for a meeting between Leber and Stauffenberg. The complexity of the Widerstand was only gradually revealed after the attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944. Justus Delbriick was arrested in August 1944, followed by Klaus Bonhoeffer, Ernst von Harnack and Rtidiger Schleicher in October. On 2 February

1945 they were sentenced to death, and Ernst von Harnack was executed in March 1945. The SS murdered Klaus Bonhoeffer and Schleicher on 24 April 1945, while Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans

von Dohnanyi had been executed at Flossenbtirg and Sachsenhausen concentration camps two weeks earlier on 8 and 9 April.

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 3

In June 1945 Emmi Bonhoeffer left Berlin to rejoin her children, aged six, ten and thirteen, in Schleswig-Holstein, where they lived

with relatives. Soon after the end of the war Emmi Bonhoeffer became involved in social and humanitarian work. She developed a system of neighbourly help to distribute CARE parcels that she received from the United States. She became an arbitrator in disputes between refugees and the indigenous population. Later she acted as secretary general of the ‘Hilfsring’, an organisation that sent food packages to East Germany. During the 1960s she looked after Jewish survivors who had been called to testify in the Auschwitz trial. To the end, she was an active member of Amnesty International. Emmi Bonhoeffer lived in Dtisseldorf from 1970 until her death on 12 March 1991.

Interview QO: Why did your husband join the Widerstand?

A: There is only one answer to this question: people behave as they are compelled to do by an inner necessity. This is not obvious to everybody. Many people think that Widerstand was a matter of free will, but often there is no choice. Freedom of choice is something pretty limited. Of course, Hitler was abhorrent to us from the outset because of his arrogant, ice-cold, high-handed manner. He was without the slightest modesty, without any feeling for the fact that there were other people cleverer than he. He regarded himself as the measure of all things and so he turned everything upside down. Anything that was disreputable but looked useful to him was called raison d’état. One merely had to hear his voice to know the kind of man one was dealing with. I never saw Hitler, but merely heard him on the radio and that was enough for me. A man who bawled all the time. In 1947, two years after the war, my father-in-law [Karl Bonhoeffer] wrote an essay about the personality of the Fihrer and mass hysteria. In it he discussed the psychiatric concept of induced madness. What he meant was a condition that is brought about by the

transmission of a madman’s delusions to his environment; it is often hard to tell where madness begins — from where it originates. My father-in-law found it impossible to judge whether Hitler was

really mad, because he had never seen him in person. But if you think of Hitler’s successes you have to ask yourself what kind of society it was in which a ‘madman’ could gain such influence.

4 | Courageous Hearts

Q: This ‘inner necessity’ you mentioned, did that hold good for the Delbriicks as well, 1.e. for your own family? Can you remember any telling incidents from your childhood?

A: I had a very happy childhood, in spite of the First World War. I was nine when it broke out. There were seven children in the family and the three youngest, Justus, Max and I, were very close. It was a wonderful comradeship. I only knew how to play boys’ games because my next eldest sister was considerably older. I never played with dolls. When the seventh child was born, my father built a house for us after my mother had remarked that our family could no longer fit into a rented apartment. He paid for it with the money that my mother had inherited. She was the daughter of Karl Thiersch, a surgeon from Leipzig and a granddaughter of Justus von Liebig, the [famous] chemist. My father thought that architects were the most stupid people because they always claimed that this or that could not be done. So he built the house with the help of a builder in accordance with his own plans, always bearing us children in mind and with an eye for the practical and useful. For example the

house, contrary to the tradition of [the suburb of] Grunewald, stood in the middle of the garden so that we could play all around it. On the playground behind the house there stood a big oak tree, parallel bars and a horizontal bar with a ladder, as well as a sand-

pit for the younger children. Everything was provided for. The garden seemed enormous to us children, and only later did I realise that it was in fact quite small. My father had his own very eccentric views about education. I remember how the boys played chess on the roof by the chimney. A neighbour called out: ‘Do you know that your sons are sitting on the roof? Isn’t that dangerous?’ To which my father replied: ‘Don’t look at them.’ My father was convinced that when a child

embarked on something dangerous like that without trying to show off, it proved that he had the situation under control. At 2 p.m. my father used to get back from the university on the S-Bahn commuter train — there were few cars in those days — and then we had lunch. To forget about our rumbling tummies, Justus,

Max and I used to play ball games in the street. One day a neatlooking boy asked if he could join in. ‘Yes’, we said, ‘play with us.’ That was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. QO: How old were you then?

A: Oh, I was thirteen or fourteen.

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 5

QO: You were practically neighbours?

A: Yes, four minutes around the corner, Wangenheim-Strafe. Dietrich had a twin sister who played the violin, as I did. Dietrich himself played the piano; his brother Klaus who was five years older played the cello. The result was that the four of us played together. Klaus later claimed that we became ‘engaged’ at the time, but I knew nothing about it. This was because without my realising it we travelled on the same S-Bahn; I got off at Savigny Square where I went to a private school and he travelled another

five stops to Friedrichwerder High School. Every morning he noted where I got out and that is when he resolved that he would marry me. He was good at observing things and picturing them to himself. He always used to say: ‘Everything is there; all you have

to do is read it and put the pieces together.’ He never allowed himself to be taken for a ride. That was how these childhood friendships began and continued when we started joint dancing lessons. In those days people had

big houses with large dining and drawing rooms, to which you could invite fifteen, twenty or more people. Dancing began soon after the war, and everyone brought something to eat — a roll, a jam sandwich or lemonade — those drinks were simply dreadful — and someone, usually Dietrich, would sit down at the piano. We played a lot of games too. We were particularly fond of a game in which each person had to write a question on a slip of paper, which was then thrown into a bowl. A committee was elected that gave a prize for the best question, which everyone then had to answer. I remem-

ber, for example, that someone once put in the question: ‘What invention do you think is most urgently needed?’ The answer was that there should be an invention enabling people to grow fur again, so that social distinctions would disappear. Another question was ‘What is the quickest way of getting to know another per-

son?’ One answer was ‘By putting him on his hobby horse’, but that was turned down. Another suggested going on a journey with him, but that was thought to take too long. Finally somebody said, and now things became serious: ‘I get to know someone best when I offend him unfairly.’ He later became my brother-in-law, Gerhard Leibholz, who had to emigrate to England in 1938 because of his Jewish descent. Q: How would you describe your education?

A: There were a lot of us at the table — seven, as I’ve said. First one sat at the little side table, then at the big one and by the time

6 | Courageous Hearts

the younger children moved to the big one, the eldest children had already left home: Waldemar for his education and Lore to be married. Then we were five — five and a governess who had the funny name of Fraulein Sengebusch. We called her Sengebiischel [Spanking Birch] because she was quick to spank us. My parents

held the view that if you have a governess, you must not interfere with her. That would have been unthinkable with the Bonhoeffers. I worked out a secret code with Max, who was a year and a half younger than I. Sengebiischel woke us every morning in time for school. If she woke me up calling me ‘Emmi’, she was in a bad mood. If she said ‘Emse’, things were so-so, but if she said ‘Emsechen’ then she was in a very good mood. I would signal her mood to Max with one, two or three fingers. My mother insisted that Fraulein Sengebusch get up with us and give us our breakfast; there was disgusting oatmeal porridge and a bit of dry bread. Sengebtischel was annoyed at having to get up so early and once said to the cook: ‘Naturally the Catholic bitch [meaning my mother] is still in bed.’ That was a miscalculation, since the cook liked and respected my mother and passed the remark on. Sengebusch of course got the sack. QO: Was your mother Catholic?

A: My grandmother, Johanna Thiersch, was Catholic, so my mother was baptised a Catholic. But I think she became Protestant even before she married my father —I don’t know exactly because

such things didn’t count for us. We were related to, and close friends of, our neighbours the Harnacks, the theologian’s family. Frau von Harnack and my mother were sisters. Adolf von Har-

nack was a committed liberal theologian who said it was not essential for a Protestant pastor to say the creed in church. If he found this difficult, he should leave it out. On Sunday afternoons Uncle Adolf always played bocce in his

garden and anyone who came to call was made to join in the game. I was about ten when he patted me on the shoulder and said: ‘I’ll give you a bit of advice for life. If you are ever uncertain

about which direction to take — right or left - do what you least enjoy doing; it usually turns out to be the right thing.’ I often thought of that later. When Max and I were in bed in the evening, my mother would come to read to us a story. In bed we had barley for supper with plums, big thick barley kernels, such as one could only swallow when Mama was reading us stories. It was cold too, since during

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 7

the war only the living room and my father’s study were heated. To persuade my mother to come, we got a wicker chair with thick blankets ready and wrapped her in it up to her chin. My mother was very fond of moral stories by Toni Schumacher and Johanna Spyri’s Heidi. One of these moral sayings ran: ‘Pick up whatever God leaves on your doorstep.’ This story is really characteristic of my whole life. I’ve never done anything systematically; I’ve merely picked up what was put at my door — and there always was something. Thus I never studied. I didn’t even take my Abitur. My father did not believe in education for women. He thought it wrong from the perspective of the national economy because in those days it was assumed that women would marry afterwards anyway. I must

admit that I didn’t need an Abitur for the things that life later demanded of me. Today I'd like to know a lot more. I used to read

very little, preferred to take my cue from real life, asked many questions and always got good answers. I found it much too much trouble always to be reading. And if one then marries a man who knows a lot, whom one can always turn to ... Of course, it was very hard to be left on one’s own at the age of forty. Then one can easily

eo on being uneducated forever or, if you prefer, being insufficiently knowledgeable. Q: Isn’t that a bit too modest? After all, [there was] the intellectual and social sphere in which the Bonhoeffer and Delbriick families moved ...

A: Neither the Bonhoeffers nor the Delbrticks had any pretension to social eminence. They invited as guests the people whom they enjoyed talking to. They didn’t invite people simply for the

purpose of being on social terms with them. There is a typical story about the Bonhoeffer father. One evening, three youngsters, of whom two were engaged, Karl Frederich with Greta Dohnanyi and I with Klaus, wandered around the big dining table and argued about whether the wife in a marriage was more trouble than help. The discussion got so animated that the elder Bonhoeffer heard it in his study and came in and asked: ‘What are you arguing about?’

On being told, he said with a laugh, ‘Wives should be troublemakers’ and went out. With the Bonhoeffers the emphasis in education was on integrity.

Anything that smacked of window-dressing or was made up or tried to impress got laughed at. My parents may have been less sensitive about this. With us, people were coy about saying something

banal. With the Bonhoeffers you hesitated to recount something interesting for fear it might be found not to be so interesting after

8 | Courageous Hearts

all, and the pretension might be laughed at. We were a shade more sensitive in this respect. To be sure, people could be critical in our house too. I remember that my father didn’t like it when in 1914/15 we children did the popular thing and ran through the streets with paper flags shouting ‘hurrah!’ to celebrate some victory — we were always victorious at

the start of the war. He didn’t like it and told us of the ancient Greeks who had taught that victories should be treated like funerals. Well, that was how we were brought up, which meant that we could not sympathise with Hitler who was an unscrupulous fanatic. Q: Did you have any experience in your father’s circle of how the intellectuals — to put it in a nutshell — made their peace with Nazism?

A: My father died in 1929 and Harnack in 1930. Neither experienced Hitler’s rise to power. People have often said: ‘The intellectuals had to be dead before Hitler could succeed. They would have

had influence in the universities.’ But the majority tumbled like dominoes. My husband went to see various professors, particularly jurists, and suggested that they act together in resisting and protesting and say clearly: ‘Not like this. The Versailles Treaty is too hard — agreed — but not like this.’ And then the same objections always followed: ‘Nothing will be eaten as hot as it is cooked’; “you cannot use a plane without leaving shavings’; ‘a lot happens in a national revolution that isn’t nice, but if Hitler finds employment for even only a million men, that would be worth quite a few flaws.’ Q: But the Bonhoeffers, the Delbriicks, the Harnacks showed themselves to be less susceptible?

A: Well, I myself had a sister who was strongly influenced by her husband, an enthusiastic admirer of Hitler. In March 1933 they went to Potsdam, to the Garrison Church for Hitler’s ‘coronation’.

Afterwards that brought on a fine old row with my youngest brother, who had many Jewish friends and despised Hitler. When my brother-in-law came home, the bolt on the front door was shut

— the last person to come in always shut it. When my brother opened the door to answer the bell, my brother-in-law boxed his ears; he hit back and a pair of spectacles broke into pieces. The enmity between the two was obvious. Q: I don’t quite see the context.

A: My brother-in-law thought it was chicanery. He had come back from this celebration in Potsdam and felt he wasn’t welcome.

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 9

He got hold of the Berliner Tageblatt, to which my brother subscribed, and burnt it; he initiated a veritable auto-da-fé. The Berliner Tageblatt counted as liberal and Jewish and that he could not stand. A few weeks later, after the boycott of Jewish shops on 1 April,

Grtinfeld called to deliver the linen that my mother had ordered. My sister rushed down the stairs and said: ‘Mama, I see you are still buying from Jews. I’m afraid I must tell you to choose — either

the Jews or your daughter.’ To which my mother replied in her soft but firm voice: ‘My child, I choose the Jews.’ This was not what my sister had expected. My mother was very definite about such things, but this conflict affected her health. Grandma Bonhoeffer, Karl’s mother, defied the boycott although she was over ninety. She lived with the Bonhoeffers, had a nice room with a balcony and had her lunch and supper with the family. She made her own breakfast and for this she periodically bought a quarter of a pound of butter at a very nice little shop. When she got there on 1

April, an SA man in jackboots was outside and said: ‘Must you really buy butter from a Jew?’ Whereupon she took her cane, rapped on his boots, so that he had to get out of the way, and said: ‘T shall buy my butter where I always buy it.’ That nothing happened to her was probably due to her old age. Q: But it took a lot of civil courage.

A: Civil courage, well, that’s quite a problem. In the summer of 1942 I was queuing at our corner shop to buy vegetables. In talking to one of my neighbours I said: ‘Now they’re beginning to kill

the Jews with gas and burn them in concentration camps.’ The saleswoman, who was listening, warned me: ‘Frau Bonhoeffer, if you don’t stop spreading these atrocity stories, you yourself will end up in a concentration camp. Then nobody can help you; we’ve

all heard about it.’ I replied: ‘Everyone should hear it; it’s the truth.’ That evening I told the story rather proudly to my husband. He had been deeply involved in the conspiracy for some time. ‘Are you completely crazy?’ he said. ‘Please understand that a dictatorship is like a snake. If you tread on its tail, it will bite you. You must go for its head. Neither you nor I can do that, only the military. They have the weapons and they have the access. Everything else is useless and amounts to suicide. What you are doing is suicide.’ He was very cross with me about this story because I had put the whole family in danger, for it was clear that we could

have heard the story only from Dohnanyi, who was working on Canaris’s staff in the Armed Forces High Command.

10 | Courageous Hearts

Let me tell you of another experience I had. It must have been about the end of 1941. I was in a tram on the Kurftirstendamm. The

tram was crowded and a neat little old Jewish woman wearing a yellow star got on. A worker got up and gave her his seat, saying in his good-tempered familiar Berlin slang: ‘There now take a seat, my little shooting star.’ She didn’t have the nerve to do as she was told and the conductor came running up and said to the man: ‘Surely you know Jews are not allowed to sit down.’ The reply was: ‘Let me tell you something, mister. I decide for myself what happens to my behind.’ With that he got out. I then pushed the woman into the seat and whispered to her: ‘Just stay where you are.’ I stood beside her until she had to get out. The conductor stopped protesting and fortunately there wasn’t a Gestapo official in the coach. What is interesting about the story is that the rest of the passengers sympathised with the worker and the Jewish woman rather than with the conductor, but didn’t dare say anything — that’s dictatorship.

It was different with my brother-in-law Georg Hobe. On the morning of the day that all the synagogues were burnt, he took the suburban train to his bank. As he saw the synagogue in FasanenStrafse he whispered to himself: ‘A cultural scandal.’ A man next to him pulled out a card, said he belonged to the Gestapo and asked

Georg for his papers: ‘Come to the Gestapo office at such-andsuch tomorrow; if you don’t, we'll come to collect you.’ He was pressed to join the Party, had to collect money for the Winter Aid programme and was later forced to distribute ration cards. This, incidentally, goes to show that membership in the Party gave no clue as to a man’s ethical standpoint. Take, for example, my brother Justus who was asked by the brother of our Jewish brother-in-law Leibholz, a textile manufacturer in Sommerfeld, to take over his factory to prevent it from

falling into the hands of the SS. Justus allowed himself to be recorded as an Aryan owner and moved to Sommerfeld in the Lausitz. Later generations see him as a Nazi profiteer, a beneficiary of the persecution of the Jews. To whom do you explain the real facts and who is going to differentiate between what is true and what is a lie? The citizens of the former GDR are now facing the same problem. Q: Can you remember the so-called Kristallnacht?

A: My husband made a journey that night and saw how the synagogues were set on fire. His attention was caught by a general

who pushed along the other side of the street, averted his head

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 11

and slipped around the corner. When my husband got home at four in the morning, he woke me up and asked: ‘What has a small head, a long beak, long red legs and stands with its feet in a bog?’ I suggested a stork. ‘No, a German general.’ Q: Your husband was very critical of the part played by the army in those years?

A: The officers kept on making fresh excuses: the ‘stab in the back’ legend, the oath to the Ftihrer. Most of them were satisfied with their salvaged consciences. You know the passage in which Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes the difference between a good and a salvaged conscience? A man with a salvaged conscience allows arguments to set his mind at rest, so that he can adapt himself to the situation. My husband got a lot of political and human help from Otto John,

who was a syndic with Lufthansa, without doubt an anti-Nazi. As he had no wife or children he was more mobile than the others. That is why he took on the most dangerous errands to find out how far people were ready and suitable for the conspiracy and for the recon-

struction afterwards. A close contact was established with Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia who worked in the Lufthansa section in charge of transport policy. My husband and John considered the idea of going back to a constitutional monarchy with a strong parliament after the collapse of the dictatorship, the idea being to win the conservatives over to the new state. Their view was that the Weimar Republic had failed because it had not succeeded in winning over the conservatives. Now they had found in Louis Ferdinand a figure on whom even the Social Democrats could agree. John escaped to Spain in a Lufthansa plane a few days after the bomb plot. His brother Hans was arrested, tortured and executed.

When Otto John heard this, he had a major nervous breakdown. QO: Was the arrest of the brother the result of a mix-up?

A: A mix-up? What do you think? As they couldn’t get Otto, they had to content themselves with his brother. They tortured Hans John so badly that he let out my husband’s name. And they tortured my husband so badly that he mentioned other names, including his own brother-in-law. O: Which brother-in-law?

A: Rtidiger Schleicher, an unusually attractive person of impeccable character who was married to Ursula Bonhoeffer. My husband

12 | Courageous Hearts

survived all the physical torture and only gave in when threatened that if you don’t sign now, we shall put the screws on your wife. He could not stand up to that. No man would have found that possible. Before that, they beat him until he was covered in blood — I collected the blood-stained laundry. Then they locked him up in a cell

for thirteen days and nights with his hands tied behind his back. It

was unimaginable. It still weighs on my mind that my husband broke down under torture in order to protect me. He was arrested on 1 October. I heard about it on the 4th, 5th or 6th. I was in Holstein with the children and couldn’t get away at once, as I had to find someone to look after my three children. A seventeen-year-old niece from K6nigsberg who wanted a place to live in Holstein took over my bed and my children. We were then living in a cottage with five small rooms — eleven children and five women. When I left I told the children that their father had broken his arm and that I must go to Berlin to look after him. When I got a permit to visit my husband, I saw him fairly often — though naturally there was always someone watching us. The first time we talked, he secretly drew a little circle on the table for me and went through the motions of cutting and taking a slice of cake. I knew at once what he was getting at: ‘They only know this much but I am in it this deep.’ But he was still hopeful. With the help of the books that I was allowed to bring him, we were able to develop a lively correspondence. In one of the first books, he had underlined the name Bonhoeffer three times. I gathered from this that there must be something relevant in the book. I searched and

searched but found nothing. I lay awake at night and thought: ‘There must be something in the book.’ I got a magnifying glass

and with the help of the bedside lamp found on the last page under a big fat ‘L’ a faint pencil marking. On the previous page there was nothing but two pages further back a mark under a little ‘i’, two pages before that an ‘e’ and so on. That gave me the clue. The book contained a report on his interrogation, so that I knew whom [had to inform. I answered him in the same way and the man at the door was left wondering at the speed with which the Bonhoeffer guy read fat books. QO: What were the details of this information?

A: I should warn a few people. I wrote to Hans John, for example, telling him he should, for reasons I gave him, revoke his earlier statements at the trial. I put the message in the doublelayered lid of a yoghurt container; in order to find out whether

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 13

he had received my message, I told him to ask me to bring toothpaste next time. That was how it operated but it was to no avail. My husband was condemned to death on 2 February, along with Rtidiger Schleicher, Hans John and Justus Perels. That was the day before Freisler was killed in an air raid. Then something very strange happened. Rtidiger’s brother, Rolf Schleicher, a physician, happened to be near the People’s Court because he wanted

to hand in an appeal for mercy for his brother. His uniform showed that he was a military doctor and he was called to a seriously injured person without knowing it was Freisler. He could

only certify that the man was dead. Then he learned that this was the judge of the People’s Court whom everyone was so afraid of. He pointed to the corpse and said to the bystanders: ‘This is the man who illegally condemned my brother to death yesterday.” When Thierack, the Minister of Justice, heard the story, he was so shocked that he wanted to re-examine the whole case; but it did no good. Ten weeks later the Gestapo took everything into their own hands and had the whole group shot along with other prisoners. But to go back to 3 February, with the help of an official in the Ministry of Justice, a Herr Pippert, I was able to get my husband’s files intercepted on the way to the Ministry and Herr Pippert managed to ‘lose’ them in his desk. From that day onwards I slept better because I told myself that nothing further could happen. Q: Your husband was shot on 23 April, practically at the end of Nazi rule. Did you find that particularly destructive for your life afterwards?

A: Hmm ... Yes, as I have said, by the Gestapo, a fortnight before the end of the war. He had remained alive from the day of the death sentence, 2 February, to 23 April. After the files had disappeared, I was sure he would survive. He, too, counted on this. Q: Did you attend the proceedings in the People’s Court?

A: No, that wasn’t possible, but we knew the date. Just before the main trial, I went to see Freisler and told him that my hus-

band’s statements could not be taken seriously since they had been obtained under torture. He asked: ‘How did you get this idea?’ I replied: ‘I took away the blood-stained laundry.’ He looked at the papers and said: ‘That may be possible — there is a note here

about “stepped-up interrogation”.’ Later this note couldn’t be found, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. They hushed up as much as they could.

14 | Courageous Hearts

Q: If one looks at photos from the 1920s and 1930s, one finds that the people who were later to take part in the 20 July plot were bright young

men. Within a very short time most of them seem to me to have aged immensely. And if you look at the photos from the People’s Court, you get the impression that not only were they finished with life but that they had

lived through a whole lifetime in this short period. In the letters of Helmuth von Moltke to Freya, his daily life is sometimes described in great detail so that one realises how many jobs had to be done, how many discussions had to take place in order to get the coup d’état prepared, and this all happened on top of all the normal business of people’s jobs.

A: It took my husband a lot of energy and time to win people’s co-operation and to set up contacts between the various groups, between conservatives and Social Democrats, the churches and Communists. As regards the daily routine, I would prefer to talk about the nightly rounds. Everything had to be done at night and by word of mouth, one could never make a telephone call or write a letter. Everything was based on personal night-time contacts. My husband got so little sleep that he once spent half a month’s

salary on buying a pound of black market coffee. At night he worked for the conspiracy and by day for Lufthansa. You can’t imagine the kind of life these people lived. The torture was applied when they were already exhausted. Q: What did you yourself do on 20 July?

A: [heard about it on the radio in Schleswig-Holstein and went to Berlin as quickly as I could to see what would happen next. I found my husband and my brother clearing the rubble from a near-by house that had been bombed; they were getting things out of the cellar. They broke off and we sat in the ruins, and I asked my brother: ‘Do you see any sense in anything now that the Attentat has failed?’ He just stared ahead for a long time and then said in his soft way: ‘I believe it was a good thing to do and perhaps it is also a good thing that it failed.’ Q: What did he mean by that?

A: Fundamentally, staging the Attentat at this juncture had no political value — only a moral one. The world needed to see that not all Germans were prepared to put up with this. My brother and my

husband saw only too well the difficulties that would have arisen over forming a new government. And not least, they were afraid that we might be getting off too lightly after all the terrible wrongs that the National Socialists had put on our shoulders.

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 15

Q: During the months of August and September 1944 your husband had still not been arrested ?

A: Yes, in August he was with us up in Holstein. He took a few days’ holiday. I wanted him to tell me what I should do if he were arrested. He replied: ‘You cannot do anything. It is as if someone has fallen into a lion’s den. Make sure you save your life for the sake of the children.’ But when it happened — when I got the news — I knew at once that he was waiting for me. One can never quite imagine in advance a situation as it then actually happens. Q: Looking back, would you say that your opposition to the regime, your resistance, grew gradually, little by little, or was there one decisive experience?

A: No, there was no decisive experience. It gradually developed on its own in the family circle - we were all related. The whole thing was recognised from the start as a calamity. It became clearer and clearer that we were right in repudiating this regime. But one could say that the way the Jews were treated gave one the certainty that one could never come to terms with Hitler. QO: What was your task?

A: Mine was confined to making coded telephone calls. For example, there was a plan to call a general strike after the Attentat. The Fulda businessman Walter Bauer, who was later put in jail, was one of the people helping to finance this. Part of the money was hid-

den under my husband’s shirts and had to be sent via Ernst von Harnack to Wilhelm Leuschner. My job was to ring up Harnack and

ask him if he would come to a musical party and bring his flute with him. That was the prearranged code-word. Or I had to walk round the block at night when they were meeting in our small library, and see whether anyone was watching our house. I never took part in the discussions — I was kept far too busy with my three children — and later on I was evacuated. Everyday life was a strain. But I believe it was important for the men to know that their wives thought as they did. If I’d been an enthusiastic Hitler fan, it would

have been very difficult for my husband. That wouldn’t have worked. To be a National Socialist or not wasn’t just a matter of political opinion, but also a question of character. Knowing one was understood was, to my mind, very important in such a situation. QO: How did you get over your fear?

A: You get used to fear; after a bit you no longer notice it. You could almost say I was too busy to be anxious. Everything depended

16 | Courageous Hearts

on being composed. What is more, my husband protected me by never telling me any details. Otherwise I might have carelessly

let something out and put myself and other people in danger. Naturally I knew the broad outlines. The situation was different with the Dohnanyis; Christel Bonhoeffer knew everything down to the details. Q: Did your husband ask your opinion now and then about particular issues?

A: No, he knew my opinions and had no need to ask questions. Q: Then there was never a decisive discussion between you?

A: From the start it was clear that he was looking for ways of doing something. Q: But this did have consequences in everyday life?

A: Basically I should have been much more careful than I was. One day my son Thomas’s teacher rang up. ‘Frau Bonhoeffer’, he said, ‘you must be more careful in what you say politically when the children are around.’ What had happened? Herr Jung had set the boys to write an essay about the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Thomas had written: ‘There are only a few Germans living

there who get on badly with the Czechs. Let’s hope the Fiihrer doesn’t find he’s got a bug in his coat.’ That was something he’d once picked up at a meal — and misunderstood. We were a bit careless with the children. Q: Didn't your eldest have to join the Hitler Youth?

A: I was able to keep Thomas out by letting him take the entry exam for the musical high school. He was musical. They had auditions and he was required to sing complicated intervals. After he had passed the exam, I took the children to my brother in Sommerfeld because of the bombs in Berlin. QO: Was that the man who took over the clothes factory?

A: Yes, Justus. O: Wasn't he arrested later on as well?

A: Yes, in September 1944. At first he had incredible luck. He

was asked by Gtinter Baumer, the official who was leading the interrogations, whether he had been at a particular conspiratorial meeting. He had been there but said that he hadn’t, but accidentally

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 17

found in his coat pocket a ticket to Sommerfeld on the day in question. The official had made a mistake about the date — the meeting took place a day later. My brother was never brought to trial and

was released from Lehrter-Strafe prison on 25 April 1945 along with Steltzer and Bethge. During the final days of the war we all sat together in the Bonhoeffer’s cellar, which was full to bursting. Then in May 1945 the Russians took away my brother, ostensibly as a witness for 20 July. At the end of 1946 we learned that he had died of diphtheria in a Russian camp in October 1945. After that I was really at the end of my tether. Q: He was the sixth of your close relations: Klaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans von Dohnanyi, Riidiger Schleicher, your cousin Ernst von Harnack and finally your brother Justus Delbriick. Have you ever regretted not having kept more distant from politics?

A: No, one simply had no choice. And what would have happened if the Attentat had succeeded? If they had been forced to take over the government? The whole country would have been full of disappointed Nazis. There would have been a new ‘stab in the back’ legend. There would have been a story that the miracle weapon had not been used because it had been boycotted. And there was nothing to hope for from the Allies; they didn’t help the German Widerstand at all. We thought the outside world bore quite a large share of the guilt. When Hitler came to power, one had the

feeling that the world wouldn’t let him go on indefinitely. But what happened? In 1936 the whole world came to the Olympic Games and it went on like that until September 1939. Everybody kowtowed before him. Q: Seen from today, Churchill’s sceptical attitude towards the German Widerstand and the demands of the Allies for unconditional surrender were understandable.

A: Very understandable after everything that happened. They didn’t want to let us off lightly. You can’t bite everybody like a mad dog and then hope for forbearance. Goerdeler’s ideas about foreign affairs may have been rather naive but reality would definitely have opened his eyes. That is why I’ve got so worked up over the recent discussion

about Poland’s western frontier. What do people think they want? Fortunately we’ve got Weizsadcker who always has some-

thing helpful to say. After the war I joined the CDU because Steltzer urged me to, but I left it when Herr Adenauer talked of

18 | Courageous Hearts

‘Brand alias Frahm’. After the experience with dictatorship, many people wanted to give the state a moral basis and thought that to do so they needed Christianity. But it’s very doubtful whether you can draw Christianity into politics in this way — and link it so closely with the name of one party. Politics often can’t be ‘Christian’. QO: But didn’t Christianity play a big part in the Widerstand?

A: Naturally it played a big part; it was the ethical basis from which the battle was fought. But just think of the role of the Confessing Church. Dietrich [Bonhoeffer] was very dissatisfied with it. He thought the gentlemen in the leadership much too soft, much too weak. The Widerstand of the Confessing Church didn’t amount to much; many people wanted to keep a foot on safe shores. I once had to give a talk in Switzerland and in the discussion afterwards

a young Swiss theologian said: ‘I believe that only a nation that has resisted the temptation to become free and strong with the help of a criminal has a right to take the Germans to task.’ That is what I regard as genuine Christianity. Q: When you think of the immense sacrifice that the Widerstand involved, do you feel that this sacrifice has been in vain?

A: That’s a very difficult question to answer. One keeps hearing it said that Germany only regained respect in the world on account

of these events, but I’m not convinced. Perhaps it did help Ade-

nauer at the beginning. But I believe Germany has recovered respect because it is tied into the West and is strong economically,

not on moral grounds or because we have made a convincing effort to establish a Rechtsstaat, a democracy. Besides, the world has moved on since 20 July and today we have completely new problems to deal with. The price we are paying for our standard of living is the destruction of the environment. In my opinion that still isn’t seen clearly enough. The Greens have done us a great service by getting this problem recognised in spite of their many mistakes and wrangles. What the Widerstand has left behind are not its great schemes, not its political legacy — here the Widerstand failed in the long run.

What has remained is the human element. In this sense the personalities of the Widerstand will live on as models. Even failure can

have meaning, although I wouldn’t go so far as to accept the theory that men can make progress only by martyrdom. In any case walking the straight and narrow does not come cheaply, and it is

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 19

always worthwhile knowing the sacrifices it will cost. The sacrifices could be worthwhile just for that. QO: What did you, your husband and your friends use as a yardstick? How did you distinguish between good and evil?

A: That, I think, was simply a sense of values handed down by our forebears. It doesn’t depend on class or education; you find it in all walks of life. Aman who shouts ‘hurrah!’ when he hears that a political opponent has been trampled to death — that makes clear the sort of man one is dealing with. Misused Darwinism, the survival of the fittest, has similarly always played a dreadful role. Hitler had the effect of a watershed. He made people divide into those who refused to bury their sense of good and evil, and those who let their judgement be shaken by the superficial successes. QO: You were twenty-five when you were married.

A: ‘A late girl’ was how they put it then. Before that I had many good friends with whom I made music, danced, ice-skated and talked. Q: Although your husband had long ago decided on you?

A: Yes. He made out later that he had watched it all with complete calm and felt all along that I would end up with him. O: Which was true!

A: Yes. After school I wanted to study music but failed the entrance exam for the Conservatory. I started much too late, at twelve or thirteen — that was during the time when there was no coal to be had and only my father’s room was heated. I was supposed to practice the violin there while he worked. Beginners on the violin are dreadful. But it didn’t disturb him. He merely used to say: ‘You mustn’t stop because with time I shall get used to the noise.’ Really and truly, that is what he was like. Then I took violin lessons and a music course in Frankfurt with a Herr Holde.

Klaus and I got engaged in the Christmas holidays and Herr Holde took the line that I must pay for his course up to the end, so once again I went to Frankfurt to get something for my money. What a German pays for, he will learn. It was when Yehudi Menuhin started as a prodigy. Q: You got to know Dietrich Bonhoeffer by playing ball games in the street. Can you remember your first encounter with your future husband?

20 | Courageous Hearts

A: No, not really. I absorbed, as it were, the whole family at once — they all interested me. For years I stood between the two brothers and was equally friendly with both. It often wasn’t clear whom I really liked better. They were both fascinating men. One

of them was tall and fair, the other squat and strong, but both were full of character and very sensitive. Klaus was the oldest one; he was four years older than me and was my brother Justus’ best friend. ‘Be more rather than seem more’ was the motto of both families. This even applied to ‘bad manners’, among us, at any rate. It used to be said of my brother Justus, when he was a student in Heidelberg, that you couldn’t invite that Delbriick fellow; he had no man-

ners. What had happened? When he had no bow tie to wear with a dinner jacket, he simply wore an ordinary tie! He didn’t think it mattered. He would say: ‘I could go in puttees too.’ He had learned from Socrates that only the opinion of the noble mattered and those who didn’t like his puttees just weren’t noble. A favourite saying of

ours was ‘People who matter don’t mind and people who don’t matter aren’t involved’. There was some arrogance behind it, but that was quickly knocked on the head. My husband was artistic and very broad-minded -— that ties in too with his concern for orderliness — and he didn’t mind spending more than we earned. When he went away for any length of time, visiting clients in Finland or Romania on legal business, | usually ran out of money. Then I had to ask my mother-in-law for money and that continually led to terrible ‘interrogations’. Naturally there were tensions, but in important matters I got on with my husband very well. What really held us together became clear during his imprisonment. It all seemed to make sense; things just couldn’t be other than they were. If I had to live over again, there is not much I would do differently. I would merely spend more time with the children. I had a husband who stood up to be counted,

and that’s what matters. He was a personality I could respect and from whom I learned a lot. QO: What were the happiest moments in your life?

A: I’m always very cautious about using the expression ‘happy’. What does happiness mean? I mean, to be fighting, to be in danger for a good cause, that doesn’t make one unhappy. I wouldn’t want

to have lived a different life. I don’t envy people who were exposed to less danger. But if you put the question like that, I’d reply

it was delightful to watch how the children lit up the moment

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 21

their father came home. To give you an example of the way he handled the children, Thomas, our eldest, started to play minuets by Handel and Bach when he was quite small. My husband listened to him playing, then went to his study and took out a book that showed how people used to dress at the time of Handel and Bach, how they danced, how they behaved. He described life at that time and then said: ‘Now play it again’, whereupon Thomas played it quite differently. Klaus was wonderful with the children. When I'd got them to bed — the three of them slept together in a little room — and they heard the garden door shutting, there was no

holding them back. All three were out and downstairs and he would come back up the stairs decorated like a Christmas tree, with them all hanging around his neck. He would settle down on the little bench in the nursery, where I’d give him his soup and fried potatoes while he talked to them. Soon they'd start to sing, two voices at first, then three. He loved his children above everything else and took pride in every progress they made, without nagging them. My husband had very sound judgement. And he inspired confidence because he kept himself in the background and could put himself into other people’s shoes. He was eminently intelligent, but not in an off-putting way; nor was he the kind of man who always wanted to be in the right. He was a man I'd go to if I had scruples or difficult decisions to make, either about my work or about other people. Q: Can you tell me about the last days of April 1945?

A: On 22 April Lutz Heuss, Theodor Heuss’s son, called on me and said: ‘I’ll collect your husband tomorrow.’ He had hoarded up bread and buried two hundred litres of petrol in cans in the garden so as to be able to go on operating in days of chaos. On the morning of 23 April our house in Eichkamp received a direct hit. At that moment I was in the garden, getting everything ready to welcome my husband. The ‘ack-ack’ began firing behind me and I ran into the house as fast as the gunfire. I would have done better to stay outside because I’d hardly shut the cellar door when the shell hit the house. I was shut in, together with two people who’d been bil-

leted with us, the wife of a railwayman and a Belgian foreign worker. They made for the front door and the Belgian shouted: ‘Ca

brie, ca brie!’ The gas pipe had been hit and was burning, but our exit was already full of debris and it was impossible to escape.

I remember being obsessed by the thought that this couldn’t be,

22 | Courageous Hearts

that he should come home in the evening and find me dead, that it

couldn’t be that I would be dead when he returned home that

evening. I mustered all my strength to dig a groove with my fingers so that we could pull the front door down and slip out. Outside there were such clouds of dust from the rubble that you could no longer recognise anything. We staggered over the broken fence into the street. I knew that workers from the Todt Organisation had dug a fine protective trench in the house opposite. It was already pretty full and a neighbour of ours, an aged pensioner, sat there crying continually: ‘My shaving mirror is broken, my lovely new shaving mirror is broken.’ That was so macabre, so grotesque that I recovered my composure. I stumbled over to my parents-in-law’s house, covered in dirt, and my mother-inlaw — an enormously caring woman — merely asked: ‘Have you got your ration book?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then you must go back and look for it, otherwise we shan’t be able to feed you.’ QO: How did you hear about your husband's death?

A: Through Eberhard Bethge, who was set free on the same day with Justus and Theodor Steltzer. Five weeks later Bethge met a man called Kosney near the prison, the only survivor of the sixteen men who were taken to be shot that night. Kosney had been able to turn his head so that he was merely shot in the cheek. He pretended to be dead and later described how he’d heard the lieutenant say: ‘Quickly, quickly, gentlemen, we’ve still got more to do.’ From then on I had nothing more to do except get back to the children. My husband was dead, my house was wrecked — what could I do in Berlin? My children were in Holstein, so I must go to

Holstein. My father-in-law was most unwilling to let me go; he kept advising me to wait but there was no point in that. An old friend said to him: ‘Karl, a mother who wants to go to her children

will always get there.’ And so it was. After travelling for a fortnight, first by bicycle, then on foot, I reached Stawedder. I peeped through the little window in the front door and saw my children, all perfectly healthy, sitting round the table. At that point my strength gave out. Naturally the first question was: ‘Where is Papa?’ That was the moment I’d been fearing most, having to tell the children. And I said: ‘Papa is far ahead of us. He is waiting for us with open arms in heaven.’ ‘Is he dead?’ ‘Only bodies can die, not souls. Papa had a lot of soul.’ Thomas turned on his heel three times and ran out of

the room; the two little ones wept. I’ve never seen deeper grief

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 23

than I did then in the eyes of my children. The smallest, Walther — he was six — later climbed on my lap and asked: ‘Can one be mar-

ried twice?’ I replied: “Yes, dear, one can in theory but can you imagine that I would marry somebody else after your father?’ ‘But

I'd like to have a Papa again.’ Those were hard moments, really hard moments. I’ve never felt that I was particularly strong and found it remark-

able that, in his farewell letter to the children, my husband spoke of ‘your mother’s stout spirit’. This is how it must have felt to him during the prison visiting hours, when most of the women burst into tears. I never did; perhaps he regarded that as strength. Once Commissar Baumer made me ask him whether he would prefer to be shot or hanged. I did this with an ironic smile and he replied, also smiling: ‘Shooting is better.’ I don’t know whether it is a sign of strength or of cold-bloodedness to let such words pass one’s lips; strength and coldness lie close together. Q: This long farewell letter contains a lot of educational advice and hints to the children. It is a very moving document, something one could really call a legacy.

A: Yes, I managed to keep it though all the upheavals of the spring of 1945. When I had to swim across the Elbe river to get to Holstein, I had nothing except two hundred marks and a copy of my husband’s farewell letter, both tied to my chest in a small rubber container. In case I didn’t get through alive, I had left the orig-

inal of the letter with my father-in-law. He in turn had a copy made and sent it to my brother-in-law Leibholz in England. He gave it to anewspaper for German officer POWs. After that it was

there for anyone to use and I no longer had any control over it.

One day it turned up in my daughter’s school book and, she related, people asked: ‘How could my mother give it away?’ It was horrible. I was infuriated that my father-in-law and brotherin-law could do such a thing without consulting me. Q: How do you feel about it in retrospect?

A: The letter meant a good deal to a lot of people, that’s what matters. Q: I'd like to know a little about the years immediately after the war in Holstein. What did you live on?

A: The family helped us to begin with. From 1947 we got parcels from the United States, at first, naturally, from my brother but

24 | Courageous Hearts

soon from strangers too — church people. I was looked after particularly well because, though I didn’t know it, a parson in New York had had a list drawn up of all the families of resistance fighters. I distributed a lot to those around me - there was frightful suffering going on — and wrote letters of thanks to the United States in which I vividly described the situation we were in. Without my knowledge, the letters were published in the Unitarian magazine, and this produced a flood of clothes parcels. Whenever a new parcel arrived, the news got around and my room became a dovecote. I exchanged the coffee in the parcels for bacon from farmers so that the children didn’t starve. The children of Widerstand fighters got double rations as well. That helped a lot. Q: Did the German population know in those days that your husband had lost his life fighting Hitler?

A: Yes, they knew. For them we were people who had taken the other side. What happened to my daughter Cornelia is perhaps a typical illustration. She went to school in Eutin. Once she missed

the train and had to hitch a ride. The driver asked her who her father was and she told him her father was dead. ‘Did he die at the front?’ ‘No, he was killed by the Nazis for working against Hitler.’ ‘Poor little traitor’s kid’, the driver replied. Q: Was your daughter really up to coping with that sort of thing or, to put it more generally, what part did their father play in the children’s education? Didn't his death cast a shadow over them too?

A: ‘Cast a shadow.’ Yes, that was bad. Very bad. I didn’t know anything about psychology. I had a practically life-sized photo-

graphic enlargement of their father made from an old passport photo. It hung in our single living room and beside it I put a little wrought-iron candlestick. When I lit the candle it made the picture

very lifelike, which I thought wonderful. I had no inkling how oppressive this ‘super-father’ was to the children. It looked as though I was trying to make my husband into a kind of saint; the only thing missing was incense. That was the one mistake I made. Then I probably read that farewell letter to them too often as well,

always at the New Year. I thought that was important for their education and I wanted to keep my husband alive, as he certainly was in that letter. Only later did I discover that this was extremely burdensome for the children. I should have exposed them more to normality and everyday matters instead of exceptional ones. Whenever they had to give their names, they spoke with grieving voices.

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 25

They felt immediately that their father stood in their way and that they were always being compared to him. My second mistake was having too little time for my children. I was busy right through the day. The letters I wrote to America had the natural result that more parcels arrived and I had to con-

sider what was the most sensible way of dealing with them. It soon became clear that many people were ready to work for a coat or a pair of shoes. I merely needed to go through the villages with

my eyes open in order to know where something was wanted; when someone came and asked for a suit, I would give him the name of a widow for whom he could chop wood or beat carpets in payment. Soon it was necessary to keep regular accounts because there were more clothes than jobs. When I had two hundred hours of work owing to me on account of clothes I’d given out, I used them to get the road from Gronenberg to Stawedder paved. I sent

the Unitarians regular reports of what was being achieved with the things they sent. So I was busy round the clock and my children suffered on account of this. When Cornelia was asked about

her mother, she said: ‘It’s dreadful. Strangers keep coming the whole time and lick up my mother’s cream; there’s nothing left for us except sour curds.’ I was tired, impatient and demanding with them. This cannot be made good. QO: In 1952 you gave up your work in Holstein. What happened after that? A: First I was asked to go to Heilsberg in Bad Vilbel, near Frank-

furt, to put my experience with the clothes at the disposal of people who were starting a refugee settlement. The underlying idea was to build up a community on a Christian basis centred around the church. That was quite a misjudgement. The people certainly

promised to take an active part in church life, but they’d no sooner done up their own places than they lost interest in anything except their own advancement. Since I myself am not a church-going person any more than my husband, who was certainly a Christian in his heart of hearts but never went to church, I was soon at cross-purposes with the pastors. “Who does she think she is?’ they muttered. ‘Just because she is a Bonhoeffer she can’t start telling us how to manage our parishes.’ What’s more, it wasn’t long before Neckermann Mailorder started putting cheap

clothes on the market, and then nobody wanted to work for old clothes from America any more. The next thing that was given to me was working for the Aid Circle.

26 | Courageous Hearts

Q: That was the organisation that sent parcels to the so-called ‘East Zone’.

A: Yes, the idea came from Anneliese Dittmann in Heidelberg.

She thought that, just as the Americans had helped us in the immediate post-war period with their CARE parcels, we must now help out our fellow citizens in the [Soviet] Zone. Over a period of time, we set up a lot of Aid Circles in the Federal Repub-

lic and I worked there for a number of years. Then came the Auschwitz witnesses. Q: As regards them, you’ve published a small book in which you describe your encounters with the survivors from Auschwitz. The Auschwitz trial began in December 1963. How did you get involved and what were you supposed to do?

A: Witnesses from all over the world were invited to this trial. They arrived in Frankfurt and didn’t know what to do next. It was a scandal! I went to the state prosecutor and told him that I’d read in the paper that, while nobody was bothering themselves about these people, VIPs were being given a student to look after them, who spent one hundred marks a day showing them everything and saving them lots of inconvenience. We owed it to the witnesses of the Auschwitz trial to take care of them. Would it be O.K.

for me and Frau Wirth, who had first called my attention to the scandal, to take them under our wing. The prosecutor welcomed the proposal. His office gave us a name; we found a hotel and met them at the station - many were disabled and needed wheelchairs. We helped them deal with the authorities and made sure that they got paid as witnesses in the proper way. I was able to invite one or two of them to my house, and later put them up for a day or two to recover their strength. My most shattering encounter was with a forty-year-old Pole. We went for a walk in K6nigstein, past the villas there, and noticed a couple of children who were playing in a sand box and had stuck flowers on the sand tarts they were mak-

ing. The Pole watched the scene for some time and then said sadly: “After I had seen how children in Auschwitz were given lethal injections, I couldn’t believe in God any more.’ I replied: ‘I can understand that. But when the judge had asked you whether you wished to swear by God or by a civil formula, you chose the religious one.’ ‘Yes’, he said, ‘over very important things like that I will still talk about God. There is no God. But we are also not without God.’ And while he was talking like this, one of the children came up to him and pushed a flower through the fence, saying: ‘Here’s a present for you.’

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 27

I always felt that we have a duty to the survivors of the Holocaust to listen carefully to what they have to say and at least try to share their suffering in retrospect. That’s the only thing one can still do to see that one doesn’t evade one’s responsibilities. They can obtain the confidence they need in order to come to grips with their memories only if they see that you are really fully listening to their words and sharing their feelings. They have a traumatic fear of not being understood in these matters. I believe a human life is only fully realised if one goes into its recesses and doesn’t shy away from them out of horror or pain. It is also a way of experiencing great joy. Here we come back to the question: what is happiness? I believe happiness lies in intensity. And I’ve had many opportunities to live intensely. Q: At present you are working for Amnesty International. To me this seems a logical continuation of what you’ve been doing all through your life. Does it have something to do with the Widerstand?

A: Yes and no. It is resistance to violations of human rights, but it carries no risks. You can, if you like, compare it to the Widerstand against Hitler, but I don’t like to do so myself. Besides, I’m active only on the outermost fringes of Amnesty — writing letters,

joining in small demonstrations. I’ve taken over the so-called ‘urgent actions’, that is cases — there’s one on my desk at the moment — where one has to act immediately by telegramme or letter because there is a threat of torture or of a death sentence. In

such a situation, a letter is sent to the Embassy in Bonn and a copy to the opposition press in the country concerned. One of the few countries to respond to such letters is Israel. They send very prompt and informative answers. Once a year I go on a ‘fishing

trip’ for Amnesty there. That produces contributions of two or three thousand marks. QO: As we are on the question of money, here 1s another question. I take

it that the activities you've been talking about were honorary. What did you live on after the war?

A: First of all, I got a widow’s pension and the 40 marks a head that each person got under the currency reform in June 1948; then 280 marks a month in restitution. In 1952 I got the first payment from the 20 July Relief Association. I invested that money in an

apartment I found in Frankfurt. Up to then, I had lived with my three children for seven years in an attic apartment no larger than sixteen metres square. In the early months we only had one bowl,

28 | Courageous Hearts

which was used for everything — cleaning herrings, washing potatoes, washing clothes, preparing a meal. Q: The Federal Republic took a long time before it worked out even a tolerable relationship with the men of 20 July, not to mention their survivors.

A: The first compensation was put through by Hans Lukaschek, who was Refugee Minister in Adenauer’s first Cabinet, and had been in contact with Goerdeler and the Kreisau group.

I think Adenauer had a very guilty conscience towards the Widerstand, because at the crucial moment he rebuffed Goerdeler, who had tried to win him over. He presumably stuck to Talleyrand’s motto. O: What was that?

A: When Talleyrand was asked what he had done during the French Revolution, he replied, ‘J’ai vécu’ — ‘I survived’. Perhaps he

was right. Who will carry on afterwards if everybody else gets killed? Naturally it is also possible that Adenauer didn’t trust Goerdeler and didn’t want to get to know the others. Q: But all the same, you could say that in the creation of the Federal Republic a lot was left undone, a lot was repressed, a lot was denied. In those days nobody seemed to show much interest in the ideas and 1deals of the Widerstand.

A: It was dreadful. I watched with anger and dismay at how many former Nazis got their old posts back — just think of that stupid remark of Filbinger’s: ‘What was lawful then can’t be unlawful now.’ That upset me frightfully; I sometimes thought that they

had all died in vain. On the other hand one can’t insist on every-

one risking their lives. The ground we walk on is so saturated with blood and wrongdoing that I sometimes ask myself whether one achieves anything by standing up for a just cause. QO: How do you get on with the die-hards?

A: I seldom meet them; there’s no point in arguing with them. I prefer to go to schools and give a talk during history or religious studies lessons. Besides, I’ve always refused to speak about my husband’s ‘tragic death’. I regard it as tragic when a soldier is killed who knows he is fighting for a criminal. If someone loses his life fighting for a cause he supports, that isn’t tragic but sad. There’s a big difference between the two. What is equally sad on the other hand, is the death of men who believed in Hitler right up to the end.

Emmi Bonhoeffer | 29

Q: I'd like to ask a final question. If you had to choose a saying that was important to you and that should be important to others, what would you choose?

A: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ [Leviticus ch. 19, v. 18]. I’m sorry I can’t formulate any other message than that. One must let one’s life speak for itself.

Chapter Two

ELISABETH FREYTAG VON LORINGHOVEN

DDE EB lisabeth Freytag von Loringhoven was born in Neustrelitz in 1909. She was the only daughter of the Imperial Russian Premier Lieutenant Georg von Rauch and his wife Helene. Together with her four elder brothers she grew up in St Petersburg, Berlin and Salzburg. Her father died early, in 1914. She was educated by a private tutor and later trained as a nurse at the Lette-Schule in Berlin. In February 1933 she married Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven with whom she had four sons: Nicolai (1934), Axel (1936), Wessel (1941) and Andreas (1943). Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven was born in Grossborn in 1899, the son of the Baltic Baronet Reinhard Ernst Heinrich Freytag von

Loringhoven and his wife Elisabeth. He became an officer in the Reichswehr, serving first with the 4th Prussian Cavalry Regiment and then with Intelligence Department 44. He was promoted to major in 1940 and posted to the General Staff of the XIth Army Corps. He was made colonel in 1943. His last assignment was with the Heereswesen department of the Supreme Command of the Army. He was involved in the Attentat by procuring explosives and the detonator. He committed suicide on 23 July at the Mauerwald

Camp in East Prussia near Hitler’s headquarters, and received post-mortem a dishonorable discharge from the army on 4 August 1944. Elisabeth Freytag von Loringhoven now lives in Salzburg.

Interview Q: You come from a Baltic family?

A: Yes, my father was a Balt who came from Reval. My mother

was born Schierstedt; her mother was a Biilow. My parents and

Elisabeth Freytag von Loringhoven | 31

brothers lived for many years in St Petersburg but at the beginning of the First World War emigrated to Germany. I myself was

born in Neustrelitz in Mecklenburg, north of Berlin. I had a Russian nurse at first and spoke only Russian. Later I got an English nurse who made me very miserable, but I probably made her miserable as well. I took advantage of every opportunity to run away. Q: You are talking about the outbreak of war in 1914?

A: Yes, of course. Even now I can remember the day that war was declared. We were in Neustrelitz in Mecklenburg and I noticed a certain agitation all around me. At one point everyone went out onto the balcony and a flag was hoisted in the market-place. This was the beginning of war in August 1914. Q: Do you remember other details from that war?

A: Pretty soon we moved to Berlin. I went to school there and began to get used to the German language. I remember my father’s death — he died in 1915 — and I remember that my mother and my

English nurse as ‘hostile aliens’ had to go to the police at regular intervals. By 1918 when the war ended, my mother had married again, to Paul von Hinze. He was a family friend from the Petersburg days and godfather to my youngest brother. Then we moved to Glatz County in Silesia where my uncle’s family owned property. Q: How would you describe the political atmosphere of this part of Silesia in the 1920s and 1930s?

A: Over the course of the centuries Glatz County had repeatedly belonged to Bohemia, and my stepfather was nervous that the newly created Czechoslovak Republic might lay claim to Glatz and move in its troops; so we relocated to Salzburg where my parents later bought a house. However, I went to Berlin because I could be more independent there. I had a passion for riding and my mother lent me the money to buy a horse. It wasn’t long before I knew the entire clique, went to Aachen for a tournament and spent most of my time in the stables. I didn’t go out much in the evening since I had to start with the horses pretty early in the morning. QO: ‘Officially’ what did you do in Berlin?

A: First I went to the Lette School and took a dressmaking course there, and after that another one in nursing and child care.

32 | Courageous Hearts

But I didn’t continue with that for long because the horses always had priority; and then I got engaged. My fiancé wanted to wait for his promotion to captain before we married because he said that only then would he be able to feed a family. But I said to him that Thad a bit of money to look after myself and if he had enough and we combined our funds, things should work out. That was a solu-

tion which appealed to him and so he went to my parents to obtain their permission to marry me. QO: How old were you?

A: I was twenty-one then. We married in Salzburg in February 1933. It was very exciting. The German men had to get permission to wear their uniforms, which naturally was given. It was a highly distinguished gathering. We went to Breslau at first, where our regiment, the 7th Cavalry, was stationed; from there we went to the Dresden region. Right at the beginning of our time in Breslau my husband had a serious accident. He fell off a stepladder, cracked the base of his skull, and bit off a small piece of his tongue. That was how our marriage began — a very difficult time. Then I had my first son. The move was already in full swing when my second son was born in Meissen. That was in 1936. Next was the War Academy in Berlin. Then came Hanover. In 1941 we gathered our belongings together and returned to Salzburg. That was where our third boy was born at a time when the air raids on German cities had begun. Q: How did your political ideas develop during all this time? Would you describe yourself as an apolitical woman or did you feel worried?

A: We were among those who counted on Hitler achieving something and were impressed by the whole development. For example, we thought it was splendid when we stopped in our German car at an Austrian filling station and the attendant whistled the Nazi ‘Horst-Wessel’ song in our honour. What we hoped for from Hitler was that he would take the right route. It was the Rohm affair of 1934 that first put us on the alert. That produced an atmosphere that made one suspicious, and from then on we kept our ears pricked. Q: Can you give an example?

A: Most of the things I heard about only after the war, but as time went on you became more and more careful when talking in public. My husband’s post with Canaris naturally meant that he knew a lot. When we talked in confidence, he would suddenly put

Elisabeth Freytag von Loringhoven | 33

a pillow over the phone, or he asked me to use the correct ‘Heil Hitler’ greeting in town so as not to attract attention to myself. I knew precisely who in town was informing the authorities about ‘infractions’. The most awkward occasions arose when Balts came to visit us and talked enthusiastically about how wonderful it all

was. One had to take care not to talk to them about realities that would have seemed quite unbelievable and might have put them in danger. After all, it was always a matter of all or nothing. And so

one was always nervous about other people hearing of things about which one already knew. I also had to be careful too because of my mother, who had not been briefed. In my family there was the additional problem that one of my brothers had turned Communist and emigrated to Cuba in 1938. Q: When was the first time you heard Hitler’s name?

A: That would be at the beginning of 1929. My stepfather, my

eldest brother and I made a big trip to Egypt — it took us six months — and on the way back my stepfather had a date in Rome with a Fraulein Hanfstaengel. That was where I first heard Hitler mentioned. I didn’t know what to make of it but somewhere at the back of my mind I noted the name. My stepfather realised early on that this was a man to be watched; unlike us — my husband and I — he had never gone along with the National Socialists and never made the transition to the new era. I still remember how after 1933 he used to begin his postcards with a ‘Heil Hitler’ in giant letters. When we had meals with him, my husband and I were very reticent about making political statements. QO: This Friulein Hanfstaengel, was she the sister of Hitler’s press chief?

A: Yes, Putzi’s sister. She had an incredible circle of friends and acquaintances. I once had dinner there with Churchill’s son. I’ve nothing to say to the woman’s detriment and owe her a lot. What’s more, I don’t think she was a passionate National Socialist. Q: You said that both you and your husband had high hopes for Hitler. Does that have anything to do with the fact that, as Balts, you were more susceptible to him than many other people? It was precisely in the so-called Border Marches that Hitler won particularly strong support. A: I don’t believe, in fact, that most Balts were in a position to understand the larger context. We wandered about as happy Nazis and we all expected a lot from Hitler. Ever since the 1905 Russian

34 | Courageous Hearts

Revolution the Balts could see Bolshevism and all the terrible damage it was doing right in front of their eyes. My husband, who after the First World War had fought in the Baltic militia to liberate Riga

from Bolshevism, knew only too well what happened to anyone who fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks. His own mother was seized as a hostage by the Reds and, along with many of our other relations, shipped off to Siberia. These experiences led my husband to complain continually that the Germans were not ‘conspiratorial’. He felt that if one had come from Russia and had had to deal with the Bolsheviks, one understood how things were done, but the Ger-

mans couldn’t manage something like this. I know he regarded Stauffenberg as the most able. Naturally he didn’t tell me anything. Q: So you knew absolutely nothing?

A: Nothing. Sometimes he came for a short visit here in Salzburg. At those times he slept here and once he asked me what he should put on, his uniform or civilian clothes? That put me on the alert and I asked myself what it might mean. But I didn’t say anything. When two days later he came back from Vienna in good spirits, I asked him whether his plans had worked out well. He said they had, but I never learned what they involved. Q: And you were no wiser on 20 July?

A: No, not at all. [had my youngest child in 1944 and had my hands full with the children. I believed my husband had been up in the Baltic ever since the winter. I knew nothing, and merely heard on 21 July that an attempt had been made on Hitler’s life. A day or two later someone telephoned to give me my husband’s good wishes. I deduced from this that he was alive. But two or three days later still, the news of his death arrived in the shape of a telegram of condolence from a relative in K6nigsberg. QO: Your husband committed suicide on 23 July 1944. Up until then the Gestapo had obviously not stumbled onto the fact of his involvement the conspiracy.

A: I don’t know about that. Later I heard from a friend that my husband, on hearing that the attempt had failed, called for a plane

to fly home and then planned to fall in action at the front. This plane had been surrounded by soldiers. That was why he went to the Lehndorf Woods to take his own life. To discover more, I went to the SS telling them that I’d had a telegram saying my husband

was dead and that I badly wanted to know more details. It was

Elisabeth Freytag von Loringhoven | 35

only after my enquiry that the SS started investigating and had me

brought in. They must have been quite disappointed at being unable to get anything out of me. All this took place at Himmler’s headquarters, just a few hundred yards from here. Q: You are referring to Hitler’s “Berghof’?

A: No, Himmler had moved into the Trapp family’s villa opposite Aigen railroad station; it was a kind of outhouse on our estate. One day his Quartermaster General turned up on our doorstep and asked very politely if Himmler’s train could be moved to

one of the sidings on our property. It was supposed to be an important camouflage measure. Fortunately I came up with an immediate and convincing reply: I knew, I said, that they didn’t have to ask us; but since they had done so, I would ask them to consider that my boys would find this move very exciting and that they might not be prevented from proudly telling everyone about it. Moreover, the many troops that would be coming and going could not be barred from flirting with our housemaids, and this would not be particularly pleasant for me as the mistress of the house. I remember that my eldest son and I studied the various SS ranks for days in order to prepare ourselves for this invasion. Fortunately, the whole thing then came to nought. Q: What else happened to you between this terrifying telegram and your talk with the Gestapo? Were you put into Sippenhaft?

A: Yes, some time around the end of July or beginning of August I was taken away. And there was something else. Actually it doesn’t belong here but I’ll mention it all the same. When, after my husband’s death, I emptied out his briefcase, I found a little box of

playing cards and there on the top lay the Queen of Hearts. Then when I went through everything two days ago in preparation for our conversation, I suddenly found the Queen in my hand again. I’m no believer in that sort of story but it’s true. Somehow or other I’ve come to believe that he put this card into my hand. Q: That points to close intimacy. What emotions do you have when you think of your husband?

A: I have always reckoned it an immense blessing that they could not lay their hands on him. If he’d fallen into Gestapo hands

I should have found it unbearable. His voluntary death was an immense comfort to me and I was grateful to fate that he was strong enough to face it.

36 | Courageous Hearts

Q: Had you reckoned with it — with his death, I mean?

A: One doesn’t reckon with such a sudden end as that. I do know how shocked I was when one day I found part of a razorblade in his wallet. When that kind of thing happens, one can quickly put two and two together, especially if one knows the methods the Gestapo used. QO: What difference would it have made if you had known more?

A: There were very many things that my husband couldn't, because of his official position, discuss with me. If I inadvertently asked some delicate question, he always knew how to change the subject so that I didn’t think the matter was particularly important. But as the years went by I increasingly had the feeling of ‘So

far and no further’, and while otherwise he gladly let me share everything, I quickly spotted: ‘Attention, Danger.’ Q: Looking back, wouldn’t you have liked to know more or do more?

A: There was no question of that. There were enough people for those jobs and besides I had my hands full — for a start, finding enough to eat. QO: If you had known more, would you then have tried to hold your husband back?

A: Most certainly not. Once, in a moment of great anxiety, I asked him whether he couldn’t get a doctor’s note and go into hospital. But he wouldn’t hear of it. I got the impression that even a hospital meant danger for him. He said: ‘If only you knew what is going on in hospitals.’ Q: How would you characterise your husband?

A: I’ve never again met a man with so much charm and I can’t say more than that. Women liked to flirt with him. I got to know

him in Hanover in 1932 and he attracted me enormously, but I never thought I would get him. But friends thought that we were a very good match and they probably did some matchmaking. At any rate, the next day we were seen arm-in-arm and that quickly made the rounds. QO: I'd like to ask you again about your arrest. How did you stand up to it and to its circumstances?

A: My sons were playing in the garden when I was taken away. The next thing I remember is the extraordinarily humane superin-

Elisabeth Freytag von Loringhoven | 37

tendent of Moabit prison. She was a magnificent woman; unfortunately I have forgotten her name. The greatest kindness she showed us was in allowing us to get together during the air raid alarms.

And not just the women of 20 July, but also women who were locked up for quite different reasons. I remember a mother whose

son had been selling butter on the black market, a young girl who had been picked up while shoplifting and a woman who worked for the Post Office and apparently had let a parcel get lost. Those were people’s life stories at this time. To keep me occupied, someone put a basket of stockings in my cell and some mending materials, and I mended the stockings. When I first saw a prison mattress — a straw mattress hard as a board, in which my predecessor had worn a couple of dents — I thought: ‘I can never sleep on that.’ But I did sleep. And it’s stuck in my memory because I was so surprised that it was possible. QO: Which of the women of 20 July did you meet in Moabit?

A: Practically all of them: Marion Yorck, Mika Stauffenberg, Barbel Haeften — they were all there. At bathing time we could talk more or less freely with one another, so we went to the bathroom as often as we could. We all threw ourselves on the others and questions poured out, whether someone had news, whether another had heard from her children, and so on. One question I shall remember to my dying day: “Do you also think’, asked Mika

Stauffenberg, ‘that they will use the children for medical purposes?’ I tried to talk her out of it but when I got back to my cell, it naturally stuck in my mind.

Marion Yorck had told us that they might in certain circumstances kill us. That hadn’t occurred to me. When I heard it from Marion Yorck, my chief wish was to die a creditable death, and I

tried to visualise what it would be like to puts one’s head in a noose and what dying creditably meant. I resolved to hold my head up high and pray fervently. But then I preferred to think about the family and concentrated on the interrogation. QO: You weren’t in solitary confinement for long, were you, but were put together with Countess Yorck?

A: Yes, she was incredibly courageous. I was there when Pas-

tor Poelchau broke the news of her husband’s death. I would have disintegrated, but actually she remained completely calm. Marion Yorck was a close friend of Barbel Haeften; they communicated by means of knocks — Barbel Haeften occupied the

38 | Courageous Hearts

next cell. That was very painful for me because I felt that I was disturbing them, and so I went about on mental tiptoes. On the

other hand, I was very glad of this cell community because I often felt that I was going to have a breakdown; it was hard to master all of this on one’s own. I can only say I had palpitations and often saw stars before my eyes. I found it increasingly hard to eat. Then I got toothache and because of this was allowed to visit the upper floor. There I sat for hours at a time by the heater, although it was summer. And then a woman passed me a newspaper from which I learned my husband had been expelled from the army. When I was released, I made a present of my umbrella to one of the wardresses. She was completely taken aback since it was so incongruous. On the journey to Salzburg I frequently had to

change trains and wait for long periods. It wasn’t at all what I was used to, but on this journey I enormously enjoyed waiting in freedom. In Aigen there was a woman who was 150 per cent Nazi. My

husband and I were always wary of her. The first time that I met her afterwards, I greeted her with exaggerated friendliness and said: ‘You know, I’m not allowed to address you with “Heil Hitler”.’ QO: You weren't allowed to address people with ‘Heil Hitler’?

A: No. When I was released I was told that I didn’t deserve to

use ‘the German greeting’. And a security policeman, ever so young and elegant, told me not to wear mourning clothes back home. That’s what they told you.

This Nazi female was the first to knock on my door in May 1945 and ask for a Persilschein. Naturally I refused. I said I didn’t want to harm her but neither would I lie on her behalf. QO: Were you repeatedly interrogated?

A: I was interrogated only once. Afterwards I was frightfully ashamed that I had stooped so low as to ask one of these types for a cigarette. I could have cut myself into pieces for doing so. It was only nervousness. I sat on the floor and had to wait my turn. Q: What happened to your children?

A: I knew nothing about them. When, two months later, I was released and went back to Salzburg, my mother showed me a letter

Elisabeth Freytag von Loringhoven | 39

from Himmler which said that the enquiry was over and that they

would have to wait and see whether I was involved in the plot. Her son-in-law had already condemned himself — that was the phrase they used. The children, it said at the end of the letter, would be sent to their grandmother. After that I counted the hours and whenever the bell rang, I rushed to the door. One day they all stood there and all was well. Q: What did the children say about their enforced stay in the Children’s Home at Bad Sachsa?

A: There they were given the name of Braun. They were told horror stories to prevent them from running away but otherwise weren't badly treated. The two eldest made contacts and friends instantly. We had hardly met when the children fell all over me

and poured out the names of the children they’d been with Stauffenberg, Hansen ... Q: Have you ever talked with your children about their father’s death?

A: I haven't. QO: Nor have the children themselves asked?

A: Not up to now. Actually I am still waiting. They know very little about this period. I’ve often thought that someday I should relate the story of my life by talking onto a tape. But I just haven’t got around to it. I don’t want to take them away from their own families, and when they come to visit there is so much else to talk about. It is conceivable that going over the past would be a help to me, but Iam well supplied with the present. QO: And immediately after the war?

A: The children were at boarding school, and besides I took care not to talk to them about things that they couldn’t understand and that would be too much for them. And I didn’t want to depress them. The only thing they were probably clear about is that I loved their father deeply; that they know for certain. Q: The younger ones hardly knew their father.

A: When my husband died my youngest wasn’t even a year old. Iremember once my husband looking with sadness but joy at this child that was jumping up and down in his pram. I shall never forget how he looked at him. That was only a few weeks before the Attentat.

40 | Courageous Hearts

Q: What do you think today about 20 July?

A: I believe nobody will think badly of me if I say that for me 20

July means first and foremost the end of my life with my husband. Afterwards my most important job was to give my sons all

the help in my power to make something of their lives. And it seems to me that they have reached their goals.

Chapter Three

BRIGITTE GERSTENMAIER

LE B rigitte born inand 1911, daughter of estate ownerGerstenmaier, Georg von Schmidt his was wife aElse, née Zwingenberger, who lived on the Estonian island of Oesel. At the outbreak of the First World War, their German origin led to the whole family being exiled to Jaroslav, north of Moscow. In 1919/20 they fled

to Hohenstein/Ernstthal in Saxony where the father sat for the state examination in theology and became a pastor. Having finished her Mittlere Reife school examination, Brigitte

went to train as a social worker in Berlin where she met Eugen Gerstenmaier, who was her teacher. They were married in 1941. Their daughter Cornelia was born in 1943, their sons Albrecht and York in 1947 and 1950. Eugen Gerstenmaier was the son of a master toolmaker and was born in Kirchheim Teck in Swabia in 1906. Following his Mittlere Reife examination and a spell in commerce, he completed his Abitur in Stuttgart in 1931 and studied philosophy and theology in Tiibingen, Rostock and Ziirich. He passed his post-doctoral Habilitation, the qualification for a university professorship, in 1936 with a thesis on the relationship between the Church and Creation, but was refused a university post because of his anti-Nazism. In 1936 he went to work under Bishop Theodor Heckel as a scientific assistant in the Berlin External Affairs Office of the Evan-

gelical Churches, which did not engage in open criticism of the National Socialist regime. Gerstenmaier thereupon made contact with the Ecumenical Council in Geneva. During the war he was active in organising spiritual care for prisoners of war and slave labourers. In 1939 he was promoted to be Consistorial Counsellor and head of the Ecumenical section of the External Affairs Office.

42 | Courageous Hearts

Early in the war, he met Hans-Berndt von Haeften and Adam von Trott, who worked as special task officers in the information and

cultural policy departments of the German Foreign Office and who in 1942 introduced him to the Kreisau Circle. There he not only gave advice on themes specifically related to the Church but also joined in discussions about the constitutional and foreign policy aims of the group. He also provided the contact point with the Ecumenical Movement outside Germany, as well as with the Bishop of Wtirttemberg Theophil Wurm, the chief spokesman of the Evangelical Churches in their fight against National Socialism. His political ideas were close to those of the conservative Peter von Yorck. After his Berlin home was hit by a bomb in 1943, he moved into the Yorck’s house in Hortensien-Strafe, where most of the meetings of the Kreisau Circle were held. Gerstenmaier was arrested in Bendler-Strafse late on 20 July

itself. On 11 January 1945 the People’s Court, under the chairmanship of Roland Freisler, condemned him to seven years of hard labour. In April 1945 he was liberated from Bayreuth prison by the Americans. In the same year he became a leader of the Relief Work of the German Evangelical Churches, a body that he had himself founded

to win sympathy and support for the Germans from abroad; he was also one of the founders of the Relief Work of 20 July, which provided help for the survivors of the Widerstand. He entered the Bundestag in 1949 as a Christian Democrat Deputy. In 1954 he became President of the Bundestag, the parliament of the Federal Republic, from which he retired in 1969. People resented his being

given compensation for the discrimination he had experienced during the Nazi period. Eugen Gerstenmaier died in 1986. His widow lives with her daughter in Oberwinter near Bonn.

Interview OQ: Would you say that you hated Hitler?

A: Yes, certainly, and from the very start. Yes! I collected all the

information I could. The first time I was qualified to vote — that was in 1932 —I bought a couple of issues of Der Angriff and what I

read in that Nazi paper was more than enough for me. There was a lot in it that I found idiotic. Above all it railed at the Jews and spoke about the ‘Slavs as being the equivalent of slaves’. I read Hitler’s Mein Kampf at the same time — and felt very lonely! Nobody

Brigitte Gerstenmaier | 43

else bothered to read it. In the face of Nazi ideas and the power that these ideas achieved, I thought a lot about how we might liberate ourselves from them. I was training as a welfare worker just then, and from time to time the girls in my school went to all sorts of Nazi events. Most of them came back in a daze and thought Hitler wonderful. One very nice girl said: “You must have at least enough discipline so that we can stick together.’ But I could make nothing of it and felt like Ionescu’s Rhinoceros: there must be something about me that stopped me from understanding it because everyone else thought it marvellous. I found his voice as revolting as the things he said. On the other hand, it was certainly true that Hitler put Germany on its feet again. Q: By which millions of Germans allowed themselves to be dazzled.

A: Yes. For example, I had a cousin whose husband, a wonderful Nordic-looking young man, very tall, was against his will appointed

Air Adjutant to Hitler. They were often guests of Hitler and my cousin was completely fascinated. It seems as though the aura of power is irresistible to many people, not only to women. I always thought there must be something wrong with me that I didn’t get it. This was a subject on which I knew I was in complete agreement with my husband and it was one of the reasons why we married. Q: When did you meet your husband?

A: Towards the end of 1938. I had signed on for a catechism class at my social welfare school in Berlin. When the tutor Gerstenmaier came into the room, I was struck by the fact that he wasn’t as

tall as my brothers but had wonderful eyes. And immediately I found what he said enlightening. One saw at once that he had no time for the National Socialists. This was the footing on which we conducted our first conversations and quickly found ourselves in agreement. Then I got to know his friends and they accepted me well enough for me to take part in many discussions.

QO: How would you describe the role of your husband in the Widerstand? A: Oh, he was great at formulating ideas and a thoughtful strategist. He always had something that captured his imagination. This ability to turn plans and objectives into concrete directives was much in demand in Kreisau. The proposals they prepared were, of course, exclusively concerned with the time after Hitler’s death.

44 | Courageous Hearts

Personally, I sometimes thought that the Kreisau people talked about things that were miles removed from reality. At times this was a bit unsettling to me. Q: In other words, the Kreisauers spent more time thinking about what the future would be like than about how the necessary conditions for it could be created. What in your view would have happened differently if more attention had been paid to the plans of the Kreisauers after the war?

A: Things would certainly have gone differently, although under Adenauer they didn’t go badly. He was a clever man, full of native wit and infinitely experienced in the art of dealing with the oppo-

sition. Fritzi Schulenburg was a man who would have got a lot done. Others, too, but it is a waste of time to ruminate upon this. The main problem would have been to persuade the Germans not to make ‘Hitler’s murderers’ responsible for everything that went badly. Moltke was quite right in thinking that the Germans, unim-

aginative and unrealistic as they are on average, would have invented a new ‘stab in the back’ legend. The Germans have been a people of subjects for ages. QO: What was your own attitude to the Attentat?

A: To me it was not a question of whether or not Christianity forbade one to kill such a major criminal. The problem was merely that one shouldn’t require any particular person to undertake the assassination. Not everybody is ready to sacrifice himself. All the same, a number of people presented themselves and gave it a try,

but somehow or other the man always managed to escape. The devil protected him.

Things finally got to the point where my husband could no longer prevent me from learning the dreadful news about the Jewish persecutions. He hadn’t told me about what was going on in Auschwitz. I heard about those crimes from other people, and only afterwards from him — at least only what was known at the time. Q: What did you know about Auschwitz?

A: At first it was an unknown word. I knew only that men were not taken to work there, but were murdered there. I heard about the latter only very late on. Q: Did you ever want to take an active part yourself?

A: Eugen and I came in by a longer and more complicated route. We often thought that, if we could kill Hitler, we might be

Brigitte Gerstenmaier | 45

ready to sacrifice our lives. I fully shared in this feeling, but when

my first child was on the way I no longer wanted to be killed. Besides I’m not a very good cook and I reflected that this guy would always have someone to taste all his food before he ate it. Q: So, you had dreams like that?

A: Yes, I thought about poisoning him, because otherwise I couldn’t get within range of him. I was young then and looked very Nordic with my long red hair — strangers thought I must be a Nazi. But to start with, I would have had to flirt with someone I didn’t know and that I was unable to do. Underneath I was just an ordinary house kitten who now and then produced a baby. Q: Can you remember any action in which you were actively involved?

A: In the spring 1943, I asked some of our friends to help in get-

ting news about the Scholl family and the background of the ‘White Rose’ to Switzerland. As one was carefully searched at the frontier, that involved some risk. Hans Schonfeld took on the job. That’s all I remember. QO: How did 20 July pass for you?

A: The day before, we had come back from our vacation in Carinthia. After we’d been completely bombed out in November 1943, Eugen found a perch with Peter Yorck. There, on 19 July we found a letter from Peter saying that ‘X Day’ would be tomorrow and that he would go directly from Weimar to Bendler-Strafse. We were to wait. On the afternoon of 20 July he called to say that the Attentat had taken place, Stauffenberg was there and my husband should come. Eugen stuffed a bible into one pocket and a pistol into the other; I went with him to the tram and he went to BendlerStrafse. That was the last I saw of him — for eleven months, if one doesn’t count the prison visits I made. Q: What happened next?

A: I didn’t know whether my husband was alive and went to the Gestapo headquarters in Prinz-Albrecht-Strafse. There I heard that Eugen was still alive and that Dr Neuhaus in Meinecke-Strafe was dealing with his case. After that I went to see the latter more often and took great pains to tell wonderful lies. On 25 July I went

to see Adam von Trott in the morning; he was still in bed. ‘Brigitte’, he said, ‘they know us all.’ He himself was arrested that same day, as I later heard from Clarita. I went everywhere, from

46 | Courageous Hearts

pillar to post, had an interview with Minister of State Meissner and was often in the People’s Court. Once I met Freisler on the stairs; he looked at me suspiciously, startled and then disappeared through a door. After all, I might have had a pistol! Most of the time one spent just hoping, even if one had nothing to hope for. I remember leaning against a kitchen cabinet and thinking: ‘Okay, you must reconcile yourself to this.’ But the next day one tried to do something else and hoped against all reason. The first time that

I was allowed to take my husband something to eat after long weeks of waiting — he was in the SS prison in Lehrter-Strafe — I took a sandwich and hid under the sausage a bit of tissue paper on

which I had written in tiny letters. I packed it in cellophane in such a way that one could see what the sandwich looked like. I prayed terribly hard that ‘the tall Knuth’ — he was the top jailer —

wouldn’t cut the bread. He didn’t but looked kindly at me and passed on my sandwich. QO: What was on the paper?

A: First of all, who was still alive, so that he would be cautious in talking about them, and besides that, questions on which par-

ticular vigilance was advisable. I can’t remember now exactly what I wrote — whatever seemed important to me at that moment. I took a lot of trouble over one thing that I thought might help

my husband and perhaps it did. Freisler wanted to do the Stindermanns a good turn. He was Hitler’s top press chief and was married to a very nice, totally apolitical Austrian. They in turn were good friends of my delightful sister-in-law, Eugen’s sister Hanna Schwarz. Freisler had fallen for Frau Stindermann a little, or at any rate adored her. I arranged for the Sitindermanns to invite Freisler to supper on the day before my husband’s trial — somehow or other we’d heard of this date. They explained to him that my husband was an unworldly theorist who would never do anything against the Nazis. Freisler had the files and knew better, but he wanted to do the Stindermanns a favour. Soon after the trial he

rang Lies] Siindermann up and asked her if he’d done the right thing. For he had treated my husband with clemency. QO: Were you still living with the Yorcks?

A: No, that was sealed up by the Gestapo. I lived with a friend of my husband’s in south Berlin, at the very end of Lichterfelde. The Tegel prison where my husband had been held since Septem-

ber lies, as you know, in the very north of Berlin. The journey

Brigitte Gerstenmaier | 47

through the city every day and the long walk at the end were quite an adventure. In the evenings I mostly went to Pastor Poelchau

and his wife, who used to have a wonderful pot of tea ready to warm up Freya von Moltke and me. We then exchanged letters — my husband wrote, just as Helmuth von Moltke did, every day. This link was a great help to us. I still remember clearly how I got to the Poelchaus on the evening of 11 January 1945, frightened

and trembling — it was the last day of the proceedings against Moltke, my husband, Delp and others. Freya opened the door for me and shouted along the hallway: ‘Seven years, Brigittchen.’ That was the sentence imposed on my husband; her own husband had been sentenced to death. Q: Countess Moltke congratulated you, while her husband was condemned to death — admirable composure! When did you see your husband again?

A: At the beginning of February he was moved from Berlin to the penitentiary in Bayreuth. Luckily for him, the files didn’t go with him. The penitentiary was a state institution of the good old sort, only completely overcrowded. My husband had to stick cardboard boxes together. At any rate it was better than being handed over to the Gestapo again. After being liberated by the Americans he came to Wiesbaden and there got to know Eric Warburg, who put an American lieutenant and a jeep at his disposal so that he was mobile. He immediately began to build up, along with Sch6nfeld, the Relief Work of the Evangelical Churches. I myself travelled for six days and nights in March 1945 from Mecklenburg with three small children, two sisters-in-law and a poor old grandfather, right across Germany until we reached my husband’s family home at Kirchheim/ Teck. During this ‘journey’ my case with all my jewellery, memorabilia, letters and essential clothes was stolen. There I was in a summer dress with a shabby fur coat over it! But I had rescued the most important thing of all — a briefcase with my husband’s letters from Tegel and his report about the proceedings before the People’s Court, which I carried around my neck day and night in all those weeks of chaos. Q: After the end of the war, your husband made a major effort to perpetuate the legacy of the Widerstand and took various initiatives.

A: Of course, first with the Relief Work of the Evangelical Churches and then as a Deputy in the Bundestag in Bonn. But he was never active in his actual profession. The dream of his life

48 | Courageous Hearts

was to become a professor of theology or philosophy. That was a

field in which he was really marvellous; at the drop of a hat he could give a lecture on Leibniz or any other philosopher. Besides,

he had always been interested in foreign affairs. In 1954 he became President of the Bundestag, less from inclination than from loyalty to Konrad Adenauer. For Eugen, that meant renouncing his own political work. Adenauer also kept the reins of foreign policy firmly in his own hands. All the same, Eugen shaped the office of Bundestag President — and with a fraction of today’s staff. QO: What in your opinion were the reasons why your husband's influence remained limited after the war?

A: My husband began to be slandered quite early on. It was alleged, for instance, that he had no right to his academic title. He was able to refute this. Then the payment of damages that resulted

from this lawsuit were resented terribly. In fact, he gave away almost all the money he received. The total was a quarter of a million deutschmarks; he gave 150,000 marks of it to a foster home

and considerable sums went elsewhere. But that did not matter. Der Spiegel started a big campaign against him — just before the election — saying how avaricious this man was. On top of it, a

pamphlet was published by the East Zone. This was really abstruse because it asserted that my husband had been a Gestapo informer. That was worse than anything else — that my husband, who had been tortured with a stick containing nails without giving anything away, should be accused of having been a traitor. He never caved in one bit. Of course, we could not leave such slanders alone, but everything tended to start all over again. Q: Let me ask a very direct question: Have you ever felt guilty in your

relations with Freya von Moltke and Marion Yorck because their husbands were executed and yours escaped?

A: No, why should I feel guilty? My husband was ready to die

with the rest, if that was how things had gone. No, I didn’t feel guilty but it wasn’t easy, especially for Eugen, to lose his friends. What mattered for me was that my husband hadn’t betrayed anybody and the way Freya shared the happiness I felt at being able to hope; she rejoiced with me although she suffered the worse fate of losing her husband. My husband also took care very early on to see that the widows

from 20 July received a pension; it wouldn’t have happened so

Brigitte Gerstenmaier | 49

quickly if he hadn’t been there. Most of them had several children, some of them small children. QO: The 20 July Relief Association was founded on your husband's initiative.

A: Yes, he was one of the keenest supporters of such a foundation. Frankly, it all ended for him in a great bust-up. For when this East Zone pamphlet appeared, the Relief Association didn’t lift a finger on my husband’s behalf. Many people seemed pleased to

see aman who until then had been regarded as honest suddenly have his position undermined. That, as I’ve said, was the worst period in our lives — worse almost than death. My husband gave up relief work with a heavy heart at the time. In a situation like that he naturally lacked the friends who had been executed after 20 July.

Q: How would you describe your husband?

A: As a hard-headed and extremely gifted Swabian with whom dealings weren’t always easy. But when it came to the point, he always did the right thing. Our marriage wasn’t always smooth because there were times when he did not leave me enough freedom. I complained if I couldn’t get what I wanted, and he couldn’t stand that because he himself was extraordinarily brave. He

died slowly and painfully, and never complained but bore it in silence. He was so imposing in his suffering — this unbearable illness. That’s what he was really like. OQ: Would you have preferred to play a more important part, I mean

regarding the Widerstand?

A: What could we women do? One couldn’t talk about these things to strangers. One couldn’t start talking politics in the dairy shop. I would say that the women were active because they provided a home in which discussions took place, because they were always trustworthy, because they didn’t flaunt their own ideas. That meant a lot, and if you think that more was possible you're a product of the present. Q: I confess that it isn’t altogether easy to imagine daily life in the

Third Reich. Today Widerstand against official measures is much more widespread.

A: Everything that is described as resistance today can’t begin to compare itself with Widerstand in those days; that’s ludicrous. In

50 | Courageous Hearts

a democratic constitutional state there can be no resistance comparable with Widerstand in a dictatorship. One needn’t believe that everything is wonderful; you can object to everything that you don’t like — nuclear power stations and motorways and the like — but opposition to such projects is a part of our democratic order. QO: You draw a big distinction there. Wasn't part of it that you were risking your necks for what you were doing?

A: Well, what were we doing? We were thinking about the future, designing a new model. That in itself was a capital crime. The people who really did something, like Gersdorff, Axel von dem Bussche, Stauffenberg above all, who were ready to blow themselves up along with Hitler —- they were the exceptions.

Chapter Four

COUNTESS MARGARETHE VON HARDENBERG

ODE M argarethe von was born in Berlin Ludolph in 1904, von the daughter of Hardenberg the Prussian Lieutenant-Colonel Oven and his wife Margarete, née von Jordan. She grew up with three brothers and sisters. Her father was killed in action in 1914. As early as 1920 she had to contribute to the support of the family, initially by working as a secretary. In 1925 she obtained a position with the Reichswehr Ministry, and in 1928 was sent to Moscow for six months on a secret mission and under an assumed name. The Reichswehr co-operated with the Red Army at that time. Between 1930 and 1935 she worked in the Berlin Reichswehr Ministry, at first

in the Truppenamt department, later with General von Hammerstein, the Chef der Heeresleitung, and finally with General von Fritsch. In 1938 she relocated to Budapest, before moving to Lisbon in 1940

as the secretary to the German military attaché. Henning von Treskow then brought her back to Berlin in the summer of 1943 as a secretary to the Heeresgruppe Mitte rear command, while working for him she typed the ‘Valkyrie’ plans in preparation for the putsch.

Henning von Treskow was born in 1901 on the Wartenberg estate in Neumark, the son of the Cavalry General (ret.) Hermann

von Treskow. In 1917 he joined the elite First Guards Infantry Regiment, known as IR 9, in Potsdam and took part in various defensive operations on the western front during the closing stages of the First World War. From 1920 he studied law for a few semesters and for a time tried his hand in commerce. In 1926 he

married Erika von Falkenhayn, the daughter of the First World War Prussian War Minister and Chief of the General Staff, who had been Margarethe von Oven’s childhood best friend.

52 | Courageous Hearts

During that year he rejoined his old Potsdam regiment and was transferred to the General Staff at the Reich War Ministry in 1936.

Raised in a conservative Prussian family, Treskow rejected the Weimar Republic and initially welcomed the NSDAP as a modern conservative-nationalist party that promised to reverse the ‘shame of Versailles’. Having first approved of Hitler’s rearmament policies, Treskow later became a strict opponent of Germany’s policies

of aggression. Even before the outbreak of war he had become convinced that the dictator had to be removed. Accordingly he turned the headquarters of Heeresgruppe Mitte on the eastern front, where from 1941 onwards he was involved in the preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union, into a centre of the resistance movement. He informed himself about the war

crimes that were being committed and purposefully recruited younger officers who held similar anti-Nazi views. He failed on more than one occasion to win over Field Marshals von Manstein,

von Bock and von Kluge to the idea of a coup. From September 1942 onwards he established contact with conspirators in Berlin associated with Colonel Oster, the retired General Ludwig Beck and Carl Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig. In March 1942 he began to move toward the assassination of Hitler, to be effected

with the help of Heeresgruppe Mitte, while the Reserve Army Command was to implement the putsch inside the Reich. In 1943, two attempts on Hitler’s life misfired. Treskow’s transfer to Berlin coincided with the disintegration of another nerve centre of the conspiracy in the Abwehr office in the capital when in 1943 Dohnanyi was arrested and Oster was dismissed. Treskow now initiated a fresh round of preparations for a coup: along with Stauffenberg he used work carried out by the General Staff relating to the deployment of the Reserve Army against potential domestic unrest and code-named ‘Valkyrie’ as a smokescreen for an anti-Nazi putsch. In October 1943 ‘Treskow was again transferred to front-line duty and became Chief of Staff with the Second Army. He stepped up his search for a suitable assassin and pushed for action. He is reported

to have said: ‘What matters is that the German Widerstand will, before the eyes of the world and before history, have made the decisive move.’ Treskow committed suicide at the front on 21 July 1944.

Margarethe von Oven was arrested after the 20 July coup, but two weeks later returned to her office, which was still able to function as a liaison with Heeresgruppe Mitte. After the war she first worked in Switzerland for a year. She returned to Germany to work

Countess Margarethe von Hardenberg | 53

as an assistant in a medical practice before accepting a position in the assets administration of the House of Brandenburg-Prussia in 1954. In 1955 she married Wilfried Count von Hardenberg, the brother of Carl Hans von Hardenberg. She lived in Gottingen until her death on 5 February 1991.

Interview Q: Your close friendship with Henning von Treskow was of long standing. He was the husband of your best friend. When did you learn about his conspiratorial activities or was there some particular occasion on which he told you of his plans?

A: Don’t tie me down to the exact date, since I can no longer remember it precisely. But it must have been in the summer of 1943. I was in Portugal but kept in close touch with him. One day I got a letter asking if I could come since he needed me. So I flew to Germany. Q: Did you know what he meant?

A: [had a shrewd idea. He then told me about Stauffenberg and let me into the secret. I resisted — inside I was nervous, nervous as a puppy. I prayed that I would break my hand so that I could get out without disgrace. I don’t want to cast myself in a rosy light. QO: What were you afraid of?

A: Frankly, the gallows. I had planned to do a lot with my life, if I may put it thus. I was very fond of living. Q: What happened after that?

A: After making up my mind to back Henning, I felt at first that it might work, that we might succeed in getting rid of Hitler. I can

clearly remember the first time that I typed the order that began with the words: “The Ftihrer Adolf Hitler is dead.’ That made my heart stop. Treskow had insisted that I work in gloves so that the document couldn’t be identified. It took a lot of effort to put the top sheet into the typewriter so many carbon copies. QO: Where were these orders for X Day kept?

A: In various places. When there was an air raid alarm, I put the papers under my arm and hid them somewhere in the cellar, under

old boxes or behind wine bottles. Once it was very awkward.

54 | Courageous Hearts

Treskow was walking on one side, Stauffenberg on the other, with

me in the middle holding the folder with the order, “The Ftihrer Adolf Hitler is dead’ under my arm. Suddenly some 55 men appeared from the opposite direction. I looked first left and then right; the men were both pale too, and this had a certain calming effect on me. It was the situation I had always been afraid of and I thought: ‘Now it’s going to happen.’ QO: But nothing happened?

A: No. QO: You mentioned just now that you were in Portugal. What did you do there?

A: I was the secretary to the German military attaché in Lisbon.

I held the post for three years. It was one of great trust that was quietly given to me because I was on very good terms with my bosses, even though I wasn’t really qualified and spoke foreign languages very poorly. Heinrich Stiilpnagel was once asked enviously why Fraulein von Oven kept getting such nice posts abroad; was it because she speaks languages so well? To which he replied: ‘No, but she speaks excellent German.’ Q: When did you become interested in politics?

A: When I went to work for Kurt von Hammerstein; his opinions influenced me deeply. I was a young and inexperienced gal in those days; I’d grown up knowing nothing about politics in a house without men. My mother was on her own with four children and there was no money to pay for their education. I started

work without any previous training. I got into the Reichswehr Ministry by a roundabout route, and there without my willing it or doing much about it, I got interested in politics. I also spent six months in Russia under a false name. That was pretty adventurous for me. All my uncles who felt responsible towards me said

to my mother: ‘For Heaven’s sake, you can’t let the girl go to Moscow; they’re all Bolsheviks there.’ The Reichswehr had arranged manoeuvres in the Soviet Union, thereby violating the Versailles Treaty. O: Was that ‘the Red Hammerstein’?

A: Both of them were called red, one because of his hair, the other because of his opinions. I worked for the latter, who later became the Army Chief.

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O: Hammerstein retired in 1933. His successor was Werner von Fritsch. Did you also work for Fritsch?

A: Yes, it went on without a break. After that I worked with Blomberg to help out and for a short time also with Beck. In 1938 when Brauchitsch took over, I packed my bags and went abroad. Q: From early on General Beck belonged to the most bitter opponents of Hitler. Did you talk to him about politics, as you had done with Hammerstein? A: Yes, but Beck was very tight-lipped. I had much respect for

him as a man and as my boss but only began to understand him through my friendship with Treskow. At first he was very much attracted by the Third Reich. For example, I remember the day of Potsdam, which I, as it were, experienced from his apartment; he lived in a corner house by the Garrison Church. I was completely fascinated and carried away. Everybody expected a break between

Hindenburg and Hitler and a lot of people were in despair. But both turned up and shook hands, then followed the ceremony in the church and one had the feeling that everything would be all right. Even Treskow was impressed by this meeting between Hitler and the octogenarian Reich President. When I went to Hammerstein next day in high spirits and enthusiastically told him all

about it, he growled: ‘So you’re another to be hood-winked by that man.’ Hammerstein hadn’t allowed himself be deceived. Q: You enjoyed the trust of your boss. What kind of work were you given?

A: They let me participate; I knew a lot. Even the papers ‘for the

eyes of the Chief only’ and top secrets were entrusted to me — things these gentlemen should have typed by themselves. To make it look convincing I had to make as many typing errors as possible. In fact, it was a highly confidential post, but I was never formally introduced into the issues at stake. Q: And this changed with Treskow? A: Yes. When I came back from Portugal, in the summer of 1943,

Treskow got me a post in Kaiserallee, which didn’t in itself look very significant, in what had previously been Wachkommando I. This allowed me to go in and out of Bendler-Strafe without attracting attention. In a sense I supervised the Berlin communications with the Heeresgruppe Mitte in the field. I made the phone calls,

distributed the mail, told the men when their wives had had a child and things like this.

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Q: When Treskow told you that a coup was being planned, you were frightened. Was there anyone with whom you could discuss such things?

A: I lived with my mother with whom I had a very close relationship, but Treskow had made the condition that none of these

things should ever be mentioned, not even to my mother. She would definitely have kept her mouth shut; she was fully on our side and we could have relied on her. For Stauffenberg and Treskow to insist that I say nothing to her was a high price for me to pay. This secrecy was the thing that tormented me most in prison. I had had to deceive my mother with whom I had such a close and trusting relationship. I kept saying to myself: ‘She will never forgive me for settling this all by myself.’ It was frightful; it affected me more than the idea that I might perhaps have to face death. And then I was discharged; but she showed no signs of anger: ‘Of course, you were not allowed to say anything.’ She understood completely. I really only talked to Henning but I didn’t want to make things more difficult for him than they already were. I talked a lot with his wife, whom I’d known since we were six. She spent most of her time in the country to avoid the bombs. Q: What did you know about other Widerstand groups?

A: I knew they existed, but we were completely separate. Henning explained that to me in terms of the need to preserve secrecy: “Never mention names and above all never mention Stauffenberg’s name. The group must be kept as small as possible, otherwise it will get out.’ I kept silent as required, but today

I wonder whether it wouldn’t have been better if we had had more contact with each other. If, for example, one compares the

Henning’s group with the Kreisauers, one finds that they had the same roots. Both were deeply religious, but while Henning pressed for action, the Kreisauers were waiting for the end of the regime. Q: What was your attitude to this?

A: I can’t judge which was the right way. Both started from the highest principles. How is it possible that God says to one group there must be no violence while pressing others to act? I only know that even inside the military Widerstand opinions differed. Whenever the Attentat was about to happen, there would

be some coincidence that played into Hitler’s hands so that those who had been very resolute were suddenly overcome by

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doubts again. ‘Can we take responsibility for murder? Is this not a sign from God that we have taken the wrong path?’, they asked themselves after several assassination attempts failed because of trivialities. One kept on being on the brink of action and then we were stopped short. It probably wasn’t supposed to happen. QO: How do you see this today, half a century later? In your view did it have anything to do with the suggestive power that Hitler radiated?

A: Yes, I think so. Henning occasionally asked me: ‘What do you think, will the masses join us or will they get in our way?’

And then he always gave himself the same answer, saying he believed that if the radio could change its tune for twenty-four hours, we should be able to capture the masses. On 20 July we didn’t get far enough to be able to test this idea, although the fact that Hitler was so anxious to get on the air as quickly as possible indirectly confirms Henning’s prognosis. Q: Can you give a short description of your role in the Widerstand?

A: Now I'd like to make this clear — I was a typist, albeit a slightly up-scale one, and for that reason I won’t put myself among

the women of 20 July. Okay, I certainly did put my head on the block, but you must appreciate the line I draw between myself and people like Freya, Marion ... O: I believe all the woman made their contribution and I think ...

A: Yes, I played my small contribution, but I don’t want this to be highlighted. QO: Modesty like that does you credit but the fact remains that the oth-

ers took you into their confidence, that they were sure you would keep your mouth shut and join in.

A: That they could certainly do; I was reliable but that was all. Q: That is a great deal in such extreme circumstances.

A: But I believe you understand what I am saying. Q: I know exactly what you mean, but I find it too modest.

A: I ran the mail room, put through the connections. What did Henning call that? “The shop of small mercies. You are the shop for

small mercies.’ If anyone wanted a feather bed or a cure for back pains or wanted to know how his wife was doing, they would use

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the telephone. Really, these were entirely harmless matters. But one never knows how things look to other people. For example, in the Kaiserallee there was a foreman called Schmadke. All the telephone lines between Berlin and the Army Groups were under his control, so he was an important man. He was a genuine Berliner,

dreadfully ugly and vulgar, refreshingly vulgar, a Communist whose left-wing heart was in the right place. With these qualities, he saved several of us from death. He was shrewd enough to see through more than we realised: he smelled a rat and immediately put two and two together. On 21 July, the day after the coup, he took me aside early in the morning and said: ‘I wouldn’t go to Bendler-Strafe today.’ And from then on he warned us daily: ‘I wouldn’t use this or that telephone just now’, or, ‘Right now I’d use this or that exit.” Schmadke knew exactly which telephones were tapped and which entrances were being watched. The Army Group gained various advantages through him. In other respects, Schmadke was a really obnoxious person. Henning had prepared me for him: “The foreman will pick a quarrel with anyone; you won't get along with him.’ It just shows how wrong you can be about a person. But the extraordinary thing was that through all the months he was aiding us he never once gave a hint of being in the know. The first time I returned to the office after being released from prison there was a large bunch of flowers on my desk. That was Schmadke, an angel in disguise. He gave me a great deal of help, that obnoxious little dwarf. Q: What did you do on 20 July, the day of the Attentat?

A: I can tell you that exactly. The original date for the Attentat had been 11 July, so the plans were all finalised a little in advance. Then Henning said: ‘I won’t have you in Berlin when this happens. The Attentat is a job for men; I want you to be out of it. If we

need you I'll send a plane. Go off to Elmau for a week. You’ve always enjoyed going there.’ I had strict orders to stay where I was

until I was called. On 20 July I awoke early and felt unusually uneasy. In spite of their orders, I said to myself, I’ll go back to Berlin now. So I boarded the train. Near Munich there was a pretty serious air raid. Then in Munich I got into the night train and, as I

was having a nap, a man next to me said loudly and clearly: ‘Stauffenberg ... Attentat ... providence ... a small clique ... all of them liquidated.’ Such were the first words I heard. I had letters from Henning in my handbag. I went into the lavatory, tore up the letters and flushed them down the drain.

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When I got out at Potsdam, I wondered whether it would be sensible to go to Treskow’s apartment. My mother and I had been living there since our own apartment had been hit, but at that moment my mother was in Silesia. ‘There’s nothing to be done about it’, I

said to myself, ‘but I must go to the house. There’s no sense in going into hiding.’ So I tiptoed to Burggrafenplatz looking in all directions. Were there any cars outside the house? Did anything look suspicious? I ran in, opened the door and shouted: ‘Who’s there?’ But there was no one. That night was terrifying. I held my breath whenever a car passed by and thought: ‘Now they’re com-

ing.’ During the night Berndt von Kleist of the staff of Heereseruppe Mitte rang me up to tell me that Treskow had fallen. ‘Please

go to Neuhardenberg and discuss with them who will break the news to his wife — you or Hardenberg, I leave it to you. Take the office car.’ So on the morning of 22 July I went out to Neuhardenberg and talked to my future brother-in-law. To avoid being overheard, we went for a walk in the park and he told me in detail what had happened in Bendler-StrafSe on 20 July. He asked me to take the news to Frau von Treskow. I did so and returned to Berlin the same

day so as to destroy whatever there was to destroy in the office. Treskow’s funeral came later, still with full military honours. Q: Did it occur to you then that Treskow had taken his own life?

A: When Kleist rang me, I thought that Treskow had been killed in action. I regarded it as one of the happier dispensations of providence, of those things that are guided from the heavens. That was

stupid of me. But all the same, it represented a shield that I had been sent. I believed it and was grateful to be able to pass it on to my friend in good faith so that we both said: ‘Thank God, he has been granted that grace.’ Only gradually did it begin to dawn on me that the story didn’t make sense. However, at first I remained under the illusion that he had met a gracious fate. Q: How did you learn the truth?

A: Henning had said goodbye to Schlabrendorff and one day the papers said that Treskow had been among the traitors. They exhumed his body and scattered his ashes. Frau von Treskow, Eta, was in the country while I was in Potsdam in the Treskow’s

apartment. Eta telegraphed asking me to go to Mark - their eldest son and my godson — and break the news to him. ‘I don’t

want him to hear it from someone else.’ That was one of my most difficult moments because the children, whom I had last

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seen at the funeral, naturally suspected nothing. Mark was attached to an anti-aircraft unit in Finkenbuch. I called his commanding officer, a lieutenant, and asked him to give Treskow two hours’ leave. ‘Thank heavens that you will be coming’, the officer said, ‘I was beginning to think I would have to tell him myself. As yet he knows nothing.’ So then I went to Finkenbuch, and while walking through the local woods I told him. He looked at me with his blue eyes beaming and said: ‘Auntie Ovchen, this cannot be. Father would never break his oath.’ I was paralysed. How are you going to preserve this boy’s respect for his father, I asked myself? I couldn’t lay all the cards on the table, I couldn’t say father had such-and-such grounds, since that would lead us

all to the gallows. So I visited him every day and during the course of long walks I tried to introduce him to his father’s motives. ‘Do you know’, I would say, ‘I imagine that your father had thought this or that.’ It was impressive to see how quickly

the boy saw the point and came to grips with it. One day Eta telegraphed asking me to take the boys for a couple of days since she didn’t want them to meet her mother who was one hundred per cent Nazi. ‘These traitors! These traitors!’ she kept on shout-

ing. I called Mark and told him what his mother had asked me to do. ‘Don’t bother’, he said, ‘I can visit Grandmother all right. It doesn’t affect me in the slightest.’ He had already come to grips with the issue so that the chit-chat about treason just bounced off him. O: How old was he then?

A: He had been born in 1927, so he was seventeen. An absolutely charming boy. Eta never heard another word from him. We only know that he had been posted to a Suicide Squad. Q: You probably met Henning von 'reskow more frequently in those days than his own family did; you saw and spoke to him more often.

A: That’s not quite right. All right - owing to Eta being in the country with the children so much, but I also grew very close to the children, to Uta in particular and to Riidi. QO: What do you remember about Treskow? How would you describe his character?

A: He had a personality that simply bowled you over. He had an incredible gift for connecting with you and winning you over. He had something — how shall I put it? Have you seen pictures

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of him? He exercised a very strong immediate influence on his surroundings; he had a great personal charm — charm and the ability to convince. You trusted him. Q: Did you admire him?

A: Admire is not the right word. I had enormous respect for him, enormous. To be sure, we were very close. Q: The books about him suggest a highly committed character, straight-

forward and upright, with a strong Prussian sense of morality.

A: The Prussian element in him was highly developed but so was his love of nature and his love of Creation. Q: What does ‘Prussian’ mean for you?

A: Pull yourself together, and jolly quickly too. Discipline. Give

the cause priority over the person. Many people have thought Treskow ambitious and up to a point he was. But not in a negative sense, not ruthlessly so, but with an iron will. Whatever he saw as

being right, he wanted to put across to others. He was very hard on himself, asked an enormous amount of himself. Uta’s nurse told us after the war that he used to fill the bath with water in the evening so that it would be as cold as possible in the morning. That was him all over; as tough as possible towards himself but endlessly caring towards other people. I was once very ill and had considerable difficulties; he was in the middle of an offensive but said: ‘If you like I will fly over to help you.’ He acted in the same way to other people. QO: You say he was hard on himself. But his face has a rather melancholy look.

A: Yes, rather melancholy, sad, to be more precise. All the same

he could be radiant. Some of the photographs made him look more melancholy than he was. When he entered a room, he was, without wanting to be, at once the focal point. He dominated other people. Your typical melancholy man doesn’t do that. Although he certainly had a tendency towards melancholy. Q: And time and again he had doubts.

A: Yes, he was always doubtful as to whether his way was the right one. That obsessed him right to the end. We had so many setbacks.... But I can still hear him saying: “We can’t wait for the last blockhead.’ The last blockhead hasn’t died to this day.

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QO: The younger Treskow children were among those taken into Sip-

penhaft. What do you know about that? A: Oh, I was the person who took dolls to the children in prison.

Then the children were separated from their mother who was kept in prison while the children were taken to a Children’s Home in the Harz [Mountains]. The name tags were cut off their clothes so that no one would know who they really were. Q: How did the families find one another again?

A: I once went to the Commissariat to take my friend a parcel and the manager said to me: ‘No, I won’t accept parcels for Frau von Treskow anymore.’ He said it with a kindly smile and added: ‘If you are at such-and-such place at six o’clock you can take your friend home.’ And that was what happened. I stood at the prison gate and she couldn’t understand how I had got there. We went back to the Treskows’ and almost immediately, almost the next day, the two girls were at the door. Q: I think the children are very attached to you because you could tell them a lot about their father.

A: Yes, the children asked a lot of questions. QO: What did they want to know the most?

A: We talked a lot about the abuse to which one was subjected. Right at the start Henning had said to me: “You must realise that no dirt will be too dirty to throw at you.’ I think only a few realised that in advance. Just as from the start only a few reckoned with the possibility of failure. Henning had always allowed for it and given me practical advice early on from which I could see he was fully aware that things might go wrong. One of his rules was ‘Put off lying for as long as you can; don’t lie too early or you’ talk yourself into a muddle’. Another gambit was ‘Fill your desk drawers with as many love letters as you can lay your hands on, because the Gestapo are more interested in people’s private lives than anything else’. My mother sat by while the Gestapo searched his desk in August 1944. She did not have the faintest idea but kept on being asked: ‘Who is this Annie? Who is Mollie?’ Following his own advice, Henning had filled his drawers with love letters. That was typical of how methodical he was. QO: What did you think when you were arrested?

A: It’s odd that I have no distinct memory of the interrogations. It was as if I was in a trance, I have no idea what I answered. You

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may think that I am exaggerating, but I had the feeling that Henning was answering for me. The answers came out without my having thought about them. I can’t explain it any further to you today, but I didn’t feel at all anxious. I wasn’t even concerned with the question: ‘How are you going to get out of this?” When I was required to sign the record, I was very surprised at what I had said. Q: Did you see death before your eyes?

A: My own? Yes, but not as a terrifying experience. At the moment when I had reconciled myself to it, the prison door opened. Q: How long were you in prison?

A: Not very long because the leading investigator probably said I was more help outside than inside. That made sense because it was in my office in the Kaiserallee that all the relatives gathered

from then on to exchange news. Without Herr Schmadke a lot would have gone wrong. QO: How did you get to grips with the enormous strain of the days round 20 July? A: What was so gnawing was the doubt, the question of the cor-

rect path. I felt happy when I was inside prison and the door had shut behind me. At that point the tension was over; ‘now it’s happened’, I thought and was quite calm. In prison one waits to see what will happen next. There’s nothing for you to do; you don’t need to ponder whether you should be doing this or that. To be out-

side and having every step watched, to be continuously spied on, that was far more exhausting, far worse than sitting in a cell. It’s like a relay race — you have passed on the baton, someone else is now carrying it and you no longer need to worry about it. In retrospect,

it’s hard to explain how maddeningly strenuous and full of tiresome details everyday life was. Seen from today everything seems so self-explanatory. The younger generation cannot imagine it at all. The immense pains one took to organise a meeting — without a telephone, without the post — and then there’s an Allied air raid. Every-

thing is in ruins and one has to start from scratch. The strain on one’s nerves — it’s no wonder our nerves are no longer so strong. The only thing that surprises me is that we have all lived for so long. We have two World Wars behind us and are all as old as the hills.

Q: What do you think today of those people who ought to have known better?

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A: Of course you aren’t talking about the people who are always wiser from hindsight. Even those who try to be honest sometimes forget that they may — now and then — have thought differently. At least I chuckle when I hear an ‘I-have-always-said-so’. These peo-

ple have completely forgotten in the interval that they said and thought something different. To come back to your question: I believe many of the people who say that they did not know, but there are many others whose word I cannot accept. Here I make fine distinctions. I regard the first as stupid and for them I simply feel pity. I tell myself that I wish I had been that dim-witted myself. For the others, whom I know to have been cowards, I feel disdain.

There is really no intermediate position. For many who never found their way into the Widerstand I have great sympathy, because

I might not have found the way myself if I hadn’t been lucky enough to be a friend of exceptional men like Hammerstein and Treskow and a few others. I don’t know — indeed no one knows. Q: Many people say that the question of being for or against Hitler was primarily a question of character. Do you agree?

A: Yes, that has become clear to me once again during the course of our interview. It is really odd that, although for months I was branded over my involvement with the Widerstand, it lost me no friends. In normal circumstances part of my circle of friends would have abandoned me immediately. So it became clear to me it was no accident that the friends to whom I felt really attached understood my behaviour and cast no stones. Whether one was a Nazi or not depended on something inside oneself. Q: What do you regard as the worst crime?

A: Worst of all naturally was the persecution of the Jews. When

Henning heard of the shootings, he went to Manstein and told him clearly what was going on. Manstein would certainly have joined us if things had gone successfully — according to the motto: ‘Tf it all goes well, count me in.’ Q: And the November 1938 pogrom?

A: We had an old factotum, a gardener’s daughter who had lived in my mother’s house, who'd raised us all and been with us for over thirty years — one of the most beloved people I’ve ever

known. When she read in the papers that the synagogues had been set alight all over Germany and that the fire brigades had turned out spontaneously, she said: ‘A fire brigade never appears

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spontaneously. They set the fires!’ The common sense of ordinary

people enabled her to pinpoint the truth. The rest of us believed what was in the papers — to begin with, at any rate. Q: Why do you suppose that the Attentat came so late? Why did all the attempts to get rid of Hitler fail? What's your opinion?

A: Because they weren’t experienced assassins, weren’t trained for it. They weren’t up to these murky waters, to the meanness and deceptions. One couldn’t think as obscenely as the Nazis operated. Men like Treskow suffered terribly from this state of affairs; they werent secretive nor were they conspiratorial types. Henning preferred to fight openly. It was totally against his nature to have to tell so many lies and conceal so much. Too little attention is paid to

that today. How often did he say to me: ‘How happy I will be when I can walk in the streets again with an honest look.’ Q: Yet Treskow was the one who pressed most persistently for the Attentat. How does that square with his caution and doubts?

A: All the time that they were planning the Attentat they also had to lead their armies through vast territories without too many losses. Try doing those two things at the same time! Estimates of the chances of a coup succeeding also varied greatly. In the last weeks and months the chances kept getting slimmer and I often heard Henning say what I passed on then, and has since been mentioned by others in many different versions: ‘We’ve got to do

it even if it fails because it must never be said that there was nobody who stood up to the crimes.’ This, I believe, is the response to your question.

Q: A word about the time after the war. What was your life like after 1945? A: Hard. For two years I was a receptionist for a country doctor;

they were wonderful and rewarding years. Then I got married. I was married for nineteen years and, as my husband had many friends who had been in the Widerstand, we continued to move in the same circle. Q: Have you engaged in any political activities after 1945? A: No. Q: Once was enough? A: Yes.

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Q: Did you feel an obligation towards Henning von Treskow after his death? A: No. I felt and feel that I have done my job. Q: What do you see differently today?

A: A lot has disappeared and rightly so. Many things did not stand the test of time; others did. It was like that with the retreat.

There were those who stood up whom we would never have expected. And many of those we thought we could count on complained just because they had lost a piece of luggage. These years since the war have seen a very big social upheaval, and that’s a good thing too. Q: Haven't you sometimes regretted the developments since the war? Haven't you sometimes felt that the sacrifices made by the Widerstand were in vain?

A: No, I stopped thinking politically. When I got out of prison and returned to my mother’s house, I said: ‘I want to spend the rest of my life in peace and quiet.’ The only thing I wanted then was for the war and the bombs to stop. More people died after 20 July than before it — that is often forgotten. I haven’t lost the great joy I felt in May 1945. There are few evenings when I go to bed without a sense of happiness that I’m lying in a warm bed and can stay in it, that there’s no need to listen for air raid sirens. I still have that feeling to this day. In this respect we have an advantage over

you. Most people get cross when they can’t sleep. When I can’t sleep, I tell myself that I’m lucky to be in bed and don’t have to go to an air raid shelter in the basement. That was not enjoyable. Q: Is there anything else you would like to say that I haven't thought of?

A: There is really only the request that I made earlier on. I do not have secrets, but I do not want to be given a little wreath of honour. I am allergic to that kind of thing. I do not like people trying to gain something after the event, even if it is just a bit of vanity, according to the motto: And when he was found again, he was discovered to have been a member of the Widerstand. Spare me this, please.

Chapter Five

FREYA VON MOLTKE

LE F reya von was born inher 1911. She Carl and her two brothers grew upMoltke in Cologne where father, Deichmann, ran the family bank until 1931, when he was no longer able to make ends meet. Her mother was Ada Deichmann, née von Schnitzler. Even before she had taken her Abitur, Freya got to know Helmuth James von Moltke after joining the Viennese circle associated with Eugenie Schwarzwald. She married him in 1931, a year after she had begun to study law.

Helmuth James von Moltke, born in 1907 and great-grandnephew of Helmuth von Moltke, the famous Prussian Field Marshall, grew up on his father’s Silesian estate at Kreisau, bought by the Field Marshall with the money given to him as a reward for his services in the war of 1866. The Field Marshall had no children, so his nephew inherited Kreisau. Helmuth James’ mother was Dorothy, daughter of Sir James Rose Innes, the liberal-minded Chief Justice of South Africa. Thus from his boyhood Helmuth James, as his two Christian names imply, came under the influence of the best elements of both the Prussian and British cultures. Even while at law school he supported the Weimar Republic and, together with Carl-Dietrich von Trotha, Horst von Einsiedel,

Hans Peters and the Breslau legal scholar Eugen RosenstockHuessy, founded the Lowenberg Workshop. This was a meeting ground for workers, farmers and students who tried to develop solutions for overcoming social inequalities and improving regional problems in the face of mass poverty. In 1929 Helmuth James assumed responsibility for the estate from his father.

In 1932 Freya and Helmuth moved from Kreisau to Berlin. Freya obtained a doctorate in law in 1935 and then spent much of

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her time running Kreisau. Her husband started a practice in inter-

national law in Berlin and at the same time began the training needed to qualify as an English barrister, which he did in 1938. He

provided legal aid for Jews and other victims of Nazism. When war began in 1939, he was posted to the Foreign Affairs Division of the Abwehr as a technical expert in the laws of war and of nations. In this capacity he tried to protect prisoners of war, civilians and Jews against National Socialist injustice. In 1940 he met Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg. Between them they began to plan for the state that would follow the Nazi dictatorship. Their numbers gradually grew and they became known as the Kreisau Circle because meetings were held at Kreisau in the spring and autumn of 1942 and Whitsun of 1943. The inner circle of the group amounted to about twenty people, but only Moltke and Yorck knew the full list. The basic aims of the circle included modification of the system of national states, the transcending of the authoritarian state, and the restoration of freedom and human dignity; the rule of law was a basic axiom. From 1941 Count Moltke steadily enlarged the membership, established con-

tacts with civilian and military opponents of Hitler, and spread knowledge about the Widerstand outside Germany, using in particular his old contacts in England. Moltke was arrested on 19 January 1944 on evidence given by a colleague under torture. In the ensuing months several members of the group joined in preparing for the Attentat, a policy that he had always resisted. Only after 20 July did the Gestapo learn of the group’s existence. Helmuth was condemned to death by the

People’s Court on 11 January 1945 and executed at Plétzensee twelve days later. Freya and her two sons, Helmuth Caspar (born 1937) and Kon-

rad (born 1941) were not subjected to Sippenhaft and stayed at Kreisau until the end of October 1945. They were then rescued by a British army car sent with Russian permission to take them to Berlin. She was thus able to rescue the Kreisau planning papers and many of Helmuth’s letters. From Berlin, she took the children to Switzerland and then to South Africa, although by that time Sir James and Lady Rose Innes were dead. There she worked with the handicapped. In 1956 she came back to Germany because she objected to apartheid, and in 1960 moved to Vermont in the United States to look after Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, who was teaching sociology and epistemology at Harvard and Dartmouth.

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Recently she has helped produce an edition of Helmuth’s wartime letters to her (Letters to Freya, 1991) and additions to the published works of Eugen Rosenstock.

Interview QO: What feelings do you have and what images come to your mind when you think of Hitler? A: I saw him twice in Berlin — it must have been 1931 or 1932 — in

any case before his so-called seizure of power. A Jewish businessman, who was a friend of a cousin of mine, had invited me to a festive film premiere; some nationalist movie was being screened. We arrived a little late, and were let in but were not allowed to go to our seats. It was dark. Next to me, standing in the beam of a lamppost there was a man of whom all I could see were his eyes. I thought to myself: ‘What terrifying eyes.’ Then the house lights went on and I saw it was Hitler. That was my first ‘encounter’, if you can call it that.

A few days later I took a friend to the opera at the Kaiserhof Hotel and there was Hitler at the head of an enormous entourage coming down the stairs. Afterwards he attended the Meistersingern, as I did. Q: Do you feel hatred when you think of Hitler?

A: No. I don’t know what feelings of hatred are and I feel no personal hate towards Hitler. I regard him as a terrible stroke of fate and I am sorry for all the Germans who allowed themselves to

be misguided and didn’t realise what was at stake. Perhaps I wouldn’t have noticed it so quickly if it hadn’t been for my hus-

band. To start with I always felt there was nothing I could do, although I found the whole National Socialist development dread-

ful. That was the difference between me and the women of the ‘Red Orchestra’. They were people who wanted to do something, who couldn’t put up with nothing being done. To write off all the Red Orchestra people as Communists misses the truth. I regret not having gone as far as they did and regard it as a weakness. But that was what I was like. I regret it but perhaps if I had acted like them I would no longer be alive, and Iam a sufficiently normal woman to have wanted to stay alive for the sake of my two sons. For that reason I am prepared, in retrospect, to excuse the people who let themselves be taken in, especially as the Hitler government did

everything it could to conceal its crimes. The Nazis treated the Germans like sheep — perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration — but

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it was this contempt for human beings that was at the heart of National Socialism; that is what I hated. But I didn’t hate Hitler or

any other Nazi personally. Not even when I heard that Helmuth was dead because I understood, all too well, that they were the primordial enemy; they were murderers and destroyers so it was only consistent for them to kill off a man like Helmuth. I have always seen it this way. QO: But haven't you sometimes felt bitterness over 20 July? If you con-

sider that your husband originally opposed the Attentat and that the Kreisau plans might never have been discovered if the Attentat hadn’t taken place.

A: ‘Bitterness’ is a good word to use. You could say that at times I have taken issue with the Attentat. But one must differentiate. My

husband was opposed to the Attentat and had always said: ‘We'll never bring it off.’ But I soon saw that there was a deeper meaning to his death. Before he died he went through some testing hours. Shortly before the end he wrote to me that perhaps it was only his death that was asked of him. Or as Sophie Scholl put it so well: ‘So

many people have fallen for this regime; it is time somebody fell against it.’ My husband thought the same and accepted the consequences. And to that extent, looking back, I have also learned to accept 20 July because in the eyes of the rest of the world it is the only sign that there were people in Germany ready to fight Hitler and stake their lives on it. What’s more, one shouldn’t set too many restrictions on the meaning of 20 July. I’ve never set too much store by such things as the honour of Germany as long as they were confined to nationalism. But when it comes to the history of mankind and the whole human race, the Widerstand counts for something and Helmuth counts in it. This is the view I’ve gradually come round to. QO: Your husband was in prison from January 1944 onwards so that he

couldn’t have been told of the preparations for the Attentat. Did you know or suspect anything?

A: No, nothing. After my husband was arrested, nobody told me anything. I was no longer au currant. To me, 20 July came out of a clear blue sky. I was in Kreisau and read about it in the paper the next day. Naturally I knew immediately what it meant. QO: What were your feelings?

A: It was ghastly. My mother was staying with me; I read it in the paper and was speechless. My mother, who was a very brave

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woman and an upright anti-Nazi, but who naturally didn’t know much, asked me: ‘Does this affect you?’ And I replied: ‘Losing Peter Yorck is like losing a brother.’ The question that most concerned me was what would happen next. QO: Were you afraid?

A: ‘Afraid’ is not the right word. I have an odd characteristic, which has helped me a lot in life — I realise it now that I’m old — I

approach everyone with a trusting frame of mind. The result of this is that whatever good there is in a person, even if there is very little, comes out. When one approaches people with mistrust, the results are bad. So I approached even the Nazis trustingly, saying to myself that in time they would see reason. I’ve tried to keep this optimism throughout my life. But I cannot say that I suffered from delusions. I always knew it was a matter of life and death. Q: And anxiety?

A: I’d shared Helmuth’s commitment all along, and so I wanted him to keep going. I hoped he would survive but after the Attentat the prospects were very dim.

Naturally there were terrifying moments — the worst of my whole life — as I began to realise that things weren’t going to go well. I had to face the truth but there were moments when hope revived and that lasted to the very end. I clung to the hope that the British would do something or that the Gestapo would get interested in his predicament and keep him alive on that account. So there were ups and downs. But as I’ve said, fear isn’t the right word. Rather tension, strain, worry, distress. QO: You were allowed to visit your husband in prison. Even after 20 July?

A: Yes, even afterwards. Helmuth had been imprisoned in Ravensbriick and when I was allowed a visit, once a month, he would be taken from there to the police college near Drdgen, a few min-

utes by car from Ravensbrtick, on the way to Berlin. He would come to meet me and was completely free. We talked, sometimes for two hours. It was a long narrow room with a bench in the corner and a table. A Gestapo official sat a few feet away and wrote. At some stage he would say: ‘Well, we must get back now.’ He was very friendly and since he read all the letters I wrote to my husband, he knew all about the Kreisau estate: ‘I’m sorry you’ve had such trouble with your geese this year.’ I once said to Helmuth:

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‘They’re not really so bad’, to which he answered: ‘Except that they tear out fingernails.’ Not his, thank God. QO: How did your husband react to the Attentat?

A: At the end of July I went to see Huppenkothen, the SS leader I dealt with, and said I simply must talk to my husband because there were problems regarding the Kreisau estate that I couldn’t take decisions about on my own. I always said this. I took along the accounts books and other records but naturally we didn’t talk about bookkeeping and such things. Huppenkothen agreed to my request, with the result that I saw Helmuth on 5 or 6 August, i.e. two or three days before the big trial of Peter Yorck and the others. Helmuth told me then that he didn’t support 20 July. QO: Were there times when you wanted to hold onto your husband for the children’s sake and your own?

A: You’ve asked me that already, you shouldn’t ask it again. I’ve answered you perfectly plainly. I backed my husband in all he

did. I never advised him to give it all up but encouraged him, because I was convinced it was the right way for him to fulfil his life. That’s also why I have taken his death upon myself — which

is the way I must put it. And as for happiness, I passed many happy hours with my husband until his imprisonment. That was the best thing I had in the world. When he came to Silesia for a few days, we'd walk through the fields for ages and they were fulfilling hours. Or I think of the many peaceful Sunday afternoons

during the war we spent in his little Berlin apartment in Derfflinger-Strafse — we did a lot of reading there. Life in the Widerstand

didn’t mean being in continual danger even if it looks like that now. As long as the Nazis didn’t discover what one was doing, one could live pretty untouched. You can only carry on under such conditions if you treat what one is not supposed to — the illegal — as a normal part of one’s life. To that extent we behaved as though nothing could ever happen. But at the same time we were very careful. Q: In his letters your husband always seems to have had premonitions.

A: Early on, when I was a young woman, he sometimes alarmed

me by saying — and it was deeply disturbing to me — that he wouldn’t live long but would die in a revolution. His account was very drastic but I won’t repeat it here.

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Q: Did that terrify you then?

A: Yes, I rejected it and said: ‘Don’t talk about such dreadful things.’ But I always had the feeling — sad to say — that it made sense. I had the impression that it wouldn’t last long. All the same I can’t claim that I ever once thought in those days: ‘That's it; now it will end badly.’ There was a screen there. Q: In short, no heading for the abyss.

A: No, not at all. Q: Which grounds were decisive in making your husband oppose an attempt on Hitler’s life?

A: For him it was a major question of conscience. Could the new era begin with murder, when murder was the chief occupation of the National Socialists? This was discussed again and again. I remember Mierendorff, whose views Helmuth shared closely, once saying to him: ‘We won’t need long — two or three days will be enough and then it will be your turn. But first we must sort out these horrible people.’ ‘We’ for Mierendorff meant the Social Democrats and the workers. My husband on the other hand, consistently held the view that a revolution from inside had little chance of success, that it would be better to wait for the Allies. But then, my husband thought the war would end sooner than it did. The war was clearly lost after Stalingrad, but every day called for terrible new sacrifices. Waiting for the Allied victory became steadily more depressing and so the Kreisau people often discussed what could be done to shorten the war. However, even a successful assassination — and this was the chief argument against it— would not have convinced the Germans that Hitler was a crim-

inal who had ruined Germany. One was afraid of a new ‘stab in the back’ legend. Q: Although your husband at first rejected an Attentat, he kept pushing forward the preparations for a coup, as 1s shown by his disappointment when the hopes he had set on 18 December 1941 came to nothing; he once reported this in a letter to you. For me, this is one of your husband’s main characteristics: his moral decisiveness on the one hand and a great democratic mobility on the other. A: I see it in a similar way. Certainly the man as a whole was very

complex, with strict principles contending with practical realities. I see in this his Anglo-Saxon inheritance. Many people who didn’t

understand him or didn’t want to understand him said that in

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many respects he was an Englishman. I would strenuously contradict them. He wasn’t an Englishman but an interesting European mixture. This is also the background for his realistic estimate of the situation: ‘We can’t bring it off.’ All the same he wouldn’t have stood against the others — of that Iam convinced — if he’d remained at liberty and joined in the preparatory talks for the Attentat.

What’s more, seen from today’s standpoint, I’m no longer opposed to the Attentat. I’ve only come to understand much later that he who lives by the sword — and Hitler had done something far worse than live by the sword — must die by the sword, and that is why the Attentat was justified. I didn’t talk to my husband about it, nor did I interfere with his views. Where everyday life was concerned, I always managed to have my own way, but in all fundamental questions I thought that his judgement was always sounder than mine. So I accepted a lot and would do so again today. He was a fabulous man and although I’ve become much more of a feminist than I was, I’m still convinced that life with an outstanding man can be a great fulfilment for a woman and I followed my husband

in many things. I admired him and at the same time I criticised him. And he sometimes spoke of his wife who came at him from behind. It was more than love, it was genuine admiration.

I’ve already explained to you that to be with my husband brought me great happiness. Admittedly we were separated for much of the time. But I don’t think about that, because one can ruin one’s life retroactively. But as soon as I could be with him in peace, I was happy. The meaning of what he was doing gave me enormous strength. The same was true for him. He was almost a different per-

son once he had made up his mind and the matter was in hand. Having started by being a man who so lacked a joie de vivre that he did not open himself up to life, he became a highly active person. He worked incessantly for the cause and was sometimes, though rarely, dissatisfied with what he had achieved and I shared his dis-

appointment. But I must say that the burden was his, not mine. I must admit that today I feel a greater need to say what I was doing then. As one gets older, takes stock of one’s life, and, as it were, reaps the harvest, I would like to be recognised as an ‘active’ member of the Widerstand, and in this respect I haven’t succeeded until now. I would have liked to have been more active, but we were all the wives of our husbands. True, I shared in everything but our role was different from that of the men. I would put it like this: when the

men planned, we listened. We didn’t feel ourselves qualified to plan. The same goes for Marion Yorck — she, too, was in it from the

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start as I was — to an even greater degree because she had no children and didn’t have her hands so full. My life was frightfully busy

for a long time; I’ve never been able to understand people who make out that there was nothing to be done. One merely had to join in, which was what my husband expected of me. He really taught me how. He seldom felt that he was stretched beyond his capacity. He always had time. People who get a lot done often have time to spare because they use their time better than less gifted people. QO: But you knew most of it?

A: Everything. It was up to my husband to decide what he would tell me and what not. He was a very tight-lipped person and there were certainly many details that he didn’t tell me, things

that he thought would merely burden and endanger me. It was senseless to know more than one had to know. On the other hand he wanted to keep me involved and told me everything related to other people. He, so to speak, introduced them to me and then asked: ‘What do you make of him?’ It may be that he had more faith in my knowledge of people than in his own. I don’t know whether he was right but I judge quickly and decisively and can usually rely on my first impressions. That was why he always wanted to hear my views and why he told me so much. But I’m convinced that he also kept quiet about a lot of things. Even today I regard it as an honour that he drew me in like this, from the very beginning. He put the question to me explicitly, the time is coming when something must be done. I would like to have a hand in it, but I can only do so if you join in too, and I said yes, it’s worth it. This is how it started, the fight for justice against the Nazi state of injustice. Today people imagine the Widerstand to have been something quite extraordinary, something heroic. We never used the word Widerstand, but saw ourselves as opponents of the Nazi regime. We did not give ourselves a name, just took action. Today we use the word Widerstand and everybody discusses where does Widerstand begin and what doesn’t qualify quite yet. In my view Widerstand is not just that which carries the death penalty; it is something that must be practised — under a dictatorship as well as in a democracy. Of course, it is somewhat simpler in a democracy. If necessary, one may even have to go to prison for a while. QO: What was Widerstand, what was opposition like in daily life?

A: You did what was obvious; you ran the farm, wrote letters and the like. Our situation was one of opposition, but you did not

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think about it all the time. This was daily life; daily life was Widerstand. That is probably the best description. Moreover, we weren’t

always in as much danger as it appears with hindsight. My husband’s work in the Armed Forces High Command was perfectly legitimate. To be sure, being an international lawyer he also fought

the Nazis from his workplace, but he was in a secure position there. And his name also was a powerful protection against the Nazis. This must be acknowledged. The Nazis saw him as the legitimate successor to Field Marshal von Moltke, and this, in fact, was what he was. And being warriors, the Nazis naturally thought of the Field Marshal as being great. It is therefore not the case that the Widerstand was a period of terror for us throughout. It wasn’t, but it gave purpose to our lives; that is how we felt about it. QO: And yet it is difficult to imagine today that nothing disquieting

should have happened to you at a time when denunciations were a daily occurrence. A: You should not forget that Kreisau was a small village. There existed a latent sympathy for the Moltke family — there is no other

way of saying this — all the more so since we never behaved like

the lords of the manor. Perhaps people in the village wondered why we weren’t Nazis; but that was all. I never encountered hostility. If I said “good morning’ some people would respond with a cutting ‘Heil Hitler’, but this was really harmless. Many people ask me today how it was possible for my husband and I to exchange letters on a daily basis in which we spoke very openly. We could control our correspondence between Berlin and Kreisau very well. We knew exactly when the letters were mailed and when they arrived. In Kreisau there was just the postal clerk

who sold the stamps and received the letters; her son did the rounds. And we also knew how long it took letters to reach Berlin. After all, as we all know, the Germans are very efficient people, and the postal services operated until the end. Moreover, my let-

ters merely contained news of how much milk the cows were yielding, in which field the threshing machines were being used, what the weather was like, and how my sons were doing. It was a large estate. Unlike the Gestapo, my husband was extremely interested in all this. As I said, I could control the letters that he wrote me, and after my husband’s arrest I hid them in my beehives. I kept bees during the war because honey was no longer available in the shops. I have always thought of these letters as my greatest treasure, and when I left Kreisau in October 1945 under relatively

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favourable conditions, the letters were of course the first thing I took. I have then carried them with me throughout the world and it was only in the 1960s that I began to make copies of them. QO: Immediately after the war you published the two letters that your husband wrote after his trial on 10 and 11 January 1945. Then in 1988, the volumes of Letters to Freya appeared. The letters that your husband sent you from prison in 1944/45 have not been published to this day. Why not?

A: Very simply because they are too personal. The two letters you mentioned in which he describes the trial before the People’s

Court are not just mine; they belong, as it were, to the general public. I knew this spontaneously, and my husband also refers to it. The other letters from prison I have regarded as my property, as something very personal. I have no intention of publishing those letters. I have allowed a very small number of people who were closely involved with my husband to read the prison letters. But I shall not publish them. That is up to my sons. Precisely because I have published so much, I must keep something in my innermost self. [had such an incredibly large number of letters and files, and so I said to myself that I must stop revealing so much of him. He always preferred to stay in the background and was very taciturn. [have had to give away too much of him; so I do not want to publish his prison letters on top of it all. When he was no longer alive, I continued to be borne by his

greatness, by what he had said and written to me during the months before his death. Months went by before the daily routine returned. To a certain extent I lived in the clouds from the time of

my husband’s arrest in January 1944 until his death in January 1945. It was a similar sense of elation to that felt after the Kreisau meetings, when we had met and felt: “We'll make it. We have gathered fabulous people around us; we shall win over others.’ This is what carried us. It was something like an act of faith. Q: Very different people, views and political convictions gathered at Kreisau. Were there no differences of opinion?

A: That was even desirable. You had someone opposite you who

thought very differently but who was an opponent of Hitler. The opposition to Hitler was what bound us together. The Kreisauers said that we must come together and try to imagine what a postHitler Europe should look like. This is what kept them alive. There was much freedom during those discussions. Talking to one another is generally one of the most important preconditions if difficulties

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are to be overcome. The Kreisau Circle wanted to talk about the future, and with a view to the future. This was a fundamental difference from the people close to Goerdeler who were older and more homogeneous and who had gained their experience during the Weimar Republic. That is basically what these people wanted to return to. My husband was convinced that his ideas were geared toward the future, whereas Goerdeler’s were all taken from the past. This was reflected in the term ‘Goerdeler nonsense’; the Goerdeler people appeared to be reactionaries to him. QO: How then do you see your husband's role within the Kreisau Circle?

A: I think it is possible to say that the Kreisauers slowly grew into a team through him. This is something that is rare in Germany.

The Germans are poor team workers. However, I only became aware of this when I came to the United States, where things are different. Furthermore, my husband was convinced that a major new beginning had to be made after the end of the Nazi dictatorship. All his questions aimed at defining what would be of real importance then. And yet he was never an intellectual, a theoretician. My husband had the gift of pondering matters to the point where he was able to act correctly; no more and no less. He was not a thinker in the strict sense, but someone who would act. The early publication of his last letters have led to a one-sided picture. My

husband played a very practical role among the Kreisauers. It might be said that he was a mover, the engine, the person who kept things together. He exhorted all of them to carry on. Together with Peter Yorck he encouraged them in innumerable conversations to think about how the new state should be rebuilt, how trade unions might be organised, what would have to be changed in schools and

universities. And if one of them failed to meet his deadline, he would be admonished: ‘You haven’t delivered; you must submit your proposals by next week ...’ That was my husband’s role. Q: Did you admire your husband? A: Yes, I did. It wasn’t that I knelt before him; but I have always

admired him. He was a wonderful person. Quaint, or let’s say odd; inaccessible to people who were farther away. It was not always easy for others. On one occasion after the war I said to my sister-in-law, who loved him very much: ‘We were in such high spirits’, and she replied: ‘But only entre nous.’ That’s absolutely true. He was in good spirits in the family circle and he had a wonderful, slightly malicious sense of humour.

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QO: What, in your view, were the key ideas of the Kreisauers?

A: Much of what the Kreisauers wrote down and worked out sounds odd today. They were very much under the influence of the political realities of the time and their opposition to the Nazis guided them in what they thought and planned. In judging their plans we must always remember that they lived under a terrible dictatorship, and it is not easy today to put oneself in their shoes. Thus the Kreisauers started from the assumption that the Germans lacked a democratic experience and democratic practice. This was also confirmed by the collapse of the Weimar Republic. This is why they were guided by the question of how it might be possible to transform the Germans into democrats in the future. This is why they emphasised things that do not appear to be so essential today, i.e. the practice of democracy in small communities, in schools, hospitals, rural districts and units that were not unmanageably large. Today, this is no longer as topical. The West-

ern Allies have helped to establish democracy in the Federal Republic. Today public life reaches every household via the media, and this challenges people to take a stand and do something. After all, it had always been much more important in the other Western countries than in the German bureaucratic state to involve oneself, to participate in government at the local level and thus to acquire a sense of responsibility for the whole. Today I would put something else at the centre, that is the quest of the Kreisauers to blend socialism and capitalism and to unite the best of both. This attempt to create a symbiosis of capitalism and socialism had perhaps the greatest prospects for the future, apart, of course, from European unity. The Kreisauers wanted the countries of Europe to relinquish part of their sovereignty and to sacrifice it to a larger united Europe. But what was probably the

most important aspect was their attempt to integrate the trade unions into the production process and to form workers’ councils so that the workers could share responsibility. Q: There is something else that I would like to come back to. You said that the publication of your husband's last letters has created a one-sided picture of him. Could you elaborate on this?

A: Well, I mean the intellectual side. Of course, he thought more deeply about things in the final phase of his life. Religious

questions also occupied him more intensely. He had suddenly been put into such an elevated position, Christ-like, unreachable, that some people said to themselves: this may exist, but it does

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not concern me. And I have been trying ever since to take him down from this pedestal. This is why the publication of the letters he wrote before his arrest were so important to me. Anyone who makes the effort will now be able to understand my husband as an ordinary person who got through a tremendous amount of work. Q: If I have understood you correctly, your husband became a firmly religious man only towards the end of his life. However, for the Kreisau Circle as a whole, Christianity was of central importance.

A: My husband came from a religious family. His parents were

Christian Scientists. My husband was opposed to this, but he tended toward religious questions. Although I came from a very different background in this respect, I followed him along this road. It is even more difficult today than in those earlier years to talk about this. In the meantime it is very evident that the established churches have failed. This presents an obstacle to understanding my husband today. After all, he had bet on the churches as forces of renewal. Over the years, the Christian faith became increasingly important to him; I would even say that the greater the pressure on him the more central became his faith. You know, if you live in the face of death, you operate at a deeper and higher level at the same time; liberal ideas are no longer sufficient. I want to put it as bluntly as that; otherwise this would not be comprehensible today. The Communists were the only ones whom one might compare with the Christians; they, too, knew exactly what they were living for; they had a vision. Christianity helps you to live, and this is why the Kreisauers relied so enormously on the

churches, Protestant as well as Catholic. This was also true of those who had retreated from the Church. As we know today, they believed the Church to be stronger than it actually was. But Christianity is much stronger than the churches that represent it today.

This was the insight that the Kreisauers had gained. In trying times they recognised the revolutionary force of faith and life that inspires the teaching of this man from Palestine to this day. That’s the point I want to make.

I am not as made for this religious world as others may be; however, I can apply the teachings in daily practice. And that is what I am trying to do. There is an enormous claim in Christian-

ity, and it is characteristic of our existence that it will always remain a claim and that we shall never reach the goal. Yet, precisely the notion that life can only be gained if one is prepared to

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lose it — and this does not automatically mean the loss of one’s physical existence — constitutes a paradox of human existence that is raised by the Christian dogma. Once we have pondered this, we

begin to do what we consider right, even if we end up with the opposite result. Perhaps it is not always put in these terms; never-

theless, great strength and liberty springs from this insight. My husband always argued that I am a person very much orientated toward this world. He may have been right. I have no transcendental thoughts at all. Yet I still feel that much good comes to me, and I do not know where it comes from. I can put it as simply as that. And then I realise that my husband is involved in it. However, 1am a completely unspeculative person, and therefore have no truck with speculations. Q: Does this mean that you still feel your husband to be very present for you?

A: Yes, he is here even today; he is still alive for me. And I always wished to help him towards the future. It is my belief that he still has much to give, that he is far from having finished his job, that we must preserve for tomorrow what he stood for. This quest has become stronger the older I have grown. It is not that I believe that the same thing might happen all over again. History isn’t like that. However, each new generation must tackle major tasks and must own up to what it has done. My husband and his friends have also done this. Dealing with them has more to do with the future than with the past. QO: And yet I would like to ask you: are you living in the past?

A: That’s not how I see it. However, you must ask other people. My great friend Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy taught that we have as much of a future as we have a past. This is the only response that I can give. Future and past belong together. I wanted to contribute to letting my husband and their friends speak for the future; to see to it that they were ‘used’. We human beings are no mayflies. We come from somewhere and head somewhere. And where we are headed, I believe, my husband is still important. And it is not just he who I would like to carry into the future, but myself too; my whole life as

it was. This is why history is so important. It is not a matter of which battles Frederick the Great waged at what point, but it is human affairs. We must delve much deeper into things human when we engage with history. This is why I feel regret about the ways in which the entire Widerstand is dealt with in Germany.

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Q: Have you tried to counter these developments? What, for example, is the image that you have transmitted to your sons?

A: I haven’t transmitted anything to my sons; I never intended to. I have never spoken much about my husband to them, even though he was my close companion throughout my life. Nor have I ever created a conscious image of him for myself. I have made him live in my sons. That’s sufficient. QO: How did you tell them about their father’s death?

A: I had to inform the eldest of his father’s death; that was one of the low points in my life. Two or three days later I was lying in bed in the morning feeling sad, and he asked me why I was so sad.

I told him, and he replied: ‘Still because of Dad ...’ You won’t believe how comforting this was to me. I realised that Caspar could not really grasp it; he was too little, and, thank God, it was best this way. Q: Did you tell your son what his father had died for?

A: I cannot remember what I told him — how much or how little. Q: In your opinion, was there the danger of a legend being created and how did you deal with this?

A: We lived in South Africa from 1948 to 1956. My mother-in-

law’s family hailed from there. And in South Africa - you must realise — the Moltkes were totally uninteresting people. This was very healthy. I was a welfare worker and had to look after the disabled — ‘blacks’, ‘coloureds’, and ‘whites’, exactly as the racial laws categorised them. In my work I was independent of racial differences, but in the long term I did not wish to have anything to do with apartheid policy. When we returned to Germany, my eldest son was nineteen, and he had to form his own image of his father. This was also true of Konrad who later told me on one occasion: ‘We really never talked much about our father; but we always had the feeling that he was with us.’ It was of course very gratifying to hear this from one’s son. Today I wonder at times whether I spoke too little about my husband. But what could I have said? My sons gradually came to appreciate what was at stake. At any rate, I did not burden them with this. After all, it isn’t easy having such a father.

Chapter Six

ROSEMARIE REICHWEIN

IL DE

R osemarie Reichwein wasa Ministerialrat born in Berlin in in the 1904, the daughter of Ludwig Pallat, Prussian Min-

istry for Arts and Science, and his wife Annemarie. There she grew up with three siblings. In the early 1920s she trained as a physical education teacher in Sweden. She then taught in the newly founded Salem Boarding School before joining a school at Wiesbaden. Having moved to the Helene Lange School in Halle,

she met Adolf Reichwein, a professor at the city’s educational academy in 1932. They became engaged on 30 January 1933 and

were matried in the spring of that year. When the Nazis closed down the so-called “Red Academy’ in 1933, both of them lost their jobs. Adolf Reichwein was born in 1898, the son of a teacher. After

studying history, philosophy and economics in Frankfurt and Marburg, he obtained his doctorate in 1923. In 1928, when he was working at the Lowenberg Workshop as an administrator, he met Helmuth James von Moltke. From 1930 to 1933 he was a member of the Social Democratic Party, in which he was regarded as a representative of religious socialism. In 1933 he took a position as a village school teacher in Tiefensee

in Brandenburg, where their first children were born: Renate in 1934, Roland in 1936 and Katherina in 1938. The year 1937 saw the publication of Schaffendes Schulvolk, a work advocating pedagogical reform, with which Reichwein made a name for himself. In 1939 he was appointed director of the education department of the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin and began to use his office as a meeting place for oppositional forces most of whom were Social

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Democrats. He was brought into the Kreisau Circle by Helmuth von Moltke where, in turn, he mediated the establishment of contacts with other Social Democrats. He was among those Kreisauers who became actively involved in the preparations for the Attentat after Moltke’s arrest in January

1944. Together with Julius Leber he established links with the Communists. The overthrow of power was to be supported by a popular movement that transcended party politics. However, during a meeting with Saefkow and other Communists, Reichwein and Leber were betrayed by an informer. They were severely tor-

tured, and were condemned to death by Roland Freisler’s People’s Court on 20 October 1944. They were executed at Plétzensee on the same day.

After her house had been destroyed by bombs in 1943, Rosemarie Reichwein and her children — a fourth having been born in 1941 — moved in with Freya von Moltke. She stayed in Kreisau until the summer of 1945. She later worked as a physiotherapist at Berlin’s Charité Hospital before opening her own practice. Today she lives in her parents’ house in Berlin-Wannsee.

Interview Q: In Letters to Freya published several years ago one 1s surprised at the openness with which Helmuth Moltke writes about political develop-

ments. In your husband's letters, which appeared in the early 1970s, there is by contrast very little about politics. Can you explain this? A: That’s fairly easy. As Social Democrats we were watched from

the start and so were extremely careful. In this respect things weren't as easy for us as for the Moltkes, who seem to have had a postal service that didn’t care about anything. It’s true that we lived in a village, in Tiefensee near Berlin, but the mailman spied on us and it wasn’t just him. We once asked one of our neighbours to look after our key because we wanted to go away, and he said: ‘I’ve been given the job of watching you; you better give the key to someone else.’ That was very decent of him. We moved to Tiefensee in the autumn of 1933 and lived there in a sort of glass house. QO: Why? Because you came from Halle?

A: Yes, people were surprised at a high school professor becoming a village schoolmaster. They asked why, decided the reason must be political, and then word quickly got round that my

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husband had been a Social Democrat. What was particularly unpleasant for my husband were the meetings of village schoolmas-

ters that took place once or twice a year; his ‘dear colleagues’ boycotted him right from the start and let him clearly understand that they didn’t want anything to do with him. The only person in the neighbourhood who behaved well was the mayor of Tiefensee, a German Nationalist who liked my husband and backed him. He had been wounded in the war and had lost a leg. “Let me assure you’, he once said to my husband, ‘I’m sick of the whole thing; I want to bail out.’ My husband replied: ‘Anyone who says A must also say B. You’ve got to stay now.’ That was based on self-inter-

est because my husband had said to himself: ‘If he goes, who knows what we will get?’ When my husband was put on trial in October 1944, our lawyer got me to ask the mayor to write an eval-

uation of Reichwein. It turned out to be so favourable that the lawyer thought we’d better not use it at the trial. After the war I had close contact with the mayor and his wife and tried to help

them a bit. As an ex-Nazi mayor he had only a very small pension

and was prevented from running the little café from which he made his living. He was very disappointed that my husband had never spoken to him openly. The people who were wholly on my husband’s side were the schoolchildren. He looked after them in the afternoons and during the vacations; he went swimming and walking with them, played ball and worked in the garden, played music too. To put it in a nutshell, he devoted his whole day to the children and hoped in this way to slowly to win over the parents. He succeeded in this, for example, by throwing small parties on 1 May, at Harvest Thanksgiving — even nativity plays at Christmas, although that was considered undesirable in those days. QO: How long were you in Tiefensee?

A: All told, nearly six years. In May 1939 my husband obtained a job as educational consultant to the Museum of Ethnography in Berlin, Unter den Linden. He gave lectures there, led tours, and got courses and workshops going. As he had been badly wounded in the First World War — shot in the lungs and other wounds — he was exempt from military service. QO: You met your husband in Halle. What took you to Halle?

A: I left home too early, in the days of inflation. There was less help available for civil servants’ children in those days, and my

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father, who worked as a Ministerialrat in the Ministry of Culture, could find money to educate only the eldest child. I was the second and interested in gymnastics. It was part of a reformist curriculum movement that was specially encouraged by my father’s Institute for Education and Instruction. Immediately after I left school an aunt arranged for me to go to an institute for training gymnastics teachers in Sweden. The first practical experience I gained was in the newly founded boarding school at Salem. After that I went to

Wiesbaden where I taught gymnastics and sport for six years. When the headmistress of my school was transferred to Halle’s Helene Lange School, I went with her. There I very soon got to know my husband, who was professor of history and politics at the educational academy at Halle. Q: That was in 1932. And later, you gave up work? A: Yes, in the spring of 1933 the Halle Academy, the so-called Red

Academy, was closed down immediately. My husband and I went to my parents in Wannsee for six months, and in October he got the position in Tiefensee. He had vacillated a long time between emigrating and staying — he’d had an offer from Ankara in Turkey where Ernst Reuter, among others, had gone. He then decided to stay at home because he didn’t think the Nazi regime would last so very long. His motto was ‘Stick it out so as to do things better thereafter’. As he’d moved from university straight into adult education and had gone on to train teachers, he lacked practical experience in teaching children. Since he had always wanted to teach, he applied to become a village schoolmaster. ‘T still lack this experience’, he said, ‘and what’s more I want to be on my own.’ Q: Had you any idea what this decision meant?

A: Not really. I’d never bothered myself with politics. On the contrary, when I was in Wiesbaden, I enthusiastically joined in the Festival of Germans overseas. I felt it was a good thing to support the Germans who lived abroad. Only later did I discover that my best friend under Hitler was an enthusiastic National Socialist. When in 1932 I went to Halle, a true working-class city, and saw strikers demonstrating, I began to get interested in the situation of workers and went to the evening classes that Professor Reichwein

gave at the Academy for workers and students. I immediately found myself in agreement with him and, as I got to know him better, completely accepted his line of thinking. For the first time in my life I really woke up and was, as it were, educated by my

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husband’s wider life. I was included in a few things — people were always coming to see us — but knew nothing in detail. As Iam bad

at deception and was always very straightforward, my husband was afraid that I might give something away. But to answer your question; to begin with I regarded the move to Tiefensee as an adventure. In the longer term, however, life in the country was very wearing. I had three children in six years and my hands were always full. It was an extremely primitive household, with a pump in the kitchen and no sink; so every bucket had to be carried outside, there were log fires and so on. [had to change my way of life

completely because what I’d been used to before was so completely different. We had friends in Jena whom we often visited and I was usually very loath to leave again. I was overjoyed when my husband got a job in Berlin. QO: That must certainly have been a great relief, as regards human contacts and friendships.

A: Naturally. In Tiefensee one couldn’t talk openly, let alone become active openly. There were some very nice people but we couldn’t be frank with them. Berlin was different; there were friends to be had with whom one could speak one’s mind. My husband had a particularly close friend, Harro Siegel, a puppeteer,

with whom we could discuss everything. But even in the city I didn’t do anything active. It is odd; in a dictatorship one feels one is being watched and is never completely frank. Besides, my chief

concern was with housekeeping. In 1941 our fourth child was born. Soon afterwards the night-time air raids began; at that point I sent the children to friends and relatives. QO: What sorts of understandings did you reach with your husband about doing something against the Nazis?

A: I approved of what he did; we were in complete agreement. When he said, ‘I’m going to do this or that’, I said, ‘very well, go ahead’, assuming he said anything at all. I never tried to influence him, even at Whitsun 1944 at Kriesau, when he told me and Freya that he wanted to make contact with the Communists. ‘If that goes wrong’, he said, ‘it will cost lives.’ I had the feeling that the people

at Kreisau spent too much of their time thinking and that some action was needed too, and that was why we needed to go along with the Communists. Otherwise we had no disagreements. On the contrary, I was astonished at how much he managed to do and how he followed a clear line throughout.

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Q: And your own activities?

A: There was a distinction between us wives whose husbands were active and the Communist wives in the city. There, the wives themselves took a very active part, distributing leaflets or establishing underground links. They probably did more than us; we stood in the background, approved of what our husbands were doing and supported them but weren’t active ourselves. Q: Did you admire your husband?

A: In some ways, yes. Young women today are surprised that we subordinated ourselves in this way. But I was convinced it was the right way to go and so I ‘synchronised’ myself completely. Later, when he was no longer there and I had to cope with the children on my own, friends told me that they had the feeling that ‘Father’ was still with us and would come through the door at any moment; this is how closely we lived to what he had stood for. Later they said about me that I became a completely different person after his death; they would never have thought it possible that I would become so active. Well, for one thing I had to fight for my existence and besides that I was much more interested later on in what was going on around me. Q: Do you remember any incident or event that opened your eyes to National Socialism ?

A: Yes, in Halle. Hitler made a speech in a sports field outside the town. That was before the seizure of power, and my sister and I went to hear for ourselves what he had to say. It was nothing but a tirade of hate. He tore everything down, found fault with everything, bellowed in all directions and basically had no political programme to offer. My sister and I were absolutely astonished at the way people shrieked and rejoiced whenever he ridiculed a political figure; they constantly gave the Nazi salute. We stood there

and shook our heads and looked at each other because it never occurred to us that one could cheer a man like this. The people around us became so annoyed that they nearly beat us up and we quickly made ourselves scarce. I saw Hitler once more from a window of the Ministry in Wilhelm-StrafSe in which my father worked. Hitler received a parade of the Condor Legion, which had come back from the Spanish Civil War. Q: And what feelings did you have towards him then? You knew of course that friends of your husband had been in concentration camps.

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A: I simply thought they were criminals from head to toe, all of them. One heard all sorts of things indirectly later on as well. My

younger brother had had an accident as a child and so couldn’t serve in the forces. He went to Galicia as a geologist and when he

got back he said: ‘If what we Germans have been doing to the population there ever comes back to haunt us, then heaven help us!’ I had a nice Russian girl as a household help. In 1941 young people came to Berlin by the wagonload, mostly girls and women. They were put into the armaments factories or placed with fami-

lies with many children. I and my four children were naturally without help — the youngest had just been born — and so my hus-

band went to the Anhalter Station to look for help for me. He found it was a regular trading place in women, a shocking trade in

human beings, and he felt terribly ashamed. The Russian girl whom he picked out had just turned fifteen. She arrived at our house crying, with a little bundle under her arm; she had blond hair and wore two plaits. My first thought was “Now I’ve got a fifth child’. She had been taken from her parents by force and at first did nothing but cry; she carried a concealed cross and prayed to the Russian Orthodox Church. She gradually got used to her new surroundings and my youngest was her special love; she’d have walked through fire for him if the occasion had demanded. That made her part of the family. When she had learned a little German, she told us what had happened in her village: the Jews had been made to dig a long ditch and then to stand in front of it; then they were shot and slumped into it. She’d watched the scene from a hiding-place and afterwards was very easily frightened. That was how I first heard of these atrocities because my husband, who presumably knew about them, had said nothing to me so as not to burden me. Q: What happened to the Russian girl after the war?

A: In 1943 my children and I moved to Kreisau, to Freya von Moltke’s, and there, toward the end of the war she fell in love with a soldier in General Vlassov’s army. Soldiers from that army worked on the estate and it was one of these she fell in love with. When at Easter 1945 we trekked into the Riesengebirge mountains, we couldn’t persuade her to come with us; we

knew what the Russians would do with her and her friend, since naturally in Russian eyes the Vlassov soldiers were collaborators. She gave us a note in Russian certifying that we had

belonged to the Widerstand and that our husbands had been

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killed as a result. Later, this note gave us valuable protection, especially against the Czechs. We never heard anything of the girl again. Q: Why did you go to Kreisau?

A: At the end of August 1943 our house in south Berlin was totally destroyed by a bomb. The Moltkes at once offered us an attic in the Schloss and helped us to establish ourselves — we'd lost everything. A major reason for choosing Kreisau was that it had a

good train service to Berlin. That meant that my husband could visit at weekends. Later, when my husband was in prison, I used to go to Berlin during the week. From January 1944 Freya made the same journey to visit her husband in jail. Q: Your own husband was arrested before 20 July? A: Yes, two weeks before, on 4 July. Q: Had he known about the Attentat or wasn’t he privy to those plans?

A: These days I am always asked that question and I can only say this: I had no idea that an Attentat was being planned and I don’t know what he knew. All he used to talk about was X Day, in other words the day when Hitler would no longer be there. What ought to happen after the regime fell was a question over which the Kreisau people racked their brains right to the end. Q: As you've said, your husband was the man who had contacts with

the Communist Widerstand.

A: Yes, that’s what sealed his fate. Julius Leber, a confirmed Social Democrat, had taken it upon himself to talk to the Com-

munists; my husband merely acted as a mediator, via Fritz Bernt, an old friend from Jena, who knew some of the leading Communists. The whole thing went through many preliminary stages; finally a first meeting was arranged with two members of the Central Committee of the underground Communist Party in the apartment of a physician friend. Against the agreement, Saefkow and Jacob also brought along a third man who they said was likewise a Communist, and that he had been in a concentration camp and was absolutely reliable. When they were on their way to a second meeting all three of them — my husband, Saefkow and Jacob — were arrested. It turned out that the third man had bought his release from the camp by becoming a Gestapo informer.

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QO: Were you scared?

A: I felt no fear. All I wanted to do after his arrest was to find out where he was. If possible, I wanted to get him out. The lawyer warned I should not take so many risks, but I did not care. I knew about death, but that is something we have to settle inside ourselves. What is the use of fear? QO: How did you learn about your husband's arrest?

A: My husband did not come home on the evening in question, and since I knew that he was meeting with the Communists I suspected something bad. I made enquiries, but it took days before I

learned that he was being held in Potsdam. Without having the slightest idea, I travelled to Potsdam on 20 July, hoping that I would be allowed to see him. But I was merely given a letter he had written. On the evening of 4 July, when my husband had not returned home, I had also gone to the Yorcks. ‘Reichwein did not come home’, I said. And Yorck merely asked: ‘And what about Leber?’ ‘He was not with them’, I replied. Yorck then called Leber at home. Leber was in — they got him a few hours later. Yorck had been among those who had favoured Leber and Reichwein contacting the Communists. Stauffenberg was also for it. After Leber’s and Reichwein’s arrest, he pushed for staging the coup because he

was afraid that under torture the two could divulge things that might be fatal. I learned about the events of 20 July that evening

when I was on my way back to Kreisau. I stopped over with friends in Cottbus, and that is when the announcement came over the radio. The names then appeared in the papers the next morning; Yorck’s was among them. QO: When did you succeed in reaching your husband after your failure on 20 July?

A: On 10 August in the Brandenburg-Gorden prison. The relevant judge in Potsdam was on vacation and his deputy, who ap-

parently did not quite understand the situation of the political prisoners, gave me a visitor’s permit without much ado. However, in Brandenburg they tried at first to turn me away. Reichwein was a political prisoner, and it was not possible for me to see

him. But I insisted, and after the prison director had made enquiries in Potsdam, I was allowed to see my husband. He appeared in prison clothes, looked very ill and had lost his voice. He could merely whisper. I asked my husband what was wrong with his throat; but the warden played it down; the prison doctor, he

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said, would look after it. The Bernts later told me that they had

injured his vocal cords during torture. Reichwein and Leber underwent terrible torture; they were beaten bloody and throttled until they passed out; then they had cold water thrown over them.

I had brought all sorts of letters along because I thought he would enquire about this or that person. Among the letters was also a bereavement card from the friend whose husband had fallen in action. He asked about it, and I took this opportunity to tell him that Yorck was no longer alive. Yorck had been executed two days before, on 8 August. I said: ‘Martha von Klein-Oels has also been widowed.’ He understood immediately and froze. Even the warden noticed this and asked: ‘What did you say just then?’ I replied:

‘It happens every day now - a friend has been widowed.’ However, my husband knew that I was alluding to Marion Yorck; KleinOels was the Yorck estate. I deduced from his reaction that he did not know anything up to this point about the abortive Attentat and the arrests in connection with 20 July, but had counted on its success. This at least was how I had interpreted his first letter. He was in solitary confinement and news reached the prisons but very sporadically. It was probably from this day onwards that he was overcome by a certain hopelessness. I then became completely seized

up. Later my husband was transferred to where the other Social Democrats were held at the prison in Lehrter-StrafSe. The Kreisauers were taken to Tegel where Pastor Poelchau looked after them. He was a tremendous help and also took care of the women who had been arrested, among them Marion von Yorck, Annedore Leber and Clarita von Trott. That is why I saw him at Tegel to ask him to drop by at the Lehrter-Strafse prison and look after my husband. Unfortunately Pastor Poelchau refused because — as he put it — he did not want to run any risks. If he went to another prison for

which he was not responsible, this would be noticed and would endanger his other friends. Pastor Poelchau regretted this very much but there was nothing that could be done about it. Q: During your visit on 10 August, did you have the feeling that this was the final goodbye?

A: No! When I traced him to Brandenburg-Goerden, we had to

discuss important family matters. The warden who was always present was an obstacle; it was not possible to talk extensively about one’s feelings. We hoped that it was not for the last time, that another visiting permit would be issued or that the prison would be bombed in which case he would have tried to escape.

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Q: As you said, your husband was then transferred to the prison in Lehrter-Strapfve. Who else was held there?

A: Apart from my husband, Julius Leber, Gustav Dahrendorf and Hermann Maafs. We women stood in line holding the things we had brought for our husbands and exchanged news. We had clean underwear and something to eat with us. One day I was given his suit, the inside of which was completely blood-stained. The newspaper cuttings, on which my husband had scribbled a few words, were always the most valuable items. On 14 October he was transferred to Prinz-Albrecht-Strafe and his trial began on 20 October. Together with Freya von Moltke I went to the People’s Court, which then sat in the Kleistpark Superior Court. We had hoped to see him one more time, but failed. The trial was over around 2 P.M. and since I had heard that he would be taken to Plétzensee, I imme-

diately went there. I bribed the guard with tobacco and he said: ‘Well, if it is the people who were brought here at 3 P.M. — they are all no longer alive.’ This was in the late afternoon. And after this I

had one basic thought: thank God that they had stopped inflicting pain on him. Poor Leber had to wait until January 1945 before his death sentence was carried out. Later, I ran all the errands necessary to obtain his belongings, along with Frau Maafs whose husband

had also been hanged at Pl6tzensee on 20 October. She was a mother of six and a very brittle person; she could not withstand the mental and physical stress and passed away soon after.

My eldest daughter has remained a friend of Uta Maaf to this day. And later we also frequently met Michael Maafs, the eldest of the six, here in Berlin. The second eldest, Wolfgang, went to the

Odenwald School as did my children; and Gerda, the youngest, was a friend of my youngest daughter Sabine. The commemorations of 20 July in Berlin were always an occasion for us to get together. However, for a long time my son did not want to be asked about his father, whose fate remained a heavy burden for him. As

I said he was at the Odenwald School where his father was portrayed as a role model, and somehow he found this impossible to bear. Then, one day, he came with us to one of the 20 July commemorations, and he saw that there were other boys of his age who had gone through the same thing. This was a liberation for him; he sensed that he was no longer alone with his problem. QO: How did you explain their father’s death to your children?

A: I could not tell the children anything. It was only after the end of the war that we were able to speak. After all, we all lived a

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schizophrenic life: towards the outside world you behaved as if everything was business as usual and carried on; but one’s inner life was in a state of rebellion. How was I to explain this to the children? When the eldest girl turned five or six she wanted to join the BDM Nazi organisation for young girls and wear a BDM uniform.

The child would not have understood if I had forbidden her to do this. She then went to all the Nazi festivities and did not realise what was going on at home. We had a small cottage on Hiddensee Island, and the beach was, of course, full of sand castles decorated with little swastika flags. ‘Why don’t we have one’, my son asked, and so I let him carry on. Why should I cause him difficulties? When their father was arrested, I merely told the children that he was ill in hospital. And whenever I returned from Berlin I would tell them of their sick father so that they would not notice any difference. When the verdict had been carried out, I just said that their father had died. No further details. It was only when Count Moltke was executed in January 1945 and Freya explained to her son that the Nazis had murdered his father that I felt that the time had come to tell my children what had happened. Q: And what did you say?

A: Caspar Moltke, my children’s playmate, had not taken the news too badly; in fact he was happy and glad that his mother was

staying home again instead of travelling to Berlin all the time. ‘They have murdered my father, and Freya is with us’, he recounted. So I told my children: ‘Our father has suffered the same fate as Caspar’s.’ QO: As far as I know, the children of the resistance fighters developed in

very different directions, not least politically.

A: Yes, the common enemy was missing. Hitler had been the common enemy who had welded them all together. In 1978, for example, there was a major controversy with one of the Stauffenberg sons who did not want Herbert Wehner to address the 20 July commemorations. After all, Wehner had been a Communist. ‘So

what?’ my son asked, ‘Communists were part of the resistance movement.’ He had no understanding whatsoever of Stauffenberg’s attitude and thus continued their feud in the columns of the newspapers. To this day the Communist resistance is misunderstood. To be sure this is not surprising in light of the fact that the GDR was our neighbour. We were afraid and wanted nothing to do with Communism. But despite all this we should not overlook that

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the Communists lost more lives. Now that the Communist bogeyman is disappearing, we have the opportunity to see the human beings that were involved. And perhaps this will also lead to a reevaluation of the Communist resistance. QO: We must not forget, however, that the resistance against Hitler had been handicapped for many years by the fact that the radical Communists did not want to have anything to do with the Social Democrats.

A: Yes, perhaps Hitler would not have risen so far if Social Democrats and Communists had pulled in the same direction. However, after 1933 the two sides slowly came together, not least because they had suffered the same fate. Yet setbacks occurred even at this stage. I remember that my husband — who knew a lot about Bolshevism — once remarked during the Moscow trials at the end of the 1930s that basically the situation in the Soviet Union

was no different than ours. ‘They have apparently copied our example’, he said.

Q: And yet your husband favoured a rapprochement with the Communists ?

A: Yes, it was possible to talk to German Communists, primarily because they lacked the powers that Stalin had at his dis-

posal; he was able to do what he liked. The danger with the German Communists was that their underground groups had been penetrated by Gestapo informers. When my husband sought

contact with the Communists, Theo Haubach warned him: ‘If you take this step, it will be the end of our friendship, for they will deliver us to the gallows.’ Essentially Haubach was confirmed by events. Q: When did you first become politically active?

A: I was never politically active and developed an interest in politics only through my husband. Nor was I involved in politics after the end of the war. I was far too busy and also had to work.

Above all, I wanted to maintain the friendships I had in the Soviet Zone. If I had committed myself, as did Annedore Leber, I would not have been allowed to visit there. I also had the cottage on the Hiddensee Island, which I would not have been able to go

to either. All in all, human relations were always much more important to me than political connections — because a single individual cannot achieve much anyway. But a lot can be done in human terms.

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Q: And professionally?

A: After 1945 I built up a new career. Thanks to my training in Sweden I was licensed to practice as a physiotherapist, and this

was much in demand after the war since there were many invalids. My Swedish friends immediately mediated a visit and got a visa for me. Up to 1946 I had tried in vain to obtain an exit permit; the Americans in Berlin refused to let me go. All Germans are guilty, they said, and have to stay. I even went to Schleswig-Holstein to see Theodor Steltzer, who belonged to the Kreisau Circle, because I thought that he, as Minister President, might be able to help me. However, Schleswig-Holstein was part of the British Zone of Occupation and Steltzer told me that he could not help. I finally ended up seeing a Jewish refugee at the American Travel Office in Berlin-Dahlem. I told him: ‘You know, you were fortunate; you were able to leave and now you have come back without suffering damage. We have lived through everything here, and now the children of my husband, who has perished as an opponent of Nazism, are not permitted to visit friends in Sweden. I don’t understand this.’ ‘Wait in the reception downstairs’, he said; a short while later there was a call informing me that I could go. I

then had a good winter with my children in Sweden. Through meetings at my old institute at Lund and with my former teacher at Stockholm, I was able to relearn and catch up. In the early 1950s

I then got a job as a physiotherapist at the Charité Hospital in Berlin. I had to make certain that I could make ends meet. After all, the 210 marks I received as a pension just covered the rent. Later on I opened my own practice; I took over the old family residence in Wannsee from my brother and thus returned to where | had spent my childhood. QO: Were you disappointed by the direction that the Federal Republic took in the 1950s?

A: During the first years after the end of the war I was reluctant to make political statements. Then came the first CARE packages, and the neighbors looked on enviously. Of course, they knew that

we got these packages because we had been part of the Widerstand. This is when we realised that we were unpopular. I remained

silent and went on with my work. I thought that some day they would be enlightened. The population found all this difficult to digest. A short while ago they had been cheering and gone along with everything; they had believed in victory to the bitter end. Now everything had been turned upside down and they were the

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culprits. I did not do anything about this, but let things run their course and remained an observer. Above all, I tried to get hold of literature on the Widerstand — a difficult job. I found the first book on the subject in Sweden: the diaries of Ulrich von Hassell. At first this book could only be published in Switzerland, just like Rudolf Pechel’s book, since the Allies did not like to see this kind of liter-

ature. They just did not want it to be known that there had been any resistance at all. Moreover, I still think it’s odd that for years we have been commemorating the East German Uprising of 17 June 1953; but 20 July has never become a public holiday, even though there has hardly been another date since the Second World War that has done as much to save the honour of the Germans. But the German population was totally uncomprehending. It was only very slowly that a learning process began after 1945. At the beginning of the 1950s we were all in the mood to make a major fresh start. Now everything will have to change, we said euphorically. For me the first disappointment was that Adenauer

forged ahead with tying Germany to the West. From the start I believed it was a mistake that the East was shunted to the sidelines. We often said to ourselves that if our husbands were still alive the whole affair would have developed differently. An attempt would have been made to maintain contact with the East and thus to preserve a united Germany. It was Adenauer’s policy of restoration that crucially contributed to the division of the country. The Russians are not solely responsible, as has always been asserted. I was

very glad when there was a turn to the left under Brandt and Schmidt and links were re-established with the East. It took a long time to do this. The former Nazis had begun to feel much too comfortable with us. I thought it particularly bad that Nazi judges were restored to their former positions because there weren’t any others; [also believed that Germany’s rearmament was fraught with danger, since it was largely the old Nazi officers who were given the leadership positions. We should have waited for at least a generation, until a different type of person had become available. Many

things turned out to be very different from what the Kreisauers had imagined. I often thought: my God, all has been in vain. Steltzer cut a very good figure in office, but the later president of the Federal Parliament, Eugen Gerstenmaier was, I felt, a disappointment, even if he helped me personally. It was incomprehensible to me that a member of the Kreisau Circle would develop in this way.

However, I don’t want to give further details; Gerstenmaier did much to raise my pension.

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Q: Would you say in retrospect that the Widerstand should have taken a different route if it wanted to succeed?

A: I believe that the Nazi scourge should have been prevented at the very beginning. Once Hitler had become Chancellor and had been given full powers, nothing could be done and

things took their course from then onwards. Opportunities to intervene were very limited. Underground work was hampered by the fact that only two or three people knew each other and were on the same wavelength; only one of these then had contact with another group, and so on. My husband was quite well informed about which groups existed. This predestined him to become a mediator. His contacts extended from the far Right to the far Left. QO: The Communists were presumably the first to become active....

A: Well, they were active even during the Weimar period. Following Hitler’s seizure of power they went underground; but the odd thing was that all they did was distribute leaflets and commit sabotage. That was naturally very risky, and many of them died in the process. It wasn’t part of Communist strategy to act directly. In this respect the military resistance was very different; to be

sure, they also had better opportunities. After all, the military could have seized power. It was only towards the end when the catastrophe was on the horizon and when my husband contacted them that the Communists came to realise that Hitler had to be removed. They supported this view, but did not themselves become active. Q: But this is exactly what the Kreisauers are reproached for, 1.e. that they merely deliberated and were not prepared to undertake the Attentat and then to assume the responsibility for tt.

A: This is what I hear the Communists saying all the time: ‘What did you actually do? All you did was deliberate!’ However,

it is terribly important that, if something disintegrates, we know what will come next. Perhaps many things relating to this Atten-

tat were insufficiently thought out; perhaps one should have anticipated more. However, it can hardly be said that the Kreisauers did not risk anything when they held their meetings. After all, they did not just wine and dine when they met at Kreisau. With a large group such as the Kreisau Circle it was never clear if there was a traitor among them. On each occasion they ran a new risk.

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Q: Your husband was in many ways different from the rest of the Kreisauers. And he was among those who were willing to assume a ministerial position.

A: This was really a very marginal consideration and was greatly exaggerated later on. People who did not like the entire Widerstand later asserted that its members had all been angling for high posi-

tions, but this is quite misguided. My husband, for example, was much more an educator than a politician. This is why it was envisaged that he would take over the area of schools and education after a successful coup. Education was always his primary concern. This is what absorbed his energies, but, as he often put it, it can’t be carried out without politics; teachers, too, must know about politics. Thus he argued with my father that the senior civil servants had retreated to their daily routine and had left politics to itself until it was too late. He liked to put into practice what he thought and planned; they were inseparable for him. No, he was not a person who would merely draw up plans at his desk. QO: How would you describe your husband's character? How did you experience him as a husband, father and teacher?

A: You know, if I answer that question it will be fixed forever. I find this scary. He was a very disciplined person who was always in control of himself. When I first met him I thought he was a military officer because he looked tough. What particularly attracted

me was his clarity of thought; he always knew exactly what he wanted and how he might intervene. I was very drawn by his whole mental attitude. He was athletic, too, and I was a gym teacher. Above all there was his love for the children; if it had been

up to him, he would have had six. He was happy when another child arrived. Obviously I was overjoyed, and he was always keen to do something with the children. We really enjoyed all that one could wish for in a family. This is often very difficult today when

women try to play a special role, which was unusual then. For years I had had a profession, and in the end I wanted a family — that seemed fulfilling to me. My husband was a good mixer among people of all social backgrounds. His charisma was exhilarating. He was not particularly

talkative at home, except for matters that had to be discussed within the family circle. Frequently he was so stressed that he said

hardly anything at home and had to rest after meals. I respected this and looked forward to friends’ visits; then he would talk and I would share in it. His friends included me in their circle and I

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attuned myself to them. One of them once said to me: ‘Reichwein was a genius of friendship.’ Q: Do you think that you are living in the past?

A: Me? Of course, the past sticks to me; my children say that too. But by interacting with my grandchildren I try to keep up with the times. Today I have a much stronger interest in politics than ever before. No, I have to say that I am looking ahead. Perhaps this is so because the past was so sad and so difficult. At times it seems as if I have been having a bad dream, a nightmare. I remember many things with terror and I am surprised at how I got through them. On the other hand, the twelve years with my husband were central to my life, and I still draw sustenance from them. And fortunately all four children continue to be close to one another. We all took a trip to Kreisau on my seventy-fifth birthday to see the place once more and to retrace our escape route. We also went to Auschwitz. Q: Please tell me in greater detail about what you call a nightmare. What images appear before your inner eye?

A: Oh no, please spare me this. I have now told you everything that happened. I don’t like to talk about what still torments me. It will never be forgotten. Especially now that one of my grandchildren has died, who I always felt would have given his grandfather great joy. He was much more like his grandfather than my son who was a copy of grandfather Pallat — Pallat is my family name. “You are a different person and you live your own life’, [always told my son. ‘For God’s sake do not take your father as your model.’ However, he then took a very similar path, becoming a sociologist. Q: Let us return to the children once more. You mentioned that your

husband was often portrayed as a model to your son while he was at Odenwald School. What was important to you? What image did you want to put across to your children? A: [have criticised the school’s headmaster for that; my son was

supposed to develop his own identity first. I have never put his father on a pedestal. We have taken the family photos as our guide.

I have always taken many photos and have filled four or five albums. When we moved to Riesengebirge in 1945 I took the albums with me on my bicycle, and later they constituted the only

momentos that we still possessed. Nowadays we often take out the photos and enjoy them. Basically it all worked out quite well;

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perhaps, though, you should interview the children. My daughters later told me that they would have liked to have heard more about him, especially the two youngest who had very few memories. Q: When you speak about your husband to your children, do you feel a sense of reluctance?

A: Reluctance may be too strong a word; however, everything was much too close to be able to talk openly with them about it.

I always thought that time would heal many wounds and that the time would come when it would be possible to talk more freely. Today we can talk about this period quite calmly; now that they have children of their own, they also have a certain distance. For many years my son never told his children. The explanation [had for this was that he himself had so many difficulties with it. My eldest daughter’s children, on the other hand, started to ask questions early on, and her eldest son even wrote his senior thesis in high school about his grandfather. My eldest daughter was also the one who at first suffered most over the loss of her father.

Later she sought her father in her partner, and of course that could not end well. Q: What are your thoughts about 20 July today?

A: We see it as a stroke of fate. We knew that it would take gangster methods to kill a man like Hitler. But there were no gangsters among those who carried out the Attentat. Perhaps many aspects of 20 July were amateurish. However, it must not be forgotten that the Nazi system had been worked out to the

last detail and that it was very difficult to meet people who thought differently. Q: And when it became clear that the Attentat had failed?

A: The sense of failure was terrible. Hitler, I thought, is a power who is evidently unreachable. And of course I also knew that there

was no Salvation for those who sat in the prisons. It was quite wrong to close one’s eyes to the revenge that was to come and to lapse into mourning. One had to be a realist and to see what was still feasible and what had to be done for the future. QO: You were spared the arrest of your entire family. Did you suffer other repressive measures ?

A: Oddly the Nazis reacted generously. I was allowed to stay in

Kreisau with the children, and they even wanted to offer me

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money. I was disgusted by this; I did not want to take a thing from them. I took all our savings out of the bank and tried to make ends meet in that way. Q: What would you have done, if it had been possible to let go of your emotions?

A: After my husband’s arrest I had the silliest thoughts. I thought that I would rather sacrifice one of my four children than him; but then there was the problem of which one it would be. I

loved them all equally. These were my desperate and bizarre thoughts. There was another one: to appear before the People’s Court and to tell the ‘truth’. Then one was tormented by the ques-

tion of what could be done. Worst of all was the sense that my hands and feet were tied. You knew very well that if you uttered one word too many, it would be your turn — and who would benefit from that? In the end things became so critical that you gave up all hope. QO: How did you deal with your bereavement — consciously as well as unconsciously ?

A: We in Kreisau were fortunate in that we experienced it all jointly. When Moltke was arrested in January 1944 I admired how

Freya was dealing with it; and when my husband was arrested, she naturally was a great support. Occasionally someone came over from the Yorck family, usually Irene, the Count’s younger sister, also known as Muto. We sat together and held counsel. I lived in one of the attics of the Schloss with my children; the Moltke family lived in a small house on a hill, known as Berghaus.

To get there, you had to go down into the valley and then up again. When the children were in bed at night I would go over there to talk and to listen to the BBC. Q: And after your husband's death?

A: There was the strong sense of responsibility towards the children that kept me going. Now you are responsible for the children; that is his legacy — you must carry on as best you can. That was the basic consideration. I believe that Freya had very similar feelings. At least it was a fruitful and memorable time for us. Q: Do you often think of your husband?

A: Yes. He pops up here and there, especially when I listen to music. My husband loved baroque music, and this brings back

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the memories. It’s true. The astonishing thing is though —- and I have to say this now — that I never had dreams about my husband,

at least not directly. I have been told that if one has powerful dreams of a particular person, they become a burden on you. But my husband has never been burdensome because I agreed with him and joined in everything he did, to the bitter end. Perhaps this is the reason for my not having any dreams about him. QO: With whom do you talk about these things today?

A: With no one really, outside of the family. I still do not broach the subject; if it isn’t raised by someone else, I do not talk about it.

I know that 20 July is a controversial topic and that people hold very divergent views about it. I do not want to destroy human contact with disagreements over things that lie in the distant past.

It was an evil period. I favour looking ahead; thinking of the grandchildren rather than digging up old problems. That is useless; it’s over now.

Chapter Seven

MARION YORCK VON WARTENBURG

4 DE M arion Yorck wasthe born in Berlin in 1904, the daughter of Franz Winter, General Administrative Director of the royal stages, and his wife Else. She was the third of six children. She attended the Berlin-Grunewald Gymnasium, which was regarded as progressive. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was among her fellow students. After taking her Abitur, she first studied medicine, then law, and received a Ph.D. with the thesis ‘Are Pay Agreements Part of Public Law?’. In 1928 she met Peter Yorck whom she married in 1930. Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg was born in 1904, the son of Heinrich Yorck von Wartenburg who had been a Landrat and mem-

ber of the Prussian Upper House. Peter grew up on the paternal estate at Klein-Oels with his six sisters and three brothers. The fam-

ily were known for their interest in art and science and were also shaped by a Prussian sense of duty and the Lutheran faith. Peter received his LL.D. in 1927. Until 1933 he and his wife lived in Berlin and Breslau, returning to Berlin in 1936. Until 1942 Marion took charge of the Yorck estate of Kauern in Silesia, while her husband rose to the position of Regierungsrat in 1935 and was nominated Reich Price Commissioner a year later. He was promoted Oberregierungsrat in 1938 even though he did not join the Nazi Party. In politics he regarded himself as a supporter of the conserv-

ative German Nationalist People’s Party and at first felt some sympathy with the Nazis, but .criticised the regime’s centralising tendencies as well as the tight control on the economy and the growing lawlessness. A trip to Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1938 provided the impetus for meetings of friends and relatives

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of the Yorck family. The group, later known as the ‘Circle of Counts’, discussed questions of domestic and foreign politics. They also debated impressions concerning German-Czech relations that Yorck had gained during his trip. Finally, the circle talked about the principles of a new Reich Constitution after the end of Nazism. In 1939 Peter took part in the Polish campaign. He was revolted

by the crimes and the policy of violence that he witnessed in Poland. His friendship with Helmuth James von Moltke began in 1940, from which time the first plans of the Widerstand were soon to emerge. Thus the Kreisau Circle was established in the Yorck’s apartment in Hortensien-Strafe. At the end of 1941 Peter lost his job as Price Commissioner, but in 1942 a place was found for him in the War Economic Section of the Wehrmacht. In this position he helped Stauffenberg work on the ‘Valkyrie’ operation — although he had at first been opposed to

the killing of Hitler - and drew up plans for a Germany after X Day. On 20 July he was arrested in Bendler-Stra8e. On 8 August he was tried by the People’s Court and was executed the same day. From 10 August until October 1944 Marion was imprisoned in Sippenhaft. At the beginning of 1946 she was arrested by the Poles, along with Peter’s sister Irena, during one of the frequent clandes-

tine trips that they made at that time between Silesia and Berlin. She remained imprisoned at Schweidnitz, Breslau and Warsaw. Later in 1946 she was made a judge in Berlin and became the first woman in Germany to preside over a court for juveniles, ultimately as Landgerichtsdirektorin. She lived with Ulrich Biel, who had emigrated to the United States in 1934 and returned after 1945 as political adviser to Frank L. Howley, the US Commander in Berlin. She still lives in Berlin.

Interview Q: A few years ago you published your memoirs of the Nazi years under the title Die Starke der Stille. Which readership did you have in mind? Or, to put it differently, of whom were you thinking when you wrote this book — who did you hope to reach with it?

A: My family, in the first instance. My husband had nine broth-

ers and sisters with many children of their own, some of whom are my godchildren and with whom I have very good relations. I realised afterwards that I had written the book for them. While

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writing, I concentrated on what I had experienced; many things have become clear to me only with hindsight. Q: The book was widely recognised and proved a great success. How do you explain this?

A: I believe that people respond to the immediacy of storytelling. And there was the absolute honesty: there is nothing in the

book that has been glossed over or dramatised. Everything is related as I believe I experienced it. The readers sense this. Q: An age that is as preoccupied with superficialities as our own needs books like this one; they are like guidebooks that give direction. How would you draw the picture of your husband that you would want made public today?

A: I have never struggled to create this picture; it created itself, and I have never made any corrections to it. My husband was not

one to promote himself. He preferred thoughtfulness. In this respect, too, I think that the picture the public has of him is accurate.

Q: You write in your book that you had very powerful dreams of your husband when you were imprisoned. Do you still have such dreams today?

A: Those were very odd dreams, indeed. I was walking through

a landscape that reminded me of the Portuguese coast, and as I wandered among the huge rocks, I suddenly saw my husband’s head, though not the rest of his body. And when I tried to reach out and grasp him, he eluded me. I was able to see at least part of him

but only if I kept a certain distance. I do not have such dreams today. Indeed, everything seems very far removed; this set in after five, ten years. And at some point I then had the feeling that he had become a part of me because I lived with him so closely during the first weeks after his death. I have tucked him inside me, and I hope that he feels quite happy there. In a certain way he thus continues to live, just as I believe more generally that the memory of a person is alive only if someone else has taken him completely inside herself. Q: After the war, did you see it as your task to keep your husband's legacy alive?

A: Of course I felt this urge, but I honestly cannot tell you how it emerged within me. All I knew, right from the beginning, was that this legacy was about something great and important. But in the beginning my first concern was with how I might earn a living.

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Q: How you think the Federal Republic has handled the legacy of 20 July?

A: That's difficult to say. Basically people do not want to hear

much about it. Nothing is done to let it pass into oblivion, but equally nothing is done to keep it alive. For some time now I have been giving regular lectures on the Widerstand at a Catholic education center. The audience — young people — are invariably very

interested and are astonishingly well prepared. However, this is the exception. Still, it proves that the attitude of the men of the Widerstand can have an impact even today. Q: And yet it must have been deeply depressing that these men gave their lives for a cause that did not sink into public consciousness and that the majority failed to understand.

A: Either way, they could not be brought back to life. Moreover,

to me their image was so unassailable and anchored so deeply inside me that I never gave much thought to the verdict of contemporaries. This was not important to me. Later, when they were rehabilitated, I asked myself why it had taken so long. I still do not have an answer to this question. Perhaps it has to do with the attitude of those fighters themselves. After all, basically they never

bothered with whether other people would be able to handle or would approve or disapprove of what they thought. Suddenly being isolated once you ventured beyond a certain point was also an aspect of life under a dictatorship. Q: To know your way and to proceed unwaveringly to the end.

A: That’s it, and to look for support would have been a laborious exercise even after the war. I knew that I would encounter ereat difficulties if 1 advocated Kreisau positions, and so I remained silent. Q: Instead you concentrated on your career?

A: Yes, I wanted to stand on my own two feet. Since I had passed the first state bar examination, I wanted to pass the second one. I then applied to the Lichterfelde court. At first I was preoccupied with my own worries, and this was a good thing. I did not miss anything. QO: You then became a judge at the Ninth Juvenile Crime Court in Berlin. Did you see more in your work as a Judge than the exercise of an office? Did you also see your work as politically significant?

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A: Of course. And I would even recommend all judges to see it that way. With each sentence I tried to consider the consequences that it might have for public life. As a criminal judge you are confronted almost every day with the need to go against the tide. The public is aware of no more than two solutions: tough penalties or

acquittal. During the early post-war years until well into the 1960s the impact of sentences on the public was, incidentally, much longer lasting. Q: Which part of your judicial work was particularly important to you? To which field did you give particular attention? A: There was nothing in particular. Working in the juvenile justice

system is interesting in every respect, and is usually very difficult to come to a good sentence. I have certainly learned one lesson, you must not be too lenient; that’s the wrong avenue. As one defendant, whom I had sent away for a ‘mere’ three years, once told me: ‘T’ll do this standing on my head.’ Nor should one be judge and clemency

board at the same time. Clemency must remain a process that is independent of the search for a sentence. Naturally you try to come to a just sentence that considers all the circumstances of the case. Q: Did your experiences from the years with your husband help you in this respect? A: Perhaps in the sense — if I may put it this way — that I matured

through him and acquired the capacity to judge. Unfortunately, being a judge can all too quickly turn into a routine. However, each

case is completely different and so time and again you must try anew to immerse yourself in the problems of that case. Q: When you say that you matured through your husband, did you admire him?

A: My husband? Ah, I loved him, and this always includes a bit of admiration, doesn’t it? loved him and knew him very well. We

were very close, which after all is the basis of a partnership. I admired his intellect, his mental capacities, above all the sobriety with which he traced problems back to their root cause where he

wanted to deal with them. Above all he was a person of great serenity who radiated an inner optimism. Pastor Poelchau later told me, when I was myself in prison, that even in Plétzensee, as he was being led to his death, my husband gave the impression that his cause had not been lost. This sense of serenity was a good trait and this is how I kept my husband’s memory. It is the most

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important thing to me. Of course, there were times when he despaired — during the days and weeks when the Germans won one victory after the other and Hitler’s name was written in ever larger letters. Yet even during these periods he never lost his calm. At the same time he could also be very mocking, dry, almost sarcastic. The funny remarks he would make on these occasions often hit the nail right on the head. Q: What was your husband's role in the Kreisau Circle?

A: I think I can say without exaggeration that my husband was the heart of the Kreisau Circle. All members liked him very much;

he was equally interested in all of them and tried to understand them all. He was the glue. Q: And how would you define the Kreisau Circle with the benefit of hindsight? A: As a group of friends who had come together on the basis of

mutual trust and respect. This was the beautiful thing about it: it was highly personal and yet it was the issues that united them. Each had a special field in which he had either worked before or proved himself in other ways. What I experienced as the most exhilarating aspect was this co-operation and clash of divergent views. It was the search for common ground, the emergence of an issueoriented circle of friends through conversation and discussion. Q: People from all walks of life came together — members of the labour

movement, representatives of Christian Socialism, liberals, aristocrats, conservatives, some of them influenced by Anglo-Saxon ideas. Where did the major differences in mentalities lie? Were they more of a sociological

or a religious nature?

A: Neither one, nor the other. They were all religiously influenced, but this was not the bond, as it was in the resistance movement of the churches. The religious element was never called into question. It existed the way everyone felt it, but it was not affected by the dogmatic differences of the theologians. Nor did sociological differences — questions of social origin or status — matter. What

was decisive were the individual differences — they had after all very different characters — and differences in questions of substance. The most exciting aspect for me was invariably the debates and discussions. It was a group of very intelligent men who participated in these debates, and I always found it easy to follow what they were about.

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Q: Could you describe some of the characters of whom you still have a distinct memory ?

A: To begin with, there was Helmuth Moltke, who was a very remarkable person — even if this sounds a bit banal. He was deeply shaped by Anglo-Saxon ideas, intellectual, smart and always con-

cerned to keep the discussion sober. When others threatened to wander off the point, he would bring them back to the question at hand, and so really he had them all in the palm of his hand. Helmuth was, as it were, the group’s engine. From a purely human point of view, Julius Leber was the man who had seen the greatest depths and heights in his life, and this was very visible. He had an incredibly expressive face, deeply grooved, with a thousand wrinkles and very radiant eyes. Occasionally he seemed a bit sarcastic, but he doubtlessly had the strongest personality in the circle; perhaps he was also the eldest. Of the rest, everyone was interesting in his own right. Eugen Gerstenmaier, for example, was an intellectual, even his religiosity was a matter of the mind. However, his faith was strong. When he was carted from one prison to another, he wrote me a card that he was able to smuggle out: ‘Deus est — pro nobis.’ I have kept this little card to this day. Q: And what, generally speaking, was the role of the women in the Kreisau Circle?

A: My first answer is that all the friends had particularly good marriages. This was true of each one in its own way; each was different, but as such solid and strong. Reichwein once spoke of the ‘Yorck-Moltke-Reichwein gap’ by which he meant that his marriage was most clearly affected by the worries of daily life. And since all the marriages were so solid, it is impossible to differentiate between

men and women; nor was the notion that women should play a special role as widespread in those days as it is today. This did not exist. It was part of a good marriage that the woman identified with what preoccupied her husband and helped him to fulfil his task. In this women did not play a visible role. Freya and I always attended the meetings: Freya in Kreisau and myself in Berlin. The men did

not have to guard their words around either Freya or me. Occasionally I took rough notes that I then summarised for my husband in the evening so as to enable us to expand this or that question. In short, the best that can be said about the Kreisau women was that they had very good marriages. And since later on Freisler gave free rein to his ridicule of the ‘clique of Counts’, I should mention that each Count was married to a woman of non-noble background.

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Q: This circle of friends, as you have called it, may perhaps best be characterised as a meeting of like-minded people that slowly grew together. When did this begin?

A: My husband and some of his friends began soon after January 1933 to realise where everything was leading. When they met they tried to clarify in their minds what, in fact, was going on and to develop a position on it. QO: What was particularly striking at the beginning?

A: The friends worried very early on that Hitler’s policy was leading towards war; the enormous rearmament programme that he promoted just could not be overlooked. Next there was the violence at home — Hitler’s brutal treatment of his opponents. This, too, was there for everyone to see by the summer of 1933. In August and September my husband went on an assignment in Torgau and I went with him. Near Torgau he showed me one of the ‘early’ concentration camps, of which some seventy soon existed throughout the Reich. You could see a very high fence, probably ten feet high, with barbed wire on both sides. This early impression remained decisive for me, notwithstanding the horrific post-war photos of concentration and extermination camps. Q: And what about daily life, life in the street? Did you have similar key experiences there?

A: The goose-stepping sound of storm trooper columns is still in my head to this day, and it did not bode well. This marching in goose-step had something violent about it, something noisy and brutal. You could sense how the individual submerged in the mass of people and how the mass experience deprived the individual of his or her individuality. This scared me greatly. Q: When did your husband and his friends begin to think about what might be done?

A: To begin with, it was more an intellectual debate between himself and his friends. The question of where it would all lead and of whether something could be done about Nazism arose only

later on. It became clear quite quickly that individual actions would definitely not be undertaken, simply because the individual was powerless in the face of such a well-organised system. Slowly the question that became the focus of debate was how the

development might be countered; merely to consider this point was in fact life-threatening. One of the strongest impressions that

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remains in my mind is the mutual trust that existed among those

friends. By 1943/44 they were discussing with increasing frequency what should replace existing conditions and what was to be done on X Day when Hitler would no longer be there. Q: Were you afraid of denunciations? Neighbours, people in the streets, no one could be trusted anymore.

A: Of course we became more cautious over the years. The slogan ‘Achtung — the enemy is listening in!’, which the regime had

coined against spies, suddenly gained a different meaning. The real enemy who was spying and relating his observations might be living in the same street or sitting opposite me on the suburban commuter train. The time of naivety was over. QO: Was there a particular point when you wanted to do something in the widest sense?

A: No, the entire Widerstand was seen by me as a common cause among friends. Slowly our work became more focused and concrete until the point of no return had been reached and everything converged inevitably toward the Attentat. I never consid-

ered taking my own path, for the Widerstand was a part of my relationship with my husband. This is difficult to understand today when women put so much value on self-realisation. This awareness grew in me after I turned forty: after my husband’s death I felt a sudden urge to stand on my own feet and search for a path of my own. Q: In this case let me ask you again about your role in the Kreisau Circle. What do you see as your contribution?

A: If I may talk about myself, I played the role of an active listener. I listened to it all; occasionally asked a question and later in the evening came back to this or that point in conversation with my

husband. I probably contributed a number of things by making suggestions or voicing doubts. Moreover, it would be wrong to see the Widerstand as an enterprise conducted like a military exercise. Hortensien-Strafse was an open house. To be welcomed, all one had to do was to knock on the door or, in the summer, come into

the back garden. Depending on who came, topics emerged by themselves and the intensity of the discussions varied. One thing led to another. At least there was never a shortage of problems to be discussed. Rather we had to restrain people in order to prevent discussions from going nowhere. There was nothing organised

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about this; it was something that expanded, in every direction. Only a few large meetings were held by prior agreement, at which a particular question was to be discussed. In these cases the participants were carefully selected and received a special invitation. Q: How do you explain that the Gestapo apparently began to recognise the extent of the conspiracy only after 20 July?

A: Perhaps this will sound supercilious, but it was a circle of very special people who were meeting together, and to the end the Gestapo had no idea of their means of interaction and of deliberating together. Elitist thinking was totally alien to them. Q: And you never had the feeling that you were being watched?

A: Never. It appears that, up until 20 July, the Gestapo did not think it possible for a circle such as the Kreisauers to come together.

Many people, and the young in particular, ask me time and again about the fears that we had; I always give the same reply: we were never scared. Life was so hectic and demanded so much that there was no room for fear. We were so busy from morning until night that there was no time to think about the next step. Everything had to be done quickly and unfolded without much ado. Being scared is, of course, also a matter of age, and we had all reached an age when people are most energetic and have the fewest qualms. We had the sense that we were needed and that something could be done, and this was an almost intoxicating feeling. At least I cannot remember having lapsed into a fatalistic mood. QO: Why did the Attentat occur so late, as late as July 1944?

A: The Kreisauers had — at least initially - a deep aversion to killing Hitler, because they saw in him a demonic force at work that could not simply be removed. In order to destroy Hitler, they argued, very different forces had to swing into action. This attitude determined their thinking., at least subconsciously. Claus Stauffenberg was the one who had agreed to risk the Attentat, and, together with my husband, a number of the friends were in touch with him. It was exclusively his decision as to how he wanted to do it. The Kreisau Circle operated only in the second rank, except that my husband had given Claus his word that he would actively join the overthrow here in Berlin. Q: Did you have contact with other opposition groups — the Dohnanyi Circle or the churches?

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A: We had few contacts; the more contacts you had, the more

dangerous things became. If you like, there were several foci around which the Widerstand crystallised, but most groups knew little about each other. Even making contact could be life-threatening. Thus everyone worked within their own circle and only a few were in touch with other groups. My husband was the link between Moltke and Stauffenberg. Q: Did your husband hide anything from you because he didn’t want to burden you?

A: That’s possible, but I don’t know. He did discuss the most important matters with me. Q: Even on 20 July? A: Before and even on 20 July. On 19 July we went to a stag party

of a close friend of my husband’s in Weimar. It took place at the ‘Elephant’, an age-old hotel where we spent the night. We retired from the party around midnight and took a walk through the park past Goethe’s garden house and back to the hotel. We did several rounds until about two o’clock, when my husband’s train back to Berlin was due to depart. He took me back to my room, packed his things and I said goodbye to him at the stairwell — in my nightgown. I never saw him again. He, on the other hand, probably saw me once more, from inside the prison van in which he was driven away after his trial and as I was leaving the court-house. Q: When did you go back to Berlin?

A: Although I could have stayed longer in Weimar, I went back to Berlin in the late afternoon of 20 July. I was much too restless. When the train stopped in Halle, I heard over the loudspeaker that an Attentat had been committed against the Fiihrer, but that it had failed. My first reaction was that I wanted to know the details of

what had happened and what would happen next. When I got to Berlin, I had a message from my husband that I should go to Silesia

without delay. I did so, but returned to Berlin a few days later. I don’t remember many details about the days that followed; all I know is that I was very busy and on the road all the time. Within the

next two-and-a-half weeks up to the trial I went to Silesia at least three times, if not even more often, where I had to look after my mother-in-law who was ill and greatly worried. In Berlin and prior to the trial I tried in vain to obtain help from high-ranking men within the regime who were well known to us, such as the Minister

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of Finance. Thus I was constantly occupied and had no time to worry. I had plenty of time to make up for this when I was in prison. QO: How long were you in prison?

A: From the end of July to the beginning of October. For the first

two or three days I paced up and down my cell like a tiger. I was incapable of anything except running around in circles. Then I slowly regained my composure, and was in fact quite glad to be locked up; I experienced it as a sort of retreat. QO: You have given an extensive account of you prison experiences in your book. What did you feel when you were released and ordinary life resumed?

A: It was no fun. You were out of touch and the extent of what had happened dawned on you only slowly. It was only afterwards

that you began to realise things. Everything was very empty; it was a sad time. Memories then returned, little by little. QO: It must have required a tremendous effort actively to shape a new beginning. Where did you get the energy?

A: I do not know where it came from, but it was there. The greater the challenge you face the more energy you develop. You gain a strength that you were completely unaware of. At least I never hung my head; perhaps this attitude was also a result of my deep faith in God. Q: And the memory of your husband?

A: At the end of July 1944, my husband wrote in a farewell letter: ‘My strong hands will carry you forward.’ And I truly had the

feeling that they did. That’s all I can say on this point, or else I would begin to invent things. Even the attempt to clarify things in my mind about all this raises a certain danger for me. I prefer to let things rest in my subconscious. Q: Because it still pains you?

A: It is well buried. In earlier years I never spoke about it, because I had a strong fear of being offended by someone. You never knew how people would react. For many we were nothing but ‘wives of traitors’. Later, the memories became part of my own being, and I did not want to promote myself. The very moment that I began to expose my own memories, I would inevitably lose them. That’s why I prefer to let things rest.

Chapter Eight

CHARLOTTE VON DER SCHULENBURG

Cc harlotte von der Schulenburg born inof1909 at Kyritz in Mark Brandenburg, the eldestwas daughter the businessman Hermann Kotelmann and his wife Frida. She lost her father in 1915 during the First World War. After gaining her Abitur she studied German literature in Marburg, Berlin, Munich and K6nigsberg. While she was still a student she met Fritz-Dietlof Count von der Schulenburg, to whom she became engaged in East Prussia in 1932. They were married in Berlin in the spring of 1933 and

by 1943 had six children: Fredeke in 1934, Christiane in 1936, Fritz-Dietlof in 1938, Charlotte in 1940, Angela in 1942 and Adelheid in 1943. Count Fritz-Dietlof Schulenburg was born in London in 1902, the son of Military Attaché Friedrich von der Schulenburg, a cav-

alry general. His father was a member of the German Nationalist People’s Party in the Reichstag during the Weimar Republic. Fritz-Dietlof studied law in Gottingen and Marburg, and became Gerichtsreferendar in 1923 and Regierungsreferendar with the Kyritz

Landratsamt in 1925. His administrative career began in Recklinghausen whence he moved to East Prussia in 1932. In February of the same year he joined the Nazi Party and from 1933 to 1935 was head of the East Prussian Gauleiter’s ‘Political Office’. He also became Erich Koch’s personal assistant in 1933 at K6nigsberg. From 1934 till 1937 he worked as Landrat at Fischhausen in East Prussia, then till 1939 as Deputy Chief of Police in Berlin, and for a short time as temporary Regierungsprasident in the regional government at Breslau.

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During the Weimar Republic, Schulenburg belonged to those folkish-conservative circles that set themselves against ‘modernity’ — which he believed to be shaped by liberalism, individualism and the Enlightenment. He hoped to achieve a strong state

like Prussia and a strong government on the Prussian model. Yet as a Prussian civil servant he also criticised National Social-

ist administrative measures, a criticism that gradually developed into an inner detachment from the regime. While he was in Berlin between 1937 and 1940 he took part in the discussions of the group associated with Count Peter Yorck, the so-called ‘Circle of Counts’. In the summer of 1940, Schulenburg volunteered to serve in the 9th Potsdam Infantry Regiment. At first he was enthusiastic about

the military successes and described the attack on the Soviet Union as an ideological war. From January 1942 he was given special duties as an expert civil servant in various ministries and military staffs.

After the Stalingrad catastrophe in the winter of 1942/43 he intensified his links with the conspirators without, however, committing himself to joining any particular group. He was in touch with the Kreisau Circle — with the older middle-class conservatives such as Ulrich von Hassell, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, Johan-

nes Popitz and General Ludwig Beck — and acted as a sort of middleman between the oppositional groups and their divergent interests. One result of his efforts was that representatives of the trade unions and socialists were brought in after 1943. In the same year he intensified his friendship with Stauffenberg. Schulenburg provided the contacts for planning the attack with the civilian Widerstand circles. If the plot had succeeded he would have been State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, where he would have been concerned with general personnel planning.

He was arrested in Bendler-Strafe on 20 July, condemned to death by Roland Freisler on 10 August, and executed on the same day at Plétzensee. Charlotte von Schulenburg escaped Sippenhaft by being put under a form of house arrest. During the final years

of the war, she lived with her six children in Trebbow in the Mecklenburg countryside with Tisa von der Schulenburg, her sister-in-law. After the war she lived with relatives at Schloss Hehlen on the Weser river. Between 1950 and 1954 she worked as a teacher in the Birklehof boarding-school at Hinterzarten in the Black Forest. After 1954 she lived in Munich where she died on 19 October 1991.

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Interview Q: On 20 July 1944 you turned thirty-five. How did you spend that day?

A: My husband had made firm plans to come to see me at Trebbow in Mecklenburg, seeing as he had missed my birthday on previous years — he was always somewhere or other — but it worked out differently. In the evening of 18 July the stationmaster at Schwerin telephoned to say that the Count had arrived on

the Berlin train and was on his way to Trebbow on foot. He

would like someone to come and meet him. We had a small car and I drove off along the station road. He was in uniform. ‘The balloon is going up’, he said, ‘so I must be back in Berlin tomorrow morning. We will have to celebrate your birthday tonight.’ So we got the children up, lit candles — because power had been cut — and decorated the birthday table. The children leapt about in their nightclothes — they were always in high spirits when he was around. Clara, a wonderful East Prussian woman, had prepared a lovely small dinner for ‘the dear Count’ — she had got the necessary ingredients in exchange for coffee and cigarettes that she had pinched from me. So that evening we sat with my husband’s sister Tisa, with whom we were living, and Matthias Wieman and his wife, close friends who had been bombed out in Berlin. O: Were the Wiemans in on the secret?

A: No, but when it became known they behaved splendidly. When, after my husband’s death, the Nazi Welfare Service came to

provide a nurse or guardian for the children, Matthias Wieman went to Berlin and applied for the guardianship himself. That was pretty risky in view of his position as a state-employed actor, even though one couldn’t imagine it today. To be friends of traitors and then to admit it! Q: So your birthday was celebrated in advance without giving the impression that anything was going on. Did your husband go back to Berlin on 19 July? A: Yes, at the crack of dawn; I took him to Liibsdorf station in the

horse-drawn cart at seven o’clock. One could only use the car in emergencies. “You know’, he said to me on the way, ‘the chances are fifty-fifty.’ I thought to myself, if he carries this off, then things will be all right; I thought only about the ‘good’ fifty. I had no doubts at

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all. Perhaps it was important for my husband that I was so confident about this matter. Then he went off and waved for a very long time. And after that I never heard another thing, absolutely nothing. When I got back to the house, I was sitting with the children in

the sun in the grounds, and Tisa came with a telegram and said: ‘Wolf has fallen.’ He was my husband’s slightly older brother who

had won the Knight’s Cross during the French invasion. It was then that I felt for the first time that something was beginning, that a new era was starting. I felt that a great black bird was circling above us. We behaved as though nothing was wrong. On the

next day, my birthday, we had a visit from my children’s governess, who had been my husband’s nurse, a big Nazi, as so many sweet and nice people were in those days. All of a sudden she ran weeping through the house: ‘Our Ftihrer! Our beloved Ftihrer.’ ‘Alice, what’s the matter?’ ‘It’s just been announced on the wireless that an attempt has been made on our Ftihrer’s life and that

he has been injured.’ ‘That's definitely not true’, I said to calm her, ‘it will be like the attack in the Munich beer-cellar.’ We acted as though it was nothing to do with us. Next morning, Stauffen-

berg’s name was on everybody’s lips, and then things became precarious because the people on our estate distinctly remembered Stauffenberg’s visit. QO: When had Stauffenberg been to Trebbow?

A: At Easter 1944, a few months previously. He was a very imposing figure for everyone in Trebbow. He looked so interesting

with his eye-patch, amputated hand and amputated fingers. The governess, the children’s nurse, they all wanted to help cut his meat at dinner. And now they had all heard on the previous night the name Stauffenberg on the wireless and came and asked: ‘Was it our Stauffenberg who was here?’ ‘No, there are hundreds of Stauffenbergs.’ I replied. I always had to watch my step. It went on like that for a few days. I heard nothing, merely rumours. We went with the children to gather corn in the fields and swam in the lake. And then suddenly one day an officer from my husband’s regiment came from Potsdam. He said he had been given the job of finding out where Count Schulenburg was hiding as he was suspected of desertion. I thought to myself: ‘He’s got away, over the frontier, thank Heavens.’ But I told the officer that I couldn’t believe it. I was so relieved. What I didn’t know was

that in reality he had been arrested in Bendler-Strafe and had been taken to the Prinz-Albrecht-Strafse Gestapo prison as early as

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20 July. Two days later another officer turned up with the same question, so I thought: ‘This is splendid. They’re hunting for him; he’s escaped.’ Tisa and I buried a lead box in the family vault con-

taining food, matches and whatever else might be needed if he arrived in the night. Nobody ever went into the vault, which was full of disintegrating coffins, and everybody found it scary. My husband could have had whatever he wanted there without anyone in the house knowing. Tisa and I also buried his letters and other papers there. Q: So you were hoping that your husband had evaded the Gestapo and would make his escape through Trebbow?

A: Yes, I thought it was possible all along. I knew nothing. When on 19 July the telegram came announcing his brother’s death I had

no idea where to forward it. To this day I don’t know whether he ever heard about it. It was only on 26 July, when the Forester told me in the kitchen that the Count had been imprisoned long ago, that I had a reason to ask what had happened. But I couldn’t seize the initiative. After the Forester, who was also the local Party leader and a stalwart Nazi, had put this story into circulation I went with my sister-in-law Tisa to the Gestapo in Schwerin. I said I couldn’t

believe that the Forester could be in my kitchen spreading this rumour that my husband had been arrested; I knew nothing about

it. People should be punished for talking like that. Whereupon they brought in a police lieutenant who wrote down everything I said. The head of the Gestapo office added that he wasn’t allowed to give me any information; no one other than the Gauleiter could do so. ‘Then I shall go to the Gauleiter tomorrow morning’, I retorted. The Reich Governor of Mecklenburg, Friedrich Hildebrandt,

was a great admirer of my father-in-law, who had always been very kind to him when he had worked as a farm labourer in Tressow. I sat next to him at my father-in-law’s funeral in 1939. Now I went to see him and he received me. He abused the ‘traitors’ and shouted a lot — he more or less had to do that. Then he said: ‘Sit down. I can do nothing for you. What the Forester has been saying is true: your husband is one of the main participants in this conspiracy. I am very sorry that you knew nothing about it.’ He assessed

me as being as naive as [ pretended to be. He saw me as a woman who had been led up the political garden path. Q: Did that happen at the end of July? At that moment your husband was still a prisoner in Berlin.

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A: Yes, that was on 27 July. It happened to be a lovely, hot sum-

mer. For my birthday the children had been given a little horse that was very wild and needed breaking in. This was a great event and we all were very busy. Every day we went swimming with the

children. Fritz learned to swim. One morning, on 9 August, I found a newspaper lying by the telephone; it was sticking out from a pile of papers and said: ‘Traitors hanged.’ It referred to the first major trial on 8 August. Peter Yorck was included — Witzleben, Klausing — Peter Yorck was godfather to Fritz, Klausing to

Neiti, my youngest. The name Schulenburg was missing, and I told Tisa, who had been trying to conceal the paper from me, that we must go to Berlin at once. The Gauleiter had explained to me in the meantime that the wives and children of the conspirators were to be arrested — I was to go to Flossenbtirg concentration camp —

but that he would try and protect me. That’s why I somehow wanted Fritzi to know that all was well with us, that his children and I had not been arrested. At midnight on 10 August, we went to Berlin. There were air raids and it took hours for us to reach the bombed and devastated city. Matthias Wieman had reserved a room for us at the Esplanade Hotel at Potsdamer Platz, very close to the People’s Court. We walked from the Lehrter Station past the Reichstag; the area was devastated. Tisa said: ‘You stay here now; I'll go to the Gestapo in Prinz-Albrecht-Strafse.’ There she was snapped at: ‘We can’t give

you any information. Just clear out of here.’ We went into the Esplanade Hotel, and I continually had the feeling that Fritzi was close by. It was that day, 10 August, that he was condemned to

death a few houses away and then executed in Plétzensee. It quickly became clear to us that we could do nothing useful and it was more likely that we were putting ourselves at risk. So at four o’clock that afternoon, we went back to Mecklenburg. I believe I fell asleep — the best thing that could have happened, a grace. I was semi-conscious. My mother was there, she was marvellous. She never once suggested that her son-in-law should not have acted as

he had and put me in this situation. One could understand how she must have felt. For that I was very grateful to her. QO: How did you hear of your husband's death?

A: On 14 August my brother-in-law Barner von Hildebrandt was ordered to go to Schwerin. My brother-in-law, my sister-inlaw, Matthias Wieman, and I all went to Schwerin and while I waited outside in the car, the Barners were told that my husband

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had been sentenced to death and executed on 10 August. It was very decent of the Gauleiter to tell us this. He sent me a message saying that I was not to leave Trebbow, use the telephone or receive visitors, so that I was more or less under house arrest. Otherwise he couldn’t guarantee my safety. I kept to the rules and if I wanted to go anywhere, I would ask for his permission first and let him know

when I got back. He really did protect me, but it didn’t help him because later on he was hanged at Dachau, along with the Forester. O: The Forester was condemned to death at Dachau?

A: It was because at the end of the war he had shot American bomber pilots in our area. The plane crashed close to us in a paddock and the crew had escaped by parachute, but then the Forester managed to shoot both of them from behind. An order had come from Berlin saying that enemy soldiers were not to be taken prisoner but shot at once. Q: And this man felt he had a personal obligation to obey? A: Yes, for him the world collapsed on 20 July. It was bad enough

that something like that could have happened to his ‘Fihrer’ Adolf Hitler, but far worse that his own landlord had been ‘against’

Hitler. If you put yourself into the shoes of such men, you can imagine their shock. From that moment on they regarded it as their highest duty to report everything. QO: Were you told officially of your husband’s death?

A: At the end of October I got a bit of paper saying that the former Regierungsprdsident had been found guilty of high treason.

But there was nothing saying that the sentence had been carried out, which totally confused me because all the other notices had contained the words: “The sentence has been carried out.’ So at the

beginning of November I travelled, with permission, to Berlin, went to the People’s Court and demanded an explanation. I got as far as Oberstaatsanwalt Gorisch in his red robe. ‘Forgive me, your ladyship’, he said, ‘this is a regrettable mistake by the Court staff. It will be corrected at once. Sit down.’ — type, type, type — ‘“The sentence has been carried out.”’ QO: After what Hildebrandt told you on 14 August you had continued to have hope?

A: Naturally I had continued to hope, seeing as my husband’s name had twice been mentioned by the BBC, and once it said that

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he had escaped. Some time in September I felt that I must tell the children. They were asking more and more frequently: ‘Where is Daddy? When will Daddy come home again? He was often away but whenever he came home, there was always great rejoicing. He would play ‘robbers and princesses’ with the children or a game that we called ‘Master of the Banner’, a kind of hide-and-seek in the course of which the ‘master’ was captured. It was wonderful. During these times he could escape from all his problems and he joined in everything. He undertook long expeditions with the children to have picnics in the woods. In September I took the children on an expedition to the wilder part of the grounds and told them that their father was dead. My eldest daughter, Schuschu who had a particularly close relationship with her father said: ‘That is simply not true. I see Daddy; he is standing there by that tree. No, he isn’t dead.’ My second, who was called Beba, burst into tears. My son Fritz, who was just six, reacted masterfully. He said with a thoughtful face: ‘Then I shall

inherit the glasses with “FS”.’ These were especially beautiful glasses that were used only when my husband was at home. They had silver rims and the letters FS and a crown engraved on them. He meant that he was now ‘FS’. And then he added: ‘I shall inherit the lovely book.’ This was a copy of Mein Kampf bound in amber

and signed by Hitler, which was kept in a chest as something unique. My husband had been given it in 1937 by the Amber Circle, as a parting gift when he left East Prussia. Unfortunately we

didn’t take the book with us when we went westwards in the spring of 1945 — with it I could have kept myself supplied with cigarettes from the Americans for years.

Q: Thanks to the Gauleiter you and the children were spared Sippenhaft. Were you interrogated? A: I was interrogated three times, the first time on 6 August while my husband was still alive. I had been swimming when some sinister men appeared by the lakeside and ordered me to come out of the water. They wanted to interrogate me as I was, in a wet bathing suit. They had brought a secretary with them who typed all I said but they did allow me to change first. I took the children away, put on fresh clothes and, to calm down, took a Bromine pill, which Thad already put aside, because my insides were shaking. And then they

began to ask me when I had last seen one person or another, whether I knew this or that person, and whether I had received let-

ters from my husband. I had set aside one or two recent letters.

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They were completely harmless; the others were in the vault. They took those away and never gave them back. They were the last letters I had. The whole affair lasted from 4 P.M. until 11 P.M. QO: Weren't you worn out by then?

A: Actually the opposite, I was more and more sure of myself. It’s only fair to add that they weren’t mean, but stuck to facts and — as it were — did their duty. QO: What were the Gestapo men particularly interested in?

A: The Forester had told them that he had seen Stauffenberg at Easter at Trebbow. They now wanted to know what we had been doing, and I described at length what we had eaten, how we had told one another ghost stories in the evening, and that we had dressed up in disguises. Stauffenberg was supposed to be recuperating with us and Tisa and I had gone to a great deal of trouble to make everything

comfortable and attractive. In the living-room Stauffenberg and Fritzi sat and talked for hours in front of the fire — naturally I didn’t tell the Gestapo that — while Tisa and I and Klausing, Stauffenberg’s adjutant whom I had invited for Easter long before, were kept outside. My husband thought this to be unfortunate and too conspicu-

ous to be a coincidence. Then we had the idea of breaking up the dialogue and doing something comic. We wrapped the tall Lieutenant in lovely materials like a lady’s evening dress, put a turban on his head and pushed him into the living room. This was a rather silly teenage prank and I was afraid Fritzi would take it badly. But Stauf-

fenberg at once began to laugh; he thought it madly comical and then my husband thought it funny too. The Gestapo people, to whom I described this joke in great detail, regarded it as a strange tale of how people behaved in castles in the evening. They wanted to know if the discussion ever got around to politics. Then the Forester

was brought in and he said for the record that he had seen Count Schulenburg and ‘the Stauffenberg’ on track 75 in the wood; they had

gone there to walk alone. ‘Well’, I said, ‘naturally I wasn’t sitting behind a bush listening.’ That was how I played the role of an innocent woman who had no suspicions and was always on the defensive. The Gauleiter was the only man who may have suspected that perhaps I wasn’t quite as stupid as I pretended. QO: What was your reaction when you learned from the People’s Court

at the beginning of November that the sentence had been carried out? Did you feel very lonely?

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A: On that November day, when I went to the People’s Court and someone said to me that there had been a ‘regrettable mistake by the Court officials’ and ‘the sentence has been carried out’, I thought: ‘I must go to Plétzensee, I must see it at once.’ So I got on to the suburban train, travelled through the dreary northern suburbs of Berlin to Beussel-Strafse station, crossed the bridge by the western harbour and then walked beside the long, long Plétzensee prison wall. I walked to and fro in front of the door and waited until someone came out, whereupon I slipped in. On the left there was a wall with a window, behind which sat an old warder who stopped me and asked what I wanted — he may have been a gatekeeper. I gave my name and said that I would like to know something about my husband. At that, he shut his window, came out of the door and took my arm. ‘Poor child’, he said because I was crying my eyes out and kept on saying: ‘I want to see where he died.’ ‘Tcan help you’, said the man, ‘if you go into that office. I’ll escort you. Somebody must open the doors.’ We went across a courtyard where inmates working in striped prison uniforms all stared at us, then into a house until I got into the said office. ‘My husband is supposed to have died here’, I repeated, ‘I want to go to where my husband died.’ The officials were polite; they said: ‘Yes, we have

the file here but you can’t go into the courtyard. We can only escort you out again.’ They were matter-of-fact and detached, but one could sense that they felt a certain sympathy, although there may have been some henchmen among them. Then they escorted

me out again. They opened an iron gate, closed it again behind me, another door, then the courtyard with the inmates, the old man who unlocked the last door for me, and then I was outside again. I felt I just had go there again. I walked through the dreary

Berlin suburbs with their bomb craters and then travelled for hours on end on the subway. In the evening I went to the splendid old inn near St Nicholas Church, which my husband had liked so much. It’s called ‘The Marksman’. They recognised me, took me to a side room and gave me a wonderful meal, without ration coupons, to bring me back to life. That’s how confused I was. Ursula Kardorff joined me and she was a great help. This visit to Plétz-

ensee is an important episode in the enormous emptiness that | felt after 20 July and will never forget. I was not allowed to write letters and nobody was allowed to contact me. But one heard that

this person was dead, and then that one, and two months later, another one was also dead. It was this emptiness — not having anyone around — that got one down.

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Q: Hence also the urge to go to ‘the place where it happened’?

A: I also visited my husband’s court-appointed defence attorney, Justizrat Hercher, in Friedrich-Strafe. He said to me: ‘Your husband made an intelligent impression, what do you mean ...?’ But then he told me: ‘I visited your husband in his cell half-anhour before his case began. He was smoking a very elegant pipe’ — given to him by Marion Doénhoff — ‘and sat behind piles of books

and worked.’ The Ministry of the Interior was very interested in the memoranda that my husband had written on the rebuilding of the bombed cities after the war. He continued to work on this in

prison. Hercher then asked my husband if he did not perhaps want to write a letter to his wife, whereupon my husband laughed and said: ‘Has the time now come?’ This shows clearly what my husband was like. Q: Did the lawyer hand over the letter?

A: No. It was confiscated along with everything else. I didn’t catch a glimpse of his letter until 1954. That was when Annedore Leber was preparing her volume, entitled Das Gewissen steht auf. The article on my husband was written by Dr Fritzsche, who had served in the same regiment and taught at Birklehof when I was working there in the 1950s. Dr Fritzsche asked me to read his article; I thought it was very good. A few weeks later he gave me the

galley proofs and now the ending was quite different. It read: ‘And after the trial he wrote to his wife: “What we did was inadequate, but ultimately History will judge and absolve us”.’ I told Dr Fritzsche: ‘I have no last letter. We must ring Dr Leber up at once.’

Annedore Leber said she did not know how the text had come into her hands, she had only a typed copy. On one side of it was my husband’s letter, on the other Berthold Stauffenberg’s last letter, and both men were executed on the same day. Annedore Leber sent me the page at once. I found it very moving to read the letter for which I had been waiting since 1944. It later emerged that a secretary in the Ministry of Justice, Frau Milly Ruth, had been told to destroy the letters of all the people who had been executed on 10 August. She was reluctant to do so and hence quickly copied them. There were four letters in all, and she took them home with her in her air raid protection kit. She took the precaution of changing the names; instead of Schulenburg she wrote Schulze, instead of Stauffenberg, Stanitzke. After the war she probably took the copies to Annedore Leber, who was known to be taking an interest in the matter, whereas nobody knew about me. A woman such

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as Milly Ruth, who might easily have been executed for what she did, makes you forget much that has happened. QO: The letter wasn’t published in full until 1990?

A: Yes, at first I didn’t give it to anybody for publication. This only became possible with the passing of time, and only now does one appreciate that the human aspect is important for other people, too. Look — this envelope has held the letter ever since 1954; I take it wherever I go. Q: I'd like to ask you about 20 July again. When your husband told you on 18 July that the balloon was going up, didn’t you try to influence him in some way? By his own account the chances of success were only fifty-fifty.

A: The idea never occurred to me. Once he had decided to do something, it was clear to me that there was no going back, even if I found it hard to accept. I often found it hard to return home alone, to spend my time alone with the small children even though

I loved them deeply and they filled my life. But his decisions counted. That was my attitude. QO: Was this resignation in the face of a stronger person?

A: No, it was by mutual agreement. Once he had thought some-

thing out, it was clear that that was how things would be. In the first years of our marriage I sometimes found it burdensome, the perpetual discussions among the men and the evenings during which they sat together for hours in debate. Sometimes I even mutinied a bit because I felt that more time should be made for the family. Later on that seemed insignificant in view of what was at stake. At that point it became my own and perfectly natural deci-

sion, which wasn’t hard to make. I was inclined to think that, given the sacrifice the family was making, an improvement in the

situation might be expected. And so I hoped that his decision might bring something, not just for us, but for everyone. Q: This subordination of women to the will of men would certainly not be possible in the same form today. What mattered first and foremost was what the husband decided.

A: That was certainly the case. One could have rebelled, and I sometimes thought of doing so. I believe that in such an extreme situation as existed at the time many things had to happen that would never have been accepted in the ordinary way. Among the

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women whose husbands lost their lives in the struggle against Hitler, I do not know of any who were particularly unhappy because of their increased isolation. And most of the men had the strength to carry their wives with them. Q: But if you had not been married, if after your studies you had worked at a theatre or for a newspaper, and if you had not fitted into the National Socialist picture of motherhood ...

A: Then I would probably have become more antagonistic because I could have made more use of my energies than was possible with my very small children. I would probably have devel-

oped in the same way as Ursula Kardorff, who worked for the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung — not prominently but still in a clearly

oppositional frame of mind. I would never have become a Nazi, but I might have moved in liberal circles — not particularly heroically perhaps — but at least as an upright person. Q: You met your husband before the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933?

A: Yes, in 1926. I wasn’t quite seventeen; I got to know him through playing tennis. My family were friends of the Landrat and

a young assistant called Fritzi Schulenburg was working in the Landrat’s office. I found him terribly interesting. We played tennis and rode our rickety bikes to swim in the lakes of Mark Branden-

burg. Then we sat on the landing stage in the public swimming pool and talked in a frightfully sophisticated way about literature — of course always maintaining the formal ‘Sie’ form of address.

One day the headmaster of my school sent for me and said: ‘Lotte, I must talk something over with you.’ We went into the conference room where he informed me that he had heard that I often sat with Count Schulenburg on the landing stage of the public swimming pool. The town council, he added, were irritated by this and had therefore decided to erect a fence along the lakeside to divide the swimmers by sex and so end this immoral behaviour.

The headmaster found this just as funny as I did, and we had a good laugh. But as Count Schulenburg disappeared from the scene soon afterwards, the matter vanished into thin air. The next time I met him was two years later at the Landrat’s house. QO: After your Abitur in 1928 you went to study at Marburg. You studied German and English and after a year moved to Konigsberg; later you studied in Berlin and Munich.

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A: In those days one could change one’s university as one wished. The University of K6nigsberg was very popular in my time, and East Prussia was a magic country. I went to Berlin on account of Professor Dovifat, the well-known scholar of journalism; to Munich on account of Artur Kutscher whose lectures at

the Department of Theatre Studies were famous. I received a small monthly cheque from my parents and earned a bit of money, as well as a good meal, as a companion to an old lady in Schwab-

ing. At lunch I told her all my silly stories, and she found it absolutely marvellous. Q: You'd lost sight of Count Schulenburg in the meantime?

A: Yes, until 1932. I was staying with friends on a skiing holiday in Walsertal when suddenly I received a postcard that my mother had forwarded and which said: ‘Dear Lotte. I’ve faithfully waited

for you for seven years and now this sudden engagement? I have hit the bottle. Schulenburg.’ What had happened? He had met an acquaintance who knew my sister, and it was she who had become engaged. Months later, in K6nigsberg, it occurred to me: ‘If he thinks you are engaged, you could perhaps send to him a postcard saying there has been a mistake.’ As I put the card in the postbox, [had the feeling that I was sealing my fate. A week later, my postbox at the dormitory was full of letters. He had answered by return that he must see me and so on. Within a week we were engaged. Q: You were married a year later.

A: On 11 March 1933, in the Berlin Church of the Holy Trinity.

After the ceremony we went to Potsdam, which was my husband’s favourite place. His father had been Commander of the Kronprinz Army Group and my father had served in the Potsdam Guard regiment. Two days later we flew from Tempelhof Airport to K6nigsberg. Q: Flying was very unusual in those days.

A: Yes, it was something special. It was the first time I had ever flown, and it was wonderful. Q: The journey to Potsdam was a gesture to your father. What do you remember about your father?

A: My father was a merchant who fell at the front in 1915, so I only knew him for a short time. I have very pleasant memories of him — as tall as a giant and fair — in fact he can’t have been that tall.

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I can still remember my father holding my hand as we went singing

through the cornfields, while the car — a funny little vehicle that you got into with the help of special steps — was being fixed. Q: You spent the first years of your marriage in East Prussia? A: Yes, as I didn’t have a baby straight away as I’d wanted, I got a dog to begin with. I remember going for a walk one Sunday along

the Samland coast, those wonderful high cliffs between the Frische Nehrung and Kurische Nehrung, with my husband saying: ‘This is the place to be Landrat.’ And this is what he became in 1934: Landrat in the Fischhausen District. It was a marvellous time. In those days Prussian Landrate were still minor royals in their districts and were able to take as many administrative decisions as they pleased. Naturally there was a Gauleiter with whom Fritzi fought unending battles. We found it very difficult to leave East Prussia. Q: Your husband had the reputation — among the National Socialists too — of being an expert in administration; when there was a difficult problem to be solved somewhere he was asked for advice. On the other

hand, your husband began to criticise the regime very early on, from inside at first, since he had joined the Party in 1932. When, in your view, did it become impossible to combine the two; when did opposition turn

into active Widerstand? A: I would say that we were full of criticism right from the start;

being a Nazi was not the same as being a Nazi; being a German Volksgenosse was not the same as being a German Volksgenosse. You

thought about things and found some of it ridiculous but hoped, to begin with at any rate — as my husband put it — that the idea would overcome Nazi reality. That the grief over the defeat of 1918, the post-war depression, the losses inside Germany, the chaos that had set in would all come to an end. This attitude was always informed by detachment; that’s certainly what I would say about myself. My husband was always such an idealist that at times I thought his knowledge of people left something to be desired. In my opinion he greatly overestimated his ‘beloved people’ — always the people. How can I explain this? The characteristics of the Party quickly began to diverge from the original idea? The pompous behaviour, the style, were a disappointment to my

husband; he disliked how people prostituted themselves and turned into corrupt party bosses. He always tried to counter this. It is difficult to explain this gradual process of breaking free to today’s generation.

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Q: The inner emancipation was the first step.

A: His personal experiences increasingly exacerbated matters. I know that historians have been very strict in their judgement. His biographer Ulrich Heinemann, for example, has traced every step

in detail and comes to the conclusion that my husband finally decided to join the Widerstand in 1942/43. But first there is the question of what one regards as Widerstand, and secondly it is very difficult for anyone who was not there to get a complete picture of

what went on within an individual during National Socialism. I was present (although not as often as my husband) when they had their heated discussions at the Yorck’s in Hortensien-Strafe. I know that my husband’s inner being had reached the boiling point from the time when he arrived in Berlin, at the latest. As Deputy Police-

President he had access to files that he would never have seen in East Prussia. In Berlin he was, for the first time, close enough to events to be able to judge the situation, and above all he had his friends with whom he could talk openly. This was the time during which he also turned to his boss, Police President Helldorf. Helldorf was generally known as an SA bigwig and confirmed Nazi; he loved

going to the horse races and was a man who lived fast. When my husband moved to Berlin, he told Helldorf ‘T didn’t apply to come here’, and got the answer ‘And I didn’t ask for you, Count Schulenburg’. Later, they got on very well, with regard to politics too. Q: In 1932/33 your husband took a keen interest in Gregor Strasser, whose political ideas obviously appealed to him more than Hitler’s. Strasser embodied, to put it briefly, the radical socialist wing of the Party. It seems to me that his turn to Strasser also implied a distancing from the nobility, from his own clan.

A: It was the nationalist socialism that fascinated him and to which he testified in 1944 before the People’s Court. He never had much time for the Weimar Republic although he did his duty as a loyal and even committed civil servant. He was also quite happy with the Prussian tradition of administration but felt that somehow something was lacking. He couldn’t stand the reactionary attitudes of the nobility. He felt a strong social impetus and had gained firsthand experience of the needs of the workers in the Ruhr industrial district — that was why he pinned his hopes on Strasser. O: Could he have become a Social Democrat?

A: His strong patriotism came through his family. In Tressow there were always political discussions; both his father and his

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brothers were interested in politics and history. For them it wasn’t

just that the war had been lost; they felt that the Kaiser had betrayed them. In 1918 my father-in-law had belonged to those who told Wilhelm II he must stay in Germany and lead his troops back to Berlin, whatever might happen to him personally. Nobody in the Schulenburg family had any use for the Weimar Republic and liberalism. They hoped that National Socialism and the SA would renovate the country. Q: Please explain once again your husband’s social ideas, while he still had hopes for National Socialism.

A: A fair distribution of wealth — no one was to have more than the rest. This was an ideal, adopted by the National Socialists early on, that the people who were associated with Gregor Strasser were

determined to turn into reality and that greatly appealed to my husband. It was abandoned very soon after the seizure of power, but my husband still believed it could work. He also believed in unity; he was attracted by the notion that all Germans wanted the same thing. At least that was how it appeared at the beginning.

Let me give you a typical example: in the spring of 1944 he showed me a manuscript that was intended to be used as a radio speech after a successful Attentat. When he went to the station to return to Berlin, he cheerfully tucked the manuscript in his breast pocket and I said: ‘Fritzi, imagine if a trunk fell on your head and while you were lying there, people found this. What would happen then?’ To which he replied: “They will carry me on their shoulders to Berlin.’ Such was his optimism. He had a friend on our estate in Mecklenburg, a wheelwright with whom he used to discuss politics. This man and a few others represented ‘das Volk’ for him. Q: The conservative view of the world and Nazi ideas must have complemented one another closely.

A: One should not forget how poorly the Germans were faring

at the end of the 1920s. National Socialism was a promise to achieve something new, and to do so many of the old world of ideas had to be abandoned. To that extent enthusiasm for National Socialism also reflected a desire to cut the umbilical cord with the old world. This is why it is so difficult to explain today. My stepmother was also more involved socially than was usual in those circles so that she was called ‘Red Marie’ in Mecklenburg. She knew every worker and visited everyone who was ill and took care

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of everyone. After the war she took starving children from Hamburg into the country and continued with her charity work later on. QO: Where did your husband’s criticism begin? What was he particularly displeased with? Even as a Party member he was far from being the type who kowtowed to his superiors and kicked his subordinates that the Nazis were so fond of.

A: In 1933 one began to notice that things were going wrong and that it was all fake. Even while he was Landrat of Fischhausen he tried to bypass the Party bosses, especially the district leaders,

by deciding matters of administration without the Party and in line with his own ideas. Meanwhile the leaders behaved like corrupt bosses. Over Christmas 1933 he thought up something special. [had a woman who helped me in the house, Frau Scheffler. Her husband was unemployed and she had two children and lived in a pavilion in the back garden. The woman was very pleased to be able to earn a little money with us. My husband had the idea of inviting the Schefflers for Christmas and giving them

wonderful presents, along with Erich Koch, the Gauleiter. He came, but behaved like a bull in a china shop. Herr Scheffler who was an old Party member, put on his neatly brushed uniform and a pair of worn-out army boots. ‘Look at your boots, Scheffler’, said Koch, who had arrived in a big car and was all spic and span, showing off his own elegant boots: ‘Mine were bought at Breitsprechers in Berlin.’ That’s when it dawned on my husband that

he and the Gauleiter lived in two very different worlds. He had expected more of the latter - more graciousness and less arrogance. My husband took this experience very seriously. QO: What did you first realise that your husband was in danger?

A: Actually as early as 30 June 1934, at the time of the socalled R6hm putsch. My husband said: ‘Pack your bags we’re going to Masuria.” He was horrified by this form of ‘justice’, which was meted out in violation of all the principles of the rule of law (Rechtsstaat). He was also afraid of his father becoming a

victim of this murderous rampage. When we got home a few days later, our maid reported that two SS men had come and asked after my husband. He was rather disturbed by this and asked me never to mention Strasser’s name. I probably didn’t grasp the drama of the situation, but it was clear that my husband was living dangerously. In any event, 30 June was an enor-

mous shock. But even afterwards he continued to believe that

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the Party could be reformed from the inside and that the Party leaders could be persuaded to see reason. It took a long time for him to realise that these were not the sort of men who could be reformed, but rather people who acted fanatically and selfishly with cast-iron principles. QO: How far were you personally drawn into the activities of your husband? A: Basically not at all. I was on the outside, not inside this male

club. On social occasions one went to the theatre or talked about concerts and books, not politics. Today I sometimes ask myself, when thinking of the atrocities, how I could go along with it and bear it all. I probably confined myself to things that were of close concern, particularly my children, so that I only saw from a distance the other things going on around me. I think this acts as a sort of protective clothing for young people. There are men who go onto

the barricades and perish. With my husband and his friends mat-

ters finally reached such a level that they simply didn’t care whether or not they died, which did seem likely. They simply felt that something had to be done. Tresckow once summed this up by saying: ‘Cotite que cotite’ — no matter what it costs. They felt this

very strongly and regarded it as a necessity that should be put ahead of all personal considerations. That was precisely the point that the Nazis did not understand. They told me they had asked my husband whether he hadn’t thought about his wife and six children during all his activities. To which my husband replied: ‘At such moments one doesn’t think about one’s wife and children.’ They told me this in order to hurt me, but I knew precisely why he had said it. It was just that their petty minds could not grasp it. QO: How did you understand it?

A: I understood it like this: he had to do it; that was beyond question for me, and he had to keep me out of it. Q: Was there ever a discussion between you and your husband, a sort of agreement? Did he ask you if you were prepared to support the Widerstand?

A: No, it was simply crystal clear. After the war I had to deNazify my husband before a strange court in Hanover that asserted: ‘You can’t prove to us that you and your husband talked about Widerstand.’ This made me very angry and I retorted: ‘No, I

didn’t tape record what we talked about in our bedroom and therefore cannot submit it to you.’

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Annedore Leber and Ralf Dahrendorf’s father sent telegrams to the de-Nazification tribunal to clear the matter up. The gentlemen on the tribunal were not completely convinced; in their eyes my husband remained an old Party member. Q: The Nazis generally left the wives in peace, putting the wife and mother on a pedestal.

A: Okay, as a child-bearing machine; a lot was made of that. During the Third Reich I ducked out of assuming various official positions. I always wanted to keep my distance. As the young wife of the Landrat I was chair of the local Red Cross and later had to be active in the Winter Aid programme. When I had my fourth child, they chased me with the Mother’s Cross but they never managed to pin it on me. Each time they called I had just gone out. Later I often asked myself why I hadn’t done more against the regime, but

instead had gone on living peacefully. After all, much was truly shocking, especially in the humanitarian field. And one must admit that one simply goes on living in the usual way. There is a Russian proverb that says: ‘Other people’s misfortune is like a little bird that has flown on for just a few hundred more yards, and has now disappeared completely.’ Even what happened in the small circle around me was so terrifying that today I often ask myself how I ever managed to get through it. QO: How do you see your role in the Widerstand?

A: I kept completely in the background, but I agreed with what

my husband did. At most I made a few criticisms when things became too ambitious. From the start I had accepted that my hus-

band was not the kind of man who came home in the evenings and who is there at weekends; rather I knew that sometime or other he would come home and then it would be wonderful. We often lived apart; that’s why there are so many letters. It was absolutely marvellous when he was there. I accepted it when he said on these occasions: ‘Unfortunately, I must be off again today and I’ve no idea when I'll be here next.’ Even when the children were born, he was never there. This was quite symbolic. In 1934, when Schuschu was born, he was on the road in East Prussia with a commission from Berlin. He had hardly left before I went into labour. I got to the maternity ward at the last minute. When the child was born, the physician asked me where my husband was. When I told him I didn’t know, he probably thought: ‘Oh dear,

another marriage that’s gone to the dogs.’ It was very funny.

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When Neiti was born, again my husband was away. But he sent me a telegram: ‘Absolutely delighted — no regrets.’ It was another girl. Nevertheless, it was the right thing every time, and there was always happiness. Q: Was your husband a man of passionate belief?

A: Yes, he could put his back into something, but not noisily.

Strangely enough, everyone listened to him when he spoke rather softly. I see him now with his clenched hand raised. You felt compelled to listen to him. QO: How would you describe your husband?

A: He was quite different from others, a splendid man. Everything about him was genuine and he despised anything that wasn’t. If men were boring, he went to sleep or refused to talk to them

or read. I believe he always lived very consciously. He would never read a book that wasn’t worth his while. His life was ritualised. The time for riding was fixed, as was the time for walking through the woods in the morning. Everything had its place in his life. Above all else reading was the most important thing for him. He could sit in front of his books for hours and think about how to arrange them. Pulling one out, putting it back again — that’s how he liked it. When he wanted to rest, he would say: ‘Now Ill sleep from 14.15 to 14.37’ — and do so. Then he would drive off again.

There was a concentrated will in his dealings with himself. He had a great influence on people because his heart was pure and he

always acted in accordance with his innermost convictions. He was so precise. That was what everyone valued in him and I also liked it from the start. I remember that he refused to behave like other men who went to department stores or elegant salons with their wives. Only once did I persuade him to go to ‘Braun’s’ in Unter den Linden. ‘I would be so pleased if just for once you would choose a dress for me’, I said. He went in, walked along the

display, picked out a sleeve that was light blue and another one that was corn yellow and said: ‘We'll take the two.’ He disappeared through the door and left me to pay — I was the Finance Minister. At least I now had two dresses that he had chosen. That was as far as he would go in that respect; otherwise it was always books, books, books. That was how we got to know one another. When I was sixteen and we sat on the landing stage of the public swimming pool to the indignation of the Kyritz philistines, he asked me what books I was reading. We talked about those books

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and then he said: ‘Now I’m going to make a list of the books you

must read.’ He brought it along next time, and I had to tell him what I thought of the titles. We particularly loved Fontaine as well as The Wandering and Metamorphoses of Reihsfretherr vom Stein by Ernst Moritz Arndt. Q: Your husband acted in the Widerstand as an intermediary between both the various generations and the different ideological positions. From 1943 onwards, he was the person who pressed for an Attentat, and it may have been his friendshtp with Stauffenberg that contributed to the

Attentat being risked.

A: That was the most decisive moment: when the two of them moved closer together. Each needed the other, they had complementary characters. Both my husband and Stauffenberg wanted more action and no more discussions. What bound the two together was their admiration for Julius Leber. QO: On 20 July your husband was prepared all day at Bendler-Strafse

and was arrested in the evening and taken to Prinz-Albrecht-Strafse.

A: As I said, I took him to the train station early on 19 July. I know from Ola Riithan, an old friend who helped my husband with his typing, that my husband appeared in the office on the morning of 20 July — her firm had an office in the Esplanade -

and asked her to sew up his army trousers whose seam had come apart at the knee. Ola mended them and immediately afterwards my husband went to Bendler-Strafe, but forgot to take his army coat with him. A few days later Gestapo men saw the cloak and said: ‘That must be Count Schulenburg’s.’ ‘Yes’, Ola replied, ‘he left it here at some stage.’ Ola Rtith was arrested and locked up for a few weeks in the Alexanderplatz prison. A terrific person. I was very fond of her. I once said to my husband:

‘If I die you must marry her at once, so that the children will have somebody.’ Q: And what did you do yourself on 20 July?

A: It was my birthday and we behaved as though nothing had changed. When Stauffenberg’s name was mentioned on the radio, I knew exactly where we were. There was no anxiety, only sadness

and the feeling that above all the children must be protected which I am good at. When our relatives left in the evening I stood there with my children and Schuschu, the eldest asked me: ‘Mami,

why have these men done this? Why did they want to kill our

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Fithrer?’ I didn’t know what to answer, for she was due to go to school the next day and might have repeated the story — she was nine. So I said: ‘I don’t know either; I can only suppose they were people who preferred peace to war.’ ‘Do you know what I think’, said my daughter, ‘I believe Daddy is with these men.’ She loved her father above everything else. After that I wasn’t able to talk to them about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ because of the danger that they might talk about it in the village. Q: What was your own attitude towards the Attentat?

A: [had no scruples about it. Q: Have you ever been angry about 20 July?

A: No, never, thank God. Because it was so clear to me that my husband had tried to do the best he could. QO: Were there conflicts within the family, which, after all, believed in National Socialism?

A: There were a few estrangements, but Tisa stood by me. She loved her brother Fritz deeply. She emigrated to England with her Jewish husband in 1934. Although the marriage wasn’t going well, it was because of Hitler that she went with him. She returned in 1939 as a divorcee. She had no children of her own and therefore took us in with her second husband. Trebbow became our real home, even though we often went to Tressow, my husband’s family home. Q: What were you expecting? You mentioned having the feeling of standing at the beginning of a new era. You had lost your inner protection and you'd lost your husband. A: The world had become different. I was spurred on by my children to live and to go on. Once, I reached the point where I thought it would be better if the children and I were no longer. The war was getting steadily gloomier, I was being continually watched, and the

threat kept growing. I went through this bad period but it passed and I pulled myself together. The love and mutual support that came from all my children helped me enormously. QO: You've said that after the Attentat you didn’t know what to say to your children. Could you describe a little more precisely this feeling of helplessness ?

A: You must remember the situation at the time: everybody knew from the papers and the radio about the ‘treason’. In August

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my son was to start school for the first time. I had to take him to the village school and that frightened me a lot because I was afraid that someone would say something offensive to him. The path ran along a lake beside a beech grove and after I handed him over, I sat beside the last beech tree so that I could keep an eye on the school. During the break my son happily romped about with the other boys and seemed contented. Later I asked him how it had gone and he thought that everything had been quite marvellous. Nobody in the village showed any hostility toward us — neither then nor later. During the summer the children collected scrap metal and old newspapers, chestnuts and beech-nuts, and whatever else one was supposed to collect in those days. During the days after 20 July I collected corn with them; it was a great experience to go through the mown fields and collect the husks, which then had to be handed in as emergency grain. I was thankful for any activity. For a time I wrote letters to my husband and I walked for hours. In the evenings I often sat with Matthias and Erika Wieman and he read poetry, which helped a great deal. My dear Clara was a great stand-by; she took over the household duties and fed the children — everything had to go on and be kept in order. When we left Trebbow at the end of April 1945, we left

behind freshly cleaned silver. That helped, too; I just couldn’t eradually go to seed and be reduced to misery. Q: Like many women you took your six children on an arduous, exhausting flight. But, unlike the others, you, as the widow of a 20 July conspirator, were probably more isolated.

A: Immediately after the war, when we were small and ugly and came to the West as poor refugees, we met with little understanding and sympathy. The sort of question we were asked was ‘How could your husband do such a thing?’ And I could only say: ‘He did it for you, too.” Someone once said to me: ‘Now you can see what happens when the aristocracy tackle something by themselves.’ Everybody knew better. Q: Didn't that upset you?

A: I found the condescension embittering, but swallowed it. One had become used to holding one’s tongue. I found my few remaining friends and we began taking tremendous pride in ourselves, even though we had been asked to make the supreme sacrifice. Somehow it was very liberating that someone had tried to stand up to injustice. That was a strong feeling in the midst of all

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the grief and despair. It also helped me that I was able to say to the children: ‘You had a father who made an impact.’ And then came

the request to write ‘Persil certificates’. Sometimes they were really outrageous, but it helped a lot if one could feel contempt for another person. QO: Were there times when you considered the sacrifice of your friends to have been in vain?

A: Yes, at times; in difficult moments I lost heart. But on the whole I was glad that my husband belonged to those who had acted differently from the rest. Q: Who could you talk to about everything?

A: With whom have I talked? With very few friends. In the 1950s I worked as a teacher and matron in Birklehof. The boarding-school was run by Georg Picht and he had collected outstanding men and women as teachers. Some of them became friends. As soon as one got to know a person better, the conversation would inevitably move on to the Widerstand —- everyone knew who I was.

I didn’t talk to outsiders; indeed I was rather repelled by their lack of interest. Since I have learned how hard it is to understand the whole affair, I have stopped talking about it altogether. But Ihave always been delighted when I met one of the others, Lotte Hofacker, or Mausi Lehndorff, or Dusi Uxkiill, or surviving friends of my husband. Q: What political questions did the children ask after the war?

A: I can’t really remember now, but basically it was always the same questions: why their father attempted the Attentat and what Hitler had done wrong. They asked, for example, why he had murdered the Jews. The children reacted with great sensitivity. On one occasion, some visitors came over from America and I mentioned during a conversation that one was a Jew, whereupon all the children froze because to them it was a word of abuse. It was very hard to explain to them what a Jew was, because they had always heard the term wrongly used. ‘You mustn’t say that, at most you should say he is “of Jewish descent’”’, Schuschu remarked. QO: What did you live on before you got the job at Birklehof?

A: Everyone said I must try to provide for myself and the children. I had a few diamonds in my bag, which I sold on the black market and cash to the tune of 20 thousand marks, that came from

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my brother-in-law Barner’s safe. Tisa had given it to me. I myself had nothing; it had all been confiscated. I once got as far as Hin-

rich Kopf, the then Minister President of Lower Saxony, who promised to use his influence on my behalf. But everything took months and in the end I got a bridging loan to which any official who came from the East was entitled. After the founding of the Federal Republic I tried to get a widow’s pension. Fabian von Schlabrendorff prepared the appropriate applications and pushed them through. It was all very laborious. First of all some bureaucrat had decreed that a civil servant or his widow had the right to a pension only if the applicant hadn’t committed a capital offence such as murder. This paragraph was actually applied to some of the key participants of 20 July! After I had protested loudly and waited a few more months, the next obstacle arose: my husband had joined the NSDAP in 1932 — the great sin. My husband was not quite forty-two when he died and had long since made good for his mistakes — and then paid for them dearly. Q: Did you get your pension in the end?

A: Yes. In 1952 I was awarded the pension for a widow of a Regierungsprdasident. It was a real red-letter day for all of us. I went

with my mother and six children to Freiburg because it was the nearest big town to the Birklehof at Hinterzarten. We had a wonderful lunch at ‘Oberkirch’s’ and we were each able to buy what we had dreamed of - trainers, a hockey-stick and so on. Q: What ts resistance for you today?

A: I see no resistance today. We now really do live in a free country in which you can say what you like. It is wonderful that we have a genuine Rechtsstaat. Resistance today? I wouldn’t know how to define it. In East Germany, yes, there was resistance before the explosion of 1989 — this silent revolution when the people in

Leipzig began to say: ‘We are the people.’ I thought that was splendid. We had all wished for something similar through the Nazi period, that the people take to the streets and shout: ‘We are the people.’ Unfortunately it all disappeared so quickly and today the uplift is past and done with. Q: One last question. As far as I know, there is no grave. Not even a memorial. Why not?

A: No, there’s no grave. At the time we heard various stories about what was done with those executed at Plétzensee. One

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story was that they were used in anatomy classes and then burnt. Another was that the corpses were exhumed, and burnt and the ashes scattered on the fields. None of that worried me. My attitude to death has changed as a result. But we did put up a memorial plaque. My sister-in-law Tisa is a sculptress and in August 1944 she carved an oval oak board with the Schulenburg coat of arms. The wood was almost six inches thick, and as an inscription we chose a favourite quotation of my husband’s: ‘I dared it with deliberation and bear it without regret.’ It was written by Conrad Ferdinand Mayer in his Ulrich von Hutten. We hung this board in Trebbow Park on a plane tree, my husband’s favourite tree, and we often sat under it. To prevent anyone seeing the inscription, we put a thick oak wreath around the board. But the Forester discovered everything. One day in 1945 a mobile SS column came, tore the board down and took it off to Schwerin. The Gauleiter rang me up and asked me to tell him at once what it was all about. The Gestapo were

very agitated and were thinking of arresting me. So I went to Schwerin. ‘Gauleiter’, I said, ‘do you find it wrong that people put up in private grounds a memorial to a man who has no grave, but all the same was my husband, the father of my children and the brother of his sister?’ ‘By itself’, the Gauleiter replied, ‘there’s nothing wrong about that. But what you’ve put as the text is very offensive.’ To which I said: ‘Oh, you know, that’s the motto of the Schulenburg coat of arms.’ Thank God that occurred to me! The Gauleiter accepted the explanation and called the Gestapo while I

was still there and said the matter had been cleared up. Fortunately they were all so illiterate that nobody thought of checking with Conrad Ferdinand Mayer! ‘Do you think, Gauleiter’, I asked, ‘that I can have the board back?’ He laughed a little awkwardly and said: ‘No, that’s not possible, really.’

Chapter Nine

BARBARA VON HAEFTEN

LE B arbara Haeften wasand born Duisburg 1908, the was daughter ofvon Julius Curtius hisinwife Adda.inHer father to become Minister of Economics and Foreign Minister in the Weimar Republic. She spent her childhood with her five siblings in Heidel-

berg and her adolescent years in Berlin, where she obtained her Abitur at the Realgymnasium. In 1925 she met Hans-Berndt von Haeften; they became engaged in 1928 and married in 1930. Hans-Berndt was born in 1905 in Berlin, the son of General Staff officer Hans von Haeften, who was to become the president of the

Reich Archives and a member of the Academy of Sciences. His mother was sister to Walther von Brauchitsch, the Commander-inChief of the Army from 1938 to 1942.

Hans-Berndt studied law in Berlin and Munich and, having passed his first bar examination in 1928, went to Cambridge on a student exchange. He worked as General Secretary of the Stresemann Foundation from 1930 to 1933, when he joined the Diplomatic Service. He was sent to Copenhagen as cultural attaché, to Vienna (1935-37) and finally, until 1940, to Bucharest as Secretary of the German Legation there. His wife Barbara gave birth to four of their children in these years: Jan in 1931, Dirk in 1934, Adda in 1936 and Dorothea in 1940. Raised in a liberal-conservative family, Haeften kept strong ties throughout his life with the Lutheran Church. In 1933 he and his wife joined the anti-Nazi Confessing Church in Berlin-Dahlem

and became friends with its two pastors, Martin Niemdller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His Christian faith became the central motive in his opposition to Nazism and its political development.

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In 1940 he returned to Berlin. He was made Deputy Director of the Foreign Ministry’s information department. By 1943 he had risen to the position of Legationsrat in the cultural affairs department. This meant that he was among the most senior members of

the opposition groups who gathered in the Foreign Service and who tried to establish contacts with foreign governments. Moving cautiously in public, Haeften participated in the Kreisau discussions in the role of an adviser. He spoke on questions of foreign policy as well as on problems of the future constitution and social system. He was in close touch with his friend and coworker Adam von Trott.

His brother Werner von Haeften was ADC to Stauffenberg from November 1943 and involved in the 20 July plot, which Hans-Berndt rejected at first. Werner was executed at the Bendler-Strafe complex on 20 July. Hans-Berndt was arrested three

days later, condemned to death by the People’s Court on 15 August and hanged that same day. A few weeks before the Attentat Barbara gave birth to their fifth child, Ulrike. She was taken into custody on 25 July without being allowed to keep her baby

and remained imprisoned until 30 September 1944. After 1945 she lived in Friedingen on Lake Constance and later in Heidelberg. In 1975 she moved in with her daughter’s family at Tutzing near Munich.

Interview Q: The famous documentary about the trial against the conspirators before the People’s Court contains a scene in which Freisler stated sarcastically and at the top of his voice what, as a Christian, his attitude was towards his oath to the ‘Fiihrer’. Freisler is rather agitated. And at that point your husband replies: “The view I hold of the world-historical role of the Fiihrer is that he is a great executor of evil....’

A: At that point Freisler cut him off and had a fit. Gerstenmaier

later remarked that this had been the key phrase of the entire Widerstand — that we all had recognised Hitler as a great executor of evil. QO: Hitler, the Anti-Christ!

A: Yes, that was our conviction, and I am glad that my husband was able to say it so openly. If he had committed suicide, these last words would not have been spoken.

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Q: Did your husband contemplate suicide for a moment after the failure of the Attentat? Did he talk to you about this?

A: Yes, but we both realised that this was off limits because we

did not know what would still be expected of us. When we said farewell, I told my husband that sooner or later we all had to die. He replied: ‘And yet man goes on hoping until his last breath.’ Subsequently, I have frequently felt ashamed that I only found such hard and cold words. When I was myself imprisoned, I was overcome by similar thoughts. QO: And yet this conversation made one powerful point. You also said

that one should not worry in advance about finding the right words; the chances are that they would come to you when the time was right.

A: Yes, I had taken this from the Bible: ‘When they deliver you

up, be not anxious what and how ye shall speak: for it shall be given to you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak but the spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.’ Those were biblical insights; we all lived with the Bible in those days. We got into this habit in the early days of Nazi rule. We knew what we

were about to lose through Hitler. And we realised that only through the Bible could we gain the strength and the certainty that we were on the right side. Q: When did this last conversation with your husband take place?

A: On 21 July, in Grammertin near Neustrelitz. My husband had come to see us on the Friday evening to tell us of his brother’s death and to say goodbye. He was absolutely certain that he would not get away unscathed, since he had shared an apartment with his brother. QO: That was Werner von Haeften, Stauffenberg’s ADC.

A: Yes, he had been shot in the inner yard of the Bendler-Strafe

complex in the evening of 20 July, together with Stauffenberg, Olbricht and Mertz von Quirnheim. Yorck and Gerstenmaier had

been arrested, as my husband also knew. It was thus quite unthinkable that sooner or later the Gestapo would not hit upon my husband. That is why he wanted to go to the Gestapo and try and play the ignoramus. ‘I will go to Six’, he said — Professor Six was the director of the cultural affairs department and his superior — ‘and enquire about Werner.’ My husband returned to Berlin on Saturday. He called me on Sunday at lunch-time to let me know

that he was still a free man. When he sat down for supper, Dr Neuhaus came and arrested him.

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Q: That sounds like an ordinary crime novel: the police arrive, ring the doorbell and make the arrest.

A: This is roughly how it must have been. Our caretaker, Herr

Jankowski, opened the door and immediately recognised Dr Neuhaus. After all, Jankowski was a former member of parliament

and had known him since the Reichstag Fire. This Dr Neuhaus had been a one-time student of theology, along with Gerstenmaier. He had led the investigation into the Fire in 1933 and was later in charge of the investigations of the Kreisau Circle. After the war he taught religious studies to children under an assumed name. Since

he had learned a good deal from our husbands and had perhaps also thought about his work for the Gestapo, what he taught in those lessons may not have been too bad. Q: When did you learn about your husband’s arrest?

A: My brother-in-law called me on Monday, 24 July to say that I should take the first train the next day and come to Berlin with his wife and my sister Vreni: ‘Herta and I will meet you at Stettiner

Bahnhof. Unfortunately Hans is unable to come.’ This was all I needed to hear to know that Hans had been arrested. I prepared another bottle for Ulrike and arranged everything so that I could leave the next morning. Ulrike, after all, was only nine weeks old. I went directly to the Foreign Ministry from Stettiner Bahnhof. My father and I had calculated that the best thing for me to do was to

go to the personnel department. I first tried to reach an assistant with whom we had been friends, but he excused himself. I then called on Herr Schréder, the head of the personnel department. He

kept me waiting until lunch-time, and afterwards when no witnesses were around, he asked me into his office. He told me not to worry; my husband had merely been taken into custody, and this was only because he had shared accommodation with his brother. However, he would be pleased to make enquiries at the Fiihrer’s headquarters. ‘I am sure that I will then be able to tell you more’, he added and asked for a telephone connection while I waited outside. When I was called back, Schréder was totally changed and

did not say a word. He was probably much relieved when I suggested making further enquiries with Six. That would be a good idea, he remarked, and so I went off to see SS Obergruppenfiihrer Professor Dr Six, whose department was in another part of town. ‘It’s a good thing you came’, Six began our conversation, ‘T still

owe your husband a reply. On Saturday he asked me about his brother. I can tell you that your brother-in-law was shot by the

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Wehrmacht in the evening of 20 July in Bendler-Strafse. He wasn’t shot by the SS, not by us, no, but by the Wehrmacht.’ Inow had an official statement and thought: ‘At least I can testify now and do not have to consider Werner.’ I then went to the Gestapo in PrinzAlbrecht-Strafse, as I had heard that it was possible to leave things there for prisoners — a blanket or even something to eat. I hoped to

obtain a visitor’s permit to see my husband who had not been home since Sunday. I was sent to No. 10 Meinecke-Strafe instead.

I was told to be there at 4 p.m., but when I got there and asked whether I could see my husband, I was told that I was myself under arrest. I replied: ‘That’s impossible. Where did you get that idea? I must go back to my children and I have a baby that has to be breast-fed.’ The official said: ‘Don’t worry, the children will receive excellent care.” But when I was alone in my cell, I got terribly worried. My husband had told me that in the case of a woman

who had been involved with the Red Orchestra underground group, her children were not at all well taken care of. Q: And where did they take the children?

A: They left them with my parents, but I only learned this after my release. However, one day the prison governor — who had been to the same welfare training school as Hans’ sister — appeared and asked whether she could do me any favours. I asked her to find out what had happened to my children. ‘Don’t worry’, she said, ‘they don’t want to be lumbered with the children on top of everything else.’ For the first time I felt a slight sense of relief. QO: Perhaps we should take a big jump here. I would like to learn some-

thing about your family, about your education and childhood. What 1s the context in which you grew up; how did you come to be what you are?

A: I was born in Duisburg. My parents were Rhinelanders, appreciative of liberty and with certain reservations about things Prussian and East Elbian. When I was two, my parents moved

to Heidelberg, where I spent my childhood. After the First World War my father built up the German People’s Party in Baden

together with Gustav Stresemann. He was elected to the Reichstag, and in 1921 the whole family moved to Berlin because my father was tired of commuting. ‘It was like an extension of the

war’, he used to say. I was put back into a lower grade, since Baden was not as advanced as Berlin, and later I did not have the self-confidence to transfer to the Gymnasium. Many years later,

when I wanted to study photography at Lette-Verein, I realised

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that my previous qualifications wouldn’t get me very far. So I decided to go back to school, to study Latin and to obtain the Abitur. | had already met my future husband and I told myself that if lever wanted to marry this Haeften fellow I would have to acquire a broader educational base. Although it wasn’t serious yet,

I clearly had him in mind. When he heard about my plans to obtain the Abitur he merely remarked: ‘There’s no point in it without taking ancient Greek.’ Q: You got married in 1930.

A: Yes, we were engaged for two years. Hans was in the middle of his first bar examination and said he wouldn’t be able to finish

his dissertation without knowing how things stood between us and whether I ever wanted to become his wife. I was nineteen and he was twenty-two. I sent my reply that same day and for the first time signed it ‘yours ever, Barbel’. In those days, people continued to use the formal ‘Sie’ address until their engagement. After that

day, when these two letters were exchanged, we celebrated 27 March as our engagement day. However, our parents were not to learn this at all cost. He hasn’t achieved anything yet and owns nothing, I thought, and he is a nobleman on top of it. Moreover, I had another two years of school to complete. So I used the formal address with him in public. He asserted that I would get myself in a muddle one day, but we kept our ‘cover’. It all came out in the end though. My parents had been spending the Whitsun holidays at Badenweiler when my father was suddenly called back to Berlin for some meeting of the Cabinet. There was a man’s bike in the corridor and Tonchen, our cook, confessed: ‘The older Haeften is in Barbel’s room.’ When my mother got back with the little ones on

Wednesday, she dared to ask me directly what I thought I was doing if Haeften was frequently visiting me. I felt there was no point in telling lies and so I said that we were engaged. My mother was delighted: she had sensed something of the sort on New Year’s Eve. I told my parents: ‘Under no circumstances do I want Hans’

professional training to be disturbed in any way.’ I received this promise. My father then asked Hans to come to his office in the Ministry — he was Economics Minister at the time — and discussed

his career plans with him. My parents were very reasonable. QO: In September 1930 when you got married, Hitler celebrated his

first great victory at the polls; the Nazi Party had the second largest number of deputies in the Reichstag. In October 1929 your father had

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succeeded Stresemann as Foreign Minister. There was a marked political shift. How did your political discussions with your husband develop during the period of your engagement?

A: Even on our honeymoon the newspaper remained the most important thing for my husband, and I occasionally remarked jokingly: ‘It doesn’t matter how old it is; the main thing is that you

have your newspaper.’ My husband was extremely critical of Nazism from the start. He had a very close friend from school who was Jewish, and his parents likewise had Jewish friends. In this way we were immune to the poison of National Socialism. I wrote a letter to him in 1933: ‘It is terrible, but I voted for the Ger-

man Nationalist People’s Party. You would surely never have done this.’ The German Nationalists gradually moved towards Hitler. During the early years of our marriage, Kurt Hahn, the founder of the reformist Salem boarding-school, visited Berlin — together with my husband whom he thought a gifted young politician — to try and convince Reich Chancellor Brtining, my father and other men of the older generation that Hitler must under no circumstances be allowed to gain power. But the latter were of the

opinion that the Nazis would quickly exhaust themselves once they were in power and that it would also be impossible for them to keep power for reasons of foreign policy. ‘Father just does not believe in the Devil’, my husband used to comment. ‘He simply cannot imagine what these people are capable of.’ QO: You grew up in a political family.

A: But I rarely opened my mouth. At lunch-times around the large family table, which accommodated twelve to fourteen people, my parents mostly talked with my eldest brother who was studying law. We girls did not open our mouths — mostly out of lethargy, I must admit. We listened and were not expected to say anything. However, in the spring of 1933 when my husband went abroad prior to taking his Foreign Service entrance exam, he always wanted to know how things were developing in Germany. There is a letter of mine, written in March 1933, which reads: ‘Hannes, you know, I cannot answer those political questions of yours.... Since

you left, I know nothing about politics, even though I read the Deutsche Allgemeine and the Vossische Zeitung every day. With the

exception of yourself, none of our friends and relatives seem to know what those in the know think about the election results and so on. And except for yourself, I believe, no one is racking their brains about the questions you ask. They are waiting, patiently.

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Given that you are so far away, you cannot do more than wait either. And I sit here apathetically. However, slowly this is turning into a mad house. To hold a meeting of the new Nazi Reichstag in the Potsdam Garrison Church is quite impudent. Well, other parliaments have met in churches, too; but I don’t think it’s right. Perhaps they could have found a more suitable room. Or it could be

that we are very backward and cling to what cannot be brought back. The Nazis are putting themselves very firmly into the saddle .... and so on. That was the mood during those months. Q: How did oppositional attitudes turn into actions that became ever more unambiguous?

A: At the beginning, only in the sense that my husband tried

to protect friends or people affected by Nazi policies. Georg Maier, for example, was the first of our friends who was put in a concentration camp as early as 1933. He had voiced his views at a university lecturers’ camp and had written in Frankfurter Zeitung about the rule of law. My husband tried very hard to get

him out. Our son Dirk was baptised by Niem6ller in March 1934. Georg Maier was the godfather, but was unable to attend the baptism. Q: To connect a known opponent of the regime so closely to the family required courage.

A: My husband entered the Foreign Service on 1 May 1933. Much had happened up to then. Our Jewish friend Agnes Hill, née Cassirer, had been attacked in her apartment by a storm trooper.

The man had stabbed her in the hand with a knife some twenty times. Agnes was a violinist and she was never again able to play.

Her friend Steuer played the viola. He was excluded from the radio orchestra right at the beginning of 1933. My husband wrote to me: ‘It is incredible that eighty men refuse to tolerate six Jews ... And why does the entire radio orchestra cave in without showing any moral fibre. Could they not fight back like men? They wouldn’t have dismissed the entire orchestra. You must try to get father to do something about Steuer.’ This sort of thing happened in our immediate circle. Q: Is there a key experience that led you to commit yourself to oppos-

ing Hitler?

A: It was not a sudden resolution; you grew into it. It was only after the war, when the first stories of heroism began to circulate,

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that I began to realise this. I knew that it had been different with our husbands. You grew into it and it was not possible to say from a certain point onwards: this is where the Widerstand began. In fact, there was no Widerstand. You found yourself in opposition from the start. The treatment of the Jews, the anti-Semitism of the regime was no doubt the decisive issue for me. My husband used to say that all middle-class people should have realised after the Potempa murders what inspired the Nazis. Q: You are talking about the infamous telegram from Hitler to the five storm troopers who had received the death sentence for beating a Com-

munist to death in the Upper Silesian town of Potempa, in which he assured them of his ‘unlimited loyalty’?

A: Yes. The sentence was commuted to life and in March 1933, shortly after the Nazi seizure of power, the five were given amnesty.

My husband was appalled that murderers were set free and the victims were found guilty. Not a trace was left of the rule of law. QO: What did you know about the various resistance circles?

A: Of course, I knew about the resistance of the churches, because my husband was in touch with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The two had met in Sunday school prior to their confirmations. Bonhoeffer, his twin sister, and my husband and his sister were all confirmed together. Even if the relationship was not particularly close, they never lost touch, and in 1933 each one knew where the other stood. Most probably it was Bonhoeffer who drew my husband’s attention to Pastor Niem6ller, who had become a minister in Dahlem in 1931. We saw the NiemOllers a number of times, and

it was my husband who turned Niemdller against the German Nationalists. He thought them to be unreliable, which they turned out to be. Q: Did you ever see Hitler?

A: No, but my father-in-law had to go to receptions in his position as president of the Reich Archives, at which Hitler occasionally made an appearance. My mother-in-law once went with him. My father-in-law said afterwards that she had looked so stern and

grumpy when Hitler was introduced to her that he stopped and looked flabbergasted for a moment. He never knew what was to happen to his sons because he died in 1937; but I had to think of this story later on. It was as if Hitler had seen that he had the mother of his future assassins before him.

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QO: Most of the time Hitler looked into enthusiastic faces.... In 1937

your husband was transferred to Vienna. Previously you had lived in Copenhagen for a year, and in 1940 you returned to Berlin via Bucharest. In other words, you had been abroad for six years. Do you think that this gave you a different view of Germany?

A: My husband was very depressed that he had served this terrible regime for so long. He often complained, and I then said to him: ‘You will only be happy when you find yourself in a concentration camp.’ But what use would it have been to volunteer for a concentration camp? It was a great relief for my husband to find a circle of like-minded people in Berlin in 1941. And you must not

forget that his personal situation was particularly difficult in Vienna. Thus my husband wrote from Vienna in January 1936: ‘T

haven't experienced anything like this before because I haven't been involved so personally right at the coal-face. It is the most difficult thing to uplift people who are devastated and cowed by threats and terror. One of them has now collapsed with heart problems after some incredible treatment. The main thing is that Iam not yet getting scared myself, since by nature I do not have a lot of courage. However, it consoles me that there is a force that is powerfully at work in a weak person that one can pray to. And

once you are back to inspire a nonchalance in me against such gibberish, I will no longer be affected by it. Thus, Barbel, to put it in a nutshell: it is an excellent idea that you will be coming a little sooner.’ In Romania my husband was in charge of the cultural affairs department and, among other things, had to look after churches and schools in the German-speaking minority areas. This was a very pleasant job and he tried everything to move the Siebenbtir-

gen Transylvanians away from National Socialism. The ethnic Germans abroad had been zealously loyal to the Reich for many years and the Hitler business looked particularly attractive to them. They thought Hitler would fulfil all their dreams. My husband was able to convince a number of influential cultural leaders that they must not allow themselves to become pawns in Hitler’s game and that it was better to keep their distance. Q: How did things develop in Berlin after your husband had found like-minded friends ?

A: Gogo Nostitz introduced him to Adam von Trott, and they

quickly discovered that they had met before when they were exchange students in Britain. Trott then made the connection with

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Moltke. However, we saw the Yorcks most frequently because they lived relatively close — just a fifteen minute walk away. I also

knew Marion, who was a good friend of my brother Klaus. They had both been to the same crammer when they were preparing for their first bar exam. QO: What did you learn about your husband's political discussions and how much of it did you take in?

A: In fact he always told me everything. However, I did not grasp the extent of the atrocities in Poland and the persecution of the Jews. What I do remember is that my husband always had visits from Austrians who were unhappy because, instead of being

involved in government in Austria, they were sent to the most unpleasant places in Poland. They were told to compile statistics and had the most horrific experiences in the process. They came to see my husband in Berlin to pour their hearts out, and these were Austrian Nazis.

Or he told me that Lichterfelde Hospital, which we passed quite often, cared for the SS men who had had nervous breakdowns after the atrocities they had been forced to commit in Poland. My husband had learned this from Moltke and he had been given the information by a Catholic priest to whom the nurses had complained. QO: Wasn't such information a tremendous burden? Were you afraid of denunciation?

A: To begin with, you did not talk openly about such things. Nor do I remember that I was scared. I am not a very timid person. My sister Freni was always imagining things: what would happen, if ... Fortunately I did not suffer such agonies; I have a

happier temperament. Perhaps we also put things more into God’s hands. Moreover, my husband never mentioned any names; for example, I never heard the name of Reichwein. The reluctance to mention names went so far that my brother-in-law Werner did not even tell his fiancée Reinhild Hardenberg, nicknamed Wonte,

that he considered himself to be engaged to her. Just before 20 July he asked my husband for advice: ‘Should I get engaged to a young woman if an Attentat is about to be staged in which Ill be very directly involved?’ And what happened after 20 July? They found a letter to her in Werner’s uniform jacket. Wonte Hardenberg was arrested together with her father, and she learned from

the Gestapo that she had been engaged to Werner. ‘Did you

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know’, the Gestapo men asked her, ‘that your fiancé had another bride?’ There was a Miss von Bredow with whom Werner had been sailing and who had apparently gone to the Gestapo on her own initiative. Q: But your brother-in-law could have told Countess Hardenberg that he considered himself to be engaged to her.

A: He was afraid that this would get her into trouble. Q: There is evidence that your husband counselled your brother-inlaw against an attempt on Hitler’s life. Can you comment on this?

A: Werner came to see us in Dahlem one day and wanted to collect a revolver that Hans had ina suitcase. That must have been in January 1944 after Werner had become Stauffenberg’s ADC. He

was going to see Hitler personally in the next few days and wanted to use the opportunity. My husband asked him if he really saw this as his task. He said, “Are you sure that this is your mission in the eyes of God and of your forefathers? Can you really take responsibility for this?’ And Werner backed away. My hus-

band was very agonised during subsequent months that he had dissuaded Werner from his plan. Who knows what would have happened if Werner had succeeded? He had been an uncompromising opponent of the regime from the start. As early as 1933 or 1934 he had said at an evening reception that he would like to kill the man if only he had a chance. Q: In this respect your husband presumably held radically different views. His attitude was largely identical to that of Moltke, that injustice cannot be fought with injustice.

A: My husband and Moltke arrived at the same conclusion that Hitler must not be killed, but reached it from different angles. His maxim was that we should not use gangster methods ourselves. My husband also took the view that tyrannicide was justified only as long as Hitler’s star was in the ascendant. He said: ‘It should have been done before Stalingrad; he should have been killed long ago —if at all.’ Once the regime was going downhill and Hitler had lost his lucky streak, killing the tyrant was, in his view, no longer a blessing. All this weighed quite heavily on our husbands. With all the murdering that was going on, scruples had diminished and political murders had sky-rocketed. However, we were not quite as pessimistic as Moltke, who believed that Germany had to be destroyed first. In July 1944, after Leber and Reichwein had fallen

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victim to an informer, my husband did not want to be among the naysayers anymore, although he remained convinced to the end that it would be better to put Hitler in the dock. In this way the population would have seen what sort of a criminal they had been

following. He was sceptical that an Allied victory would also mean a victory for justice. Q: Did you consider ways in which you yourself could have become politically active?

A: With me you will search in vain for political activities; my

imagination only went as far as the idea that Hitler would be mauled by one of the dogs. The Christian commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ does, after all, put you in a terrible dilemma. And for many of the men the problem of the oath must be added as a special obstacle. Our husbands’ generation was the first to overcome it. My husband believed that our actual guilt consisted in that we had not been imaginative enough to remove Hitler in time and to build up an opposition movement from the start. Q: But this would have meant winning over the politicians prior to 1933 and the military thereafter.

A: Yes, but they were too cowardly and were too scared to risk their lives. ‘It is incredible’, my husband remarked, ‘that a man like Uncle Walther [von Brauchitsch, the army Commander-inChief until 1941] has to fear so much for his life.” And why did Hitler pick on little Uncle Walther? Because he was a submissive character and the obedient student of his master. That was a question on which the entire Haeften family agreed. My husband once asked Brauchitsch’s son: ‘Is it not time that you find yourself a boss other than Goring?’ And he replied: ‘If you weren’t my cousin I would have had you arrested by now.’ QO: How do you remember 20 July?

A: My husband had been to see us in Mecklenburg on 19 July and had told us that there had almost been an attempt on Hitler’s life in the previous days. Werner had called him there to tell him that he had finally ‘found an apartment for Mother’. Hans should go back to Berlin at all costs the following morning to deal with the details since Werner would be too busy in the office. That was the agreed code-word, and I also knew what this was about. On 20 July I got home in the evening; I had been picking blueberries in the woods and was now on my own. Again I heard planes on their

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way to Berlin and asked myself if this had something to do with the Attentat. Later, when I prepared some food for Ulrike in the kitchen, there was an announcement on the radio: an attempt had been made on the Ftihrer’s life, but he had survived it. Unfortunately that was all I needed to know. QO: You were arrested five days later and remained in solitary confinement until September. Were you immediately interrogated?

A: No, only on the day of my release; but I never stopped feeling that an interrogation was in the offing. I was very scared of being interrogated because I did not know how to handle it. After

all, I had been very close to my husband and had been more or less completely informed. I was rather despondent and asked Pastor Poelchau for advice: ‘I can’t tell lies; I would immediately get into a muddle. What shall I do? This Dr Neuhaus who has locked me up is much more clever than I and is certain to spring traps on me.’ Poelchau tried to explain to me that it would be nonsensical to tell the Nazis the truth. ‘That would be as nonsensical as trying to pick weeds from a weed-infested field’, he said. I could not see this: ‘If I were able to clear just half a square yard, I would do it.’ I had always taken the view that one should be absolutely truthful and that I should keep away from the lies that we encountered all

the time. I thus wanted to tell these people the truth; tell them what I felt — quite apart from the fact that this would have avoided arguing myself into knots. Q: Your ‘resistance’ to Nazism thus consisted in your truthfulness ...

A: At first Poelchau was no great help to me, because he tried to

steer me away from this course of action. But there was another minister who said: ‘For the moment your husband’s life is at stake, and therefore you simply must not have any knowledge.’ That was a good point of orientation. Later Poelchau told me that my husband had been executed. He wanted to do it gently and therefore told me only a week after 15 August. I almost drowned in my tears. And yet it was a liberation to know that he had escaped from those monsters and that there was no more torture. Thenceforth I knew that I had to fight for my own life. I had to try to be as cunning as possible so that I would live for my children. Poelchau was a great help at this point by saying that he would try to get me photos of my children: “You must not lapse into paralysis!’ Fortunately I was still alert enough to realise what he was trying to say, that is: ‘You

are beginning to have delusions.’ And it was true. I was going

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round in circles with my questions and worries. After this I tried to read things other than the Bible and the hymnal. To be exact, I had been given only the New Testament. When I asked the librarian for a Bible, she said, ‘A Bible? Don’t you know that the Old Testament is Jewish?’ The New Testament that I was given also contained the

Psalms. Oddly enough the Nazis did not consider them Jewish; they were ‘de-Jewed’ as they called it. On the day after Poelchau’s visit I took one of the books that the librarian brought to me every week, and without more ado I read a profane book. It was a study of Matthias Grtinewald, the painter. I also found words that Luther

had written to Melanchthon when the latter was in a crisis or depressed: ‘First you must try to sort things out with the help of Biblical words and psalms; then see the wise men of the community, and if none of this is any good, have some fun with a woman.’ So, what you have to do is to distract yourself, I concluded.

Q: With the help of the hymnal you kept in touch with Countess Yorck, who was in the cell next door.

A: Yes, we tapped the number of the hymn out with a ring — we

were allowed to keep our wedding rings. The verses were transmitted with a scraping noise so that you could clearly differentiate: hymn 368, verse whatever. This is how we were able to communicate very nicely. However, when Frau Freytag von Loringhoven was put into Marion’s cell because she could not stand up to solitary confinement, communication was disrupted between Marion and myself. But there was an even smaller cell above mine

and every night its inmate called: ‘Good night, Lola.’ I then knocked on Marion’s wall and this is how we said goodnight to each other. Q: What other ‘distractions’ were there in this period?

A: It was a great help that you were put to work. I had a sewing machine set up in my cell and with great zeal I put patches on the shirts of Goring’s Air Force. I also learned many of the hymns by heart because I said to myself that if I were killed I must be able to

sing the hymns on my way to the gallows. This would stop me from thinking other thoughts and enable me to face up to it. When Poelchau noticed what I was doing, he told me to start with ‘The Golden Sun’ in all its twelve verses or, alternatively, with the following Morning Sigh: ‘O Holy Trinity ... Support me all this day. Let the grace of the Father look upon me. Let the wisdom of thy son refresh me. Let the light and fire of the Holy Ghost illuminate

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the dark places of my heart.’ It was a sigh from the depth of the soul that uplifted me. I learned a lot and prayed a lot in those months. I said an ‘Our Father’ before every meal and every time I found it hard to utter: ‘Thy will be done.’ It was a time of profound experience, made more intense by my loneliness. Q: You mentioned that you were very scared of being interrogated. Can you be more specific?

A: When I was arrested, Dr Neuhaus had shown me a letter I

had written to my husband in which I hint at a dream I’d had about Werner. When I was taken to the prison, he said: “We shall have to talk about your strange letters.’ It was a very unsettling threat and I had no idea of how I would wriggle out of it. O: What about this dream?

A: The dream was very astonishing indeed. We had been in Vienna for two and a half years, and during one of our excursions [had got to know the Géttweig Abbey. It had a really marvellous

flight of stairs with low steps and it was said that Napoleon climbed them on horseback. In my dream Werner had come down these steps carrying a blood-stained sword in his hand. A nighttime air battle took place above; the sky was blood-red. The stairs

ended in a Viennese basement restaurant in which my husband and I, my mother-in-law and many strangers were standing. We were supposed to learn that Werner had just killed Hitler — a point that was not explicitly made, but that was nevertheless obvious. I had written this letter to my husband in the evening and all I did

the following morning was scribble in the margin that I had dreamed about Werner, who had committed a deed of the greatest political significance. I wrote: “We felt as if it was the time of the French Revolution.’ That was all. O: When was the letter written?

A: In March or April 1944 when my husband took a rest-cure at

Karlsbad. I had long forgotten the matter and was taken by surprise when Dr Neuhaus read me this and then added: ‘You must have known about your brother-in-law’s plans.’ My brother-inlaw Werner was not a man to make plans. He was a man of action. I don’t know whether I made that point in this first interrogation. Q: And Dr Neuhaus came back to this letter when you were released at the end of September?

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A: Yes, but at this stage I was much calmer and emotionally prepared. I had spoken to Poelchau about this and he suggested that I must have had the second sight. I did not quite see this, but

during the interrogation at the time of my release I suddenly heard myself say: ‘I must have had second sight then.’ Neuhaus retorted, ‘Don’t talk such nonsense’, but he dropped the topic for the moment. Suddenly he said: ‘Your husband has told us though that he had informed you of your brother-in-law’s plans.’ I knew that my husband would never have allowed such a statement to pass his lips, and without further thought I said: ‘That can’t be, it isn’t true that my husband said this.” Now that this man had lied to me in this way, I could have told the most blatant lies myself. My fanatical belief in truthfulness had disappeared in thin air. Q: When you were interrogated you had had no official notice that your husband had been executed. I can imagine that this situation was not a simple one for you.

A: Yes, only Poelchau had told me that my husband was dead. Without knowing it himself, he had seen me for the first time on the day of the execution; however, he arrived when I had reached another ‘emotional low’ and therefore tried to be gentle with me. He said that he did not believe that the civilians were being tried as yet. They were still dealing with the military officers. That night I found myself kneeling on my bed for the first and last time to pray. I do not know the hour of his death, but it must have been around the same time, between eight and nine o’clock.

When I was interrogated, I was in constant fear that I might betray Poelchau. The policeman was not to deduce from my behaviour that I already knew of my husband’s death. And when he told me Isomehow managed to tremble; my teeth were rattling so

that I was taken aback myself. I was as if paralysed when he revealed to me that my husband had been condemned to die by the People’s Court and so on. My reaction at this point was independent of my mind. Q: The conversations with Pastor Poelchau have been very helpful to you. Who else provided consolation and how?

A: Initially I was involved only with people I knew. There was

a young woman in the cell next door who was from France or Holland. And when she saw me cry she said in order to console me: ‘Everything ends one day.’ It was touching that there was someone who noticed how sad I was. At the beginning of August

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— and in any case after the 9th — Marion was put into the cell next

door. When we were let out for exercise she suddenly stepped out of her cell. I burst into tears and was unable to contain them.

It was a good and intimate neighbourliness even though we could not exchange more than a few words when our contingent

of prisoners was led down a narrow stairwell to the yard for exercise in the morning. When Marion whispered: ‘Peter is dead’,

I told myself that I had already known it. My husband had told me that Peter had been arrested on 20 July and this was tantamount to receiving a death sentence. Of course I did not mention anything to Marion. Later on Clarita was put into the cell above me and since the upper level had its exercise at a different hour from ours, I could see Clarita do her rounds in the yard if I stood on top of my sewing machine. These were our little pleasures. Then, on Friday 29 September, Michaelis arrived. In the afternoon Mady Freytag von Loringhoven shouted from the fourth storey across the prison yard: ‘I have been released and so has Frau von Treskow, and the children will also return.’ This was the signal for us and on Saturday morning, after we had cleaned our cells, we were taken to the interrogation room. There was hardly any time. I forgot my coat and had to go back to fetch it. When I reached the staircase Clarita and Annedore Leber were standing

there. This was a hopeful sign. If three people were called in together it couldn’t be too bad, I thought to myself. On the way to Meinecke-Strafe the official accompanying us remarked that better times would soon come; soon the sun would also be smiling and one almost had the hunch that we were being taken for our release. QO: After the interrogation you were simply told ‘You can leave now’?

A: Yes, we were indeed sent home that Saturday. Like a miracle and by sheer coincidence my mother had come to Berlin that day, and so I travelled to Mecklenburg with her in the afternoon. Clarita

and my sister-in-law took us to the train station. The train was completely overcrowded and, sitting among total strangers, we reported on our experiences in prison. It was an affectionate hour on the train to Neustrelitz. Q: Your children were waiting at home and you had to talk to them about your husband’s death?

A: Yes, it was a difficult task to tell them. I could not tell them

that their father had been hanged, so I merely said that he had

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been executed. But Dirk, who was ten at the time, immediately asked: ‘Mama, what does “executed” mean?’ And I then told them after all. Later I spoke with people who had strong opinions about whether this had been the right thing to do. I thought the little ones would slowly grow into it; however, it weighed very heavily on Dirk. Many months later, in January or February 1945 Dirk was in bed with fever and tonsillitis and suddenly he burst out: ‘Mama, I cannot understand why daddy had to suffer that death. That was a punishment. How can God allow a good person like Pansing to die like that?’ I replied: ‘We cannot understand it, we can only have trust’, and then I reminded him that Christ also had to die on the cross. The Bible says that no one has greater love than the person who gives his life for his friends. These were the supports that we were able to give to ourselves. But for me it was no less difficult to understand. If even Christ had called out on the cross, ‘My God, my God why hast thou for-

saken me’, how could our husbands face this kind of death? When our old friend Kurt Hahn saw me again in 1945, he confessed to me that he had been baptised after 20 July; for he had recognised that these men were capable of their actions only through the power of the Christian faith. Salem had been a school

based purely on humanism; thenceforth, he said, the Christian faith would be at its centre. Q: Do you believe that you have a different relationship with death?

A: Well, it is impossible to say in advance if you will have the same terrible fear at that point. QO: Have you retained your strong faith to this day?

A: My daughter Ulrike has asked me the same question: whether

my faith was really still alive. C.G. Jung once said: ‘The older I grow the less I am able to speak about my faith, but I feel as if 1am carried by it.’ That is how I also feel today, but oddly it was more possible to speak about it in those earlier days. Our housekeeper, old Frau Jankowski, confessed to me at the end of the war that she

had prayed in those night-time air raid when the bombs were crashing all around us: ‘Dear Herr von Haeften, plead for us.’ All

of a sudden you can connect with this prayer, and it provides a bridge. And yet I have to confess that time and again I have been bowled over, and when I attended a service I often found it impossible to hold back my tears. However, if I was despondent, it never lasted for long. I soon got over of it.

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Q: Do you feel anger at times against your own generation — those people who maintained that they, too, had been wishing for a successful move against Hitler, but never contributed anything themselves?

A: No. I am too aware of the individual’s entanglements with his environment. That’s also why my idea of heroism and heroes is different. There were those men who deliberated and planned

and who were prepared to give their lives and also to leave us alone; but it is not for everyone. Q: No reproaches?

A: No, I do not think of myself as someone without flaws either. Q: How did you deal with the danger of hero worship?

A: Jan, my eldest son, once scolded me: “You are turning daddy’s words into a doctrine.’ He was a mere fourteen then and there was a danger that he might be kept back at Salem for the second time. That’s when I reminded him of what his father once said, namely that he should at all costs get his Abitur in classics. During the Christmas break and without my knowledge he then got the entire family to side with him, and Jan began a commercial apprenticeship a year later. All this left me thunderstruck at the time. Q: Did you admire your husband?

A: I certainly did not admire him, but I was happy that he developed in this direction. Q: You did not receive your husband’s farewell letter until very late, in February 1945. In tt he wrote: ‘I did not hold the Fifth Commandment as sacred (although I once used it to restrain Werner). Above all I did not give much love to you who were entrusted to me. I should have distanced myself, for your sakes, for mummy’s and the parents’ sakes. Please tell them ... that I ask them most sincerely to forgive me.” What I think is important in these lines is that your husband put his conflict into terms of having had to choose between his political mission and his family.

A: Well, you cannot quite put it like that; when should he have made a decision? Q: Do you live in the past? A:I don’t think so; my family is too large for this. I have five children and fourteen grandchildren and I live all their lives intensively

with them. No, I do not live in the past; nor do I mourn it. But it is alive inside me, you will perhaps have noticed. Talking about their

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father never stopped. A friend of my daughter Adda once remarked that I had a feeling as if their father was always included. That’s a very beautiful observation. QO: What image of their father did you transmit to your children?

A: The elder ones still witnessed how despondent he was during the final years and also how susceptible he was health-wise. He was physically a fragile person and was frequently ill. The Hitler regime took an enormous toll on him. A Berlin internist took the view that there was nothing wrong organically and that my husband was merely exhausted. That is why he prescribed ‘elating experiences’. Later we have often repeated these words. ‘Elating experiences’ — that’s precisely what was lacking. Later on Adda, my eldest daughter, was pained by the fact that her schoolmates had fathers and she didn’t have one. That’s when I realised for the first time how important it was to have a father — especially for girls of that age. Q: The ‘children of 20 July’ grew up primarily among women.

A: All my children found their life partners relatively early on. My own brothers’ and sisters’ children, for example, took much

longer to emancipate themselves from their parents. After all, from the beginning we gave them much more responsibility. If I merely think of how, during the early post-war years, I burdened my son Jan with my worries and difficulties. Jan and our old Pastor Wesemann -— they were the only confidants I had once my parents had to leave Mecklenburg in the autumn of 1945. Perhaps my

children were better equipped for life than others after they had had to take responsibility very early on. Q: Did you have to start a completely new life after the war?

A: It never started completely fresh but rather grew further. Q: In 1946 you moved to Lake Constance into the vicinity of Salem,

where your sons went to school. What was your source of income at this time? A: After my husband’s death I was given mercy payments, four

hundred marks for myself and one hundred per child, all in all nine hundred marks. One day I was told by a senior SS officer to go to the Adlon Hotel in Berlin and he informed me that my husband’s assets had been confiscated; however, I would receive mercy payments for myself and my children. Marion later told

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me that these payments were not honourable and that she would

not have accepted them. I had no compunctions about taking the money. I failed to see why my parents were now supposed to pay for everything. With the end of Nazi rule the payments also stopped. From 1946 to 1950 I lived in a remote castle near Radolfzell, which my father’s brother had leased. This uncle had a large farm a few kilometres away and it was from there that I received more or less all my provisions. In order to obtain a pension from the Foreign Office, I had to be de-Nazified. My husband had persuaded me during our time in Bucharest to join the Nazi Women’s League, since his own situation was so uncomfortable and precarious that my refusal to join would have made matters worse. It was not just that I had lost my husband; I now had to submit to peculiar endorsements. We had helped to collect ration cards with which a woman by the name of Jacob supported Jews who had gone into hiding. She wrote a letter stating that I had not been a Nazi. Q: Do you think the legacy of the Widerstand is being properly valued in the Federal Republic of Germany?

A: I cannot really judge this. But I believe that most people had

thought in terms of a much deeper caesura. Whether this could have prevented Adenauer’s policy, I do not know. During the rearmament debate in the 1950s Clarita Trott and I once wrote a piece for the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung. On the occasion of some university ceremony, one of the professors had asserted that the ‘heroes

of 20 July would be glad to see Germany gaining recognition as well as an army’. We were indignant that they wanted to use the names of our husbands in support of rearmament. Q: Did you feel a desire to do more for your husband?

A: Perhaps I did too little and did not look after such matters. In 1946 Ricarda Huch put an appeal into the papers asking the families of the Widerstand to send her reports. She wanted to write a book on the resistance fighters in whom she saw models for future generations. Unfortunately this project never materialised. I visited her in Freiburg where she lived at the time with her daughter. Perhaps I was too lazy and could have put myself out bit more

here and there. But what could I have changed? I was probably also too impatient and would have given myself away too easily. If discussions with people I did not know took a turn that I did not like, I quickly retorted, “My husband was killed in connection

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with 20 July’, and after that people lapsed into silence. My contacts with my friends were very important to me in the period after the war, with Marion Yorck, Clarita Trott and Hans’ sister, Elisabeth Harmsen. Q: And Freya Moltke, the mother of a subsequent son-in-law?

A: I met Freya only in March 1946, and there is no doubt that she was among the people who were important to me. Gogo Nostitz had sent her to me with a diphtheria vaccine. QO: With hindsight, how do you view the years with your husband today?

A: As a thoroughly happy period. For one thing, and unlike the other women, I was with him almost all the time. We felt privileged because Hans was not drafted into the army. It was quite a worry when he had to appear before the draft board. He was not a strict anti-militarist. Fortunately the Foreign Office classified him as ‘indispensable’. Q: And your own role?

A: I was merely a support for him. No doubt I gave him help, thanks to my ‘intrepid and cheerful nature’. He was a much more

profound thinker and I recognised from the start that he was heading in the right direction. I agreed with him, in a naive way perhaps, but I was a prop for him. Thus he wrote in one of his letters: ‘You must come soon with your intrepid cheerfulness that cannot be toppled.’ He was particularly sensitive about the atrocities that he heard of, and it tormented him that it all took so long. The “elating expe-

riences’ that his doctor had prescribed for him finally existed in his family circle. This circle imposed no pressure or restraint. And this is what fortified him.

Chapter Ten

CLARITA VON TROTT ZU SOLZ

4 DE

C larita von Trott zuofSolz wasTiefenbacher, born in Hamburg in 1917, the eldest daughter Dr Max a lawyer, and his wife Clarita. She lived with her three brothers and sisters in Ham-

burg until she obtained her Abitur. She then made several trips abroad, worked on a farm and took various courses, including stenography. She first met Adam von Trott at the end of 1935. They later fell in love and married in the spring of 1940.

Adam was born in Potsdam in 1909, the fifth of August zu Trott’s eight children. His father subsequently became Prussian Minister of Culture. He grew up in Potsdam, Kassel and at the family estate at Imshausen before beginning his law studies at G6ttingen. He received his LL.D. in 1931 for his thesis ‘Hegel’s Philosophy of State and International Law’. Following this, he spent two years as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford where he made many lasting friendships with leading British politicians, especially those in the Labour Party. From 1937 until the end of 1938, he travelled to China via the United States. From 1940 he worked in the information department of the German Foreign Office where he was promoted to the position of Legationsrat in 1943. The political connections he established were mainly with socialists, though he never lost his respect

for his conservative family, whose values remained rooted in Prussianism. During the year Adam had spent in the Far East, he studied Chinese thought and tried to reach a decision on how a patriotic German should react to National Socialism. In 1939 he wrote a memorandum for Hitler relating to discussions with the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax about his

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government’s attitude towards Germany’s foreign policy. The idea was to prevent the expected invasion of Poland. In 1940 Adam and

Clarita moved into an apartment in Berlin-Dahlem where their daughter Verena was born in 1942 and Clarita a year later.

Like his friend and superior Hans-Bernd von Haeften, Adam zu Trott took part in the discussions of the Kreisau Circle from the spring of 1941 onwards. His official trips to Switzerland, the Neth-

erlands and Sweden afforded him opportunities to inform the Allies, with the approval of the Kreisauers, of the plans of the antiNazi opposition.

But the hope of obtaining tangible promises concerning the conditions of peace to be offered to a new German government after the removal of Hitler remained unfulfilled. Trott befriended Stauffenberg in 1943 and renewed his efforts to gain concessions from the Allies in the context of the latter’s plans for a coup. Once again he failed, as did his attempt to make contact with the Soviet ambassador in Stockholm in June 1944. He was arrested on 25 July 1944 and executed in Plétzensee on 26 August. Clarita, trying to escape the bombing raids on Berlin, moved to

the Imshausen family estate with her two daughters. She was imprisoned in Berlin from 17 August to 30 September 1944 under the Nazi Sippenhaft clause. After the war she worked for the Quak-

ers in Berlin, before she began to study medicine in 1950. She obtained her medical doctorate in 1955. From 1960 onwards, she

worked as a psychotherapist, at first in Hamburg and later in Berlin where she practised psychoanalysis.

Interview Q: You were born in Hamburg. How did you grow up?

A: I was born in 1917, the eldest of four children. My father was

at the front, and my mother lived with her parents in Hamburg until the end of the war. I grew up in Reinbek, which was then a village on the outskirts of Hamburg in a very rural setting. Our back garden bordered on a wood. Both in my daily life and emotionally I was rooted in Catholicism on my father’s side. The fact that my mother had insisted on our being raised in the Protestant faith did

not disturb the warmth in which we were raised. I loved school, which was only ten minutes from home in the middle of the fields. I had joined the BDM Nazi girls’ organisation as a precaution to enable me to go to university. In 1934 it was still a harmless associ-

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ation, but was so boring that week after week I thought up fresh excuses in order to avoid going. Once I had left school, they never saw me again. Under no conditions was | prepared to join a similar organisation again; but I would have had to have done so, if I had gone to university. Perhaps I also came to realise that in 1936 it was

no longer possible just to be a member. In the end my father’s wishes prevailed. He, like other adults in the family and friends, wanted me to marry as soon as possible — preferably the son of a respected Hamburgian family. I remember his words: ‘If you study your eyes will become red from reading too much, and then no one will want to marry you.’ It was only gradually that I was able to escape this influence. First I went to Cambridge to polish up my English; then I took up stenography and typing, which stood me in good stead later on. Thereafter, instead of joining the Labour Service, I worked on a fruit farm in the Saarland for a year. It was only now that I was given permission — my parents’ qualms and objections notwithstanding — to move to Berlin for six months. ‘Here in

Hamburg everyone knows who you are’, they argued, ‘but we hardly have any friends in Berlin. You do not have a well-known name and have no money. You will regret having left everything behind here.’ I think I felt like Chechov’s ‘Three Sisters’ who longed for Moscow, and Berlin was the place for me.

I was lucky to find an interesting circle of young people. When the six months were almost up I happened to run into Peter Bielenberg, an old friend from Hamburg. We met and through him I got to know Adam who, much to my surprise, wanted to take me to a political discussion that Peter had arranged for that same evening. Q: Did you know Trott before?

A: Adam had asked me to dance a few years earlier at a ball in Hamburg, and he had stayed on my mind since then. When I saw him and listened to what he was saying that evening, it somehow

clicked. Social ills that were simply accepted as given had depressed me, even when I lived in the sheltered world of my childhood. In the meantime the entire nation was tumbling toward the abyss. And now for the first time I met people who wanted to do something about this. The idea of Widerstand was thus inseparably linked with our incipient friendship from the start. Q: You then stayed in Berlin?

A: I found myself a small job and stayed for as long as I could manage. At the end of August 1939, about two weeks before the

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outbreak of war, I had to go back to Hamburg. I sensed that I might never see Adam again. He wanted to go to the United States, and I just could not imagine that he would ever come back. He left in September 1939. Q: He worked at the Institute for Pacific Relations in New York and tried to gain support for the German resistance movement. He returned to Germany in the spring of 1940.

A: Yes, at the beginning of March 1940. We got engaged when

we first met again in April. He felt that he needed a wife if he were to return to Germany voluntarily and begin a dangerous tightrope walk. He needed a home to which he could retire from his hectic life, where he could relax, gather his thoughts and gain new strength. ‘She understands what is most important to me in life and will help me to fight for it’, he wrote to his mother. Of course, it was due in part to this understanding that I tried to look

after his material well-being despite the war. But above all he needed me as a sounding-board when he got home. Thus he did not like me reading while he was sitting at his writing desk. My mother-in-law told me that she had had similar experiences and that she had become used to knitting in order to be able to respond

at any time. Later I was depressed that I remembered so little of our discussions. But I understood him well enough to ask questions, to raise objections and to make a contribution. However, | lacked the background knowledge that would have enabled me to contextualise his thoughts. QO: I am assuming that large parts of these conversations were about politics. How did you yourself see the political development in Germany?

A: If you were to ask me what I thought before I met Adam, I would have to say that for me politics was something to which one was subjected and which took place in an inaccessible sphere. All one could do was reconcile oneself to the impact, for example by turning to the arts or by committing oneself to a humanitarian cause. It was only during that summer with Adam and Peter Bielenberg that I grew into the Widerstand. Up to that point my views

of the world had been shaped by my father, who became an important person in my life when I was about fourteen — around the time of the so-called Nazi Machtergreifung. He was very widely read, from the arts to modern physics, from philosophy to theology and, above all, history; and he incorporated his hatred of the Nazis into essays and three historic dramas. For as long as I could

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remember, my father had been a political pessimist. He predicted a civil war in the 1920s, and in 1933 he remarked: ‘This means war within five years.” Thus my mother and the rest of us saw catastrophe just around the corner all the time, and each fresh piece of

evidence of Hitler’s arrogance and megalomania deepened our premonitions of future, even greater misfortune. QO: What was it that you felt was being threatened? Was it the violence that threatened civil society? Was it the Hamburgian notion of tolerance that was thought to be at risk?

A: Yes, in this respect my family was atypical of the ‘unbroken world’ of Hamburgian merchants. As far as Iam concerned, I still remember youths rioting on the train. That was at the beginning of February 1933. They were wearing Hitler Youth shirts and proceeded to demolish the compartments. They gave one the feeling

that ‘now we are allowed to do it; this is our turn’. The second experience I had after 30 January 1933 was that the two best teachers at my school, both of them nice men and good educators,

fell for the Nazis. One of them was probably a follower of the German Nationalist People’s Party. He suddenly got up during an assembly completely red in the face and thumped the lectern with his fists. All I remember was that we had to shout something about ‘workers’ and again ‘workers’. It was clear that he had been struck by some thunderbolt. To be sure, we did not know exactly why he was so excited; but one sensed that he had lost his bearings. The other teacher later occasionally donned his storm trooper uniform. I can still see the brown shirt before my eyes. It did not

tally at all with his usual demeanour. This was all disquieting and disappointing. However, all in all the realities of the Third Reich touched me, but only vaguely for as long as I was a high school student. Q: You were seventeen or eighteen then. How did you see Hitler at this stage?

A: He scared me. I had been born during the First World War. My father had been at the Western Front for four years. Due to the Allied blockade there was starvation during the so-called ‘turnip winter’ and my mother told us later that she had had to eat huge amounts of porridge to produce enough milk for me. All this was still very recent. So everything inside me rose up against a dictator who was provoking the entire world and whose voice already made me cringe. I consciously experienced his unpredictability,

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the blood bath of the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ on 30 June 1934,

the constant violations of international agreements, the Nuremberg racial laws. This was bound to end badly. I thought: ‘All can see it, but no one is prepared to take action against it.’ QO: If I may take this up: “All can see it and no one takes action.” From

the start your husband-to-be belonged to those who did not just analyse the situation, but who tried actively to influence events. You said that you gained this impression on the first evening.

A: That’s certainly true. My husband was not an intellectual who lost his footing. Professor Winkelmann, who took part in that evening later described to me how Adam ended each analysis of

a particular problem with the question: ‘What are the consequences; what is to be done?’ Adam said at times that his quest was to find the right mix between a vita activa and a vita comtemplativa. In this respect his trip to the Far East meant much to him. QO: What would you say were your husband’s dominant character traits?

A: That’s difficult to say. Perhaps a sense of responsibility and

courage, combined with openness and tolerance. Also love of humanity, if you do not misunderstand this. And you must picture him, as he wanders through the forests of his region, with his shotgun over his shoulder, looking for deer and, as he put it in his long penultimate letter, ‘seeing, hearing, and smelling all of Nature’s movements, sounds and scents’. He felt fortified when he

scanned the rolling hills, the fields and meadows. Much more should be said about his parents than is possible here, if one wants

to highlight the basic theme of his life: his sense of political responsibility. His mother, who came from a prominent American family of Huguenots, worked for social causes and was active in her church. She influenced him just as much as the tolerant authority and the dignified seriousness of his father. Before he introduced me to his mother, he took me to his father’s grave. Both families were characteristically committed to public service and civil courage.

I have often asked myself how it was that my husband made such an indelible impression on innumerable people even though he met them no more than briefly. I imagine it was his lively and somehow enquiring interest in his discussion partners that opened them up to him. This may have had the effect that they saw themselves in a new light. Adam was not afraid of approaching people. On the contrary, he sought intensive human contact — with villagers

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as much as with his fraternity friends, Communists or socialists, with young diplomats and older politicians, with the Jews in the village of Solz, with Chinese scholars and many others. Quite frequently, these encounters resulted in friendships. He was convinced that he had to join a political grouping, but basically he put his trust in friendships. QO: Was it difficult for you to adjust to your husband?

A: Well, he was considerably older, by more than eight years. That was bound to have an impact on our relationship. I also had to get used to the fact that he came from a different world than my

own. It seems typical that I first thought it too obedient when Adam went away ‘on duty’; and he jokingly referred to my ‘greedy merchant’ background when I teased him that he was going ‘to the office’. He also handled his daily chores in a different way to that which I was used to. My father was an attorney and completed his business promptly. At weekends he often came home with piles of

papers, which he then ploughed through. My husband, by contrast, left important letters that required a reply lying around for weeks. He was not someone who sat down and got something out of the way. Rather he followed his inner clock. What I observed in this respect may perhaps be explained in terms of the fact that he could not ignore the complexity of problems and that he knew how much ignorance or lack of comprehension could backfire. He was astonishingly well able to stand up to stress. If I am not mistaken, this was something he acquired early on. It helped him to gain a comprehensive understanding of origins and motives when he had to deal with human conflicts or substantive issues. And this in turn made it possible for him, in combination with his good intuition, to react coolly in complicated situations. Q: Did you feel that you were included in his decision-making processes?

A: Yes and no. It was important to him to learn what I thought of his ideas and plans. However different we may have been, at a fundamental level we were — if I may put it like this — cut from the

same cloth. And he valued what I —- knowing him and yet removed from his work — was able to contribute to his vexing everyday problems. This should be obvious from all that I have said so far.

Perhaps I should add that my husband did much to enable me to catch up with his view of things. This may have been the most valuable thing about our relationship. If I could not agree with

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him on a particular point, he was very concerned to understand my objections. We then discussed this for a long time until my qualms were dissolved in the deeper and broader perspectives that he had developed. Q: Someone has testified that your husband possessed a “pinch of inhumanity’. What is the meaning of this? A: You are probably thinking of Albrecht von Kessel’s remark that Adam possessed a “pinch of inhumanity’ that is characteristic

of all significant figures. Anyone who achieves a lot is bound to organise his life in terms of this achievement. This imposes certain

limitations upon one’s own life, and also upon those of one’s friends. Still, I find it paradoxical to see Adam of all people as a hard man. As many people have stated quite independently, his

warmth and the natural way in which he showed his affection made him a ‘genius at making friends’. It was Kessel, himself a close and very sensitive friend, who has given an almost hymnic description of his last meeting with Adam. I also remember that I had to take quite a lot of criticism at first. After all, we still had to grow together. I would like to recount an anecdote after which you will understand why I was able to accept his lessons without getting depressed. At the very beginning of our marriage I once lost the ration cards for our food entitlement for the coming weeks. I thought this was a disaster and felt paralysed and downtrodden. I confessed to Adam without delay, but he

merely put his arm around me and consoled me. I don’t think there are many people who would have reacted like this. QO: What concrete knowledge did you have of his activities and plans?

A: I feel that I knew everything, even if I did not have a detailed knowledge of his plans for action. Thus it was only after the war

that I heard about the group associated with Treskow at Heereseruppe Mitte. It is difficult to imagine nowadays how far the silence and the precautionary measures had to go. At the very beginning of our marriage I had naively told my parents that our friend Peter Bielenberg was making common cause with Adam at the Foreign Office. After all, they knew him well and I was glad to be able to report on something of mutual interest. The news was spread quickly and no less naively: how come Peter is in the Foreign Office, and what is he doing with Trott? This could have become very awkward, and I was rightly reproached for my remark.

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Q: When, for the first time, did you have a sense that your husband's work was a danger to his life?

A: There was always a basic fear. Thus my husband had an office car, a tiny Fiat Topolino. It gave the impression that my husband, who was 6 feet 6 inches tall, could have carried it under his arm. Of course, he was strictly forbidden from using it for private purposes. However, Adam drove to his evening discussions in it — to the Yorcks in Hortensien-StraBe, to the von Haeftens and others. I would have preferred to walk, fearing that we might be stopped by a police patrol. And what would we have said then? My hus-

band said: ‘Oh, I'll think of something.’ And indeed he always did. Adam also took risks during his trips abroad that scared me stiff. He once told me that he had visited Elizabeth Wiskeman, a British liaison in Berne, and that a policeman had been outside her house. ‘Who knows’, he said half jokingly, ‘whether that was an

intelligence agent.’ Since it was know that connections existed between all intelligence services around the world, he did not succeed in calming me. I took my bike and rode to Hans Haeften to obtain a second opinion. He told me of another uncomfortable situation during his visit to Sweden in the autumn of 1943. He had been forced to hide for hours in the corridor outside his British contact’s apartment because the latter had had an unexpected visitor. It was Harold Nicholson, a

mutual friend, who was not supposed to know about Adam. I implored him to make certain that none of this reached the Gestapo.

‘You can be certain’, he said, ‘that I take every thinkable precautionary measure. But there is a level of caution that jeopardises the plan for the sake of which one is being cautious. It is inevitable that I put my head in the noose whenever I go abroad.’

Of course we always had the telephone covered by a tea-cosy when he talked; but we had no idea about how the bugging mechanism worked and how we could protect ourselves against it. Even within our own four walls there remained a residue of insecurity. QO: What was your role within your husband’s resistance circle?

A: You seem to think that we all had specific tasks. Q: Yes, one thinks all too easily that everything was well organised.

A: Well, if we had tried to organise even more, we would have been caught very quickly. The notion that the Widerstand was well organised may hold true of the military and the Communists. The civilian resistance was able to get as far as it did only because it

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was flexible and disorganised. As far as I could see, it acted as a circle of friends that was predicated on personal commitment and mutual trust. In order for our husbands to be able to devote themselves fully to the Widerstand, we women had to back them up, at least on the domestic front. It was part of this role that we did not know more

names than was necessary. Even among friends we used code names, such as ‘the uncle’ for Leuschner. During one of my last visits to Berlin Adam told me that there was no time for me to get to know the Lebers, although I would probably get on particularly well with his wife. But I thought my husband was using a code name — ‘Labour’ — for a prominent socialist. In his letters I find code names such as ‘Sea Lion’, ‘Pea Uncle’, ‘Eva’s Sister’,

‘the Children’, ‘the other Peter’, and the like. Writing from Imshausen, I once suggested a system to my husband by which we would simply call our friends ‘head’, ‘heart’, ‘shoulder’, and so on. Adam invented a story about his health as a way of telling me about political developments in his circle of friends. For a short while this worked fairly well. Another anecdote belongs to this context. Barbara Haeften once wrote to me: ‘Oh, if only we had reached the point at which we would use the familiar “Du’!’ I responded enthusiastically in the sense of “Why not here and

now?’. It was only much later that I learned what she in fact meant, i.e. that we would use the familiar ‘Du’ as soon as Hitler was dead. Our role was therefore primarily to use caution and to avoid anything that might attract attention. This included giving up virtually everything that might be called one’s private life. QO: Why did you remain — like many other women — primarily your

husband's wife even though by temperament you were activists? Was this due to the spirit of the age?

A: Of course it was the age in which we lived, and most likely it was possible only because of the men who were involved. But since the question is asked so frequently, I occasionally ask myself if there will always be situations in which one spouse must somehow be subordinate to the other. I believe I have made the observation that major public achievements are also dependent upon the quality of the person’s marriage. It may be impossible that both spouses can devote themselves simultaneously with equal energy to their jobs without either the marriage or the jobs suffering. What is missing in these situations is the ‘stoic centre’.

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Q: You said earlier that you had to leave Berlin. When was this and where did you go?

A: This was in May 1943. I was pregnant at the time. At the end

of the winter we suddenly experienced major air raids. My husband felt that we owed it to our children to protect them against shocks that they would never get over. Naturally, I wanted to be as close to Berlin as possible. The Brosigs offered us an apartment in the manager’s house on their Grof-Behnitz estate. We had spent

many enjoyable weekends there with other friends. It seemed to be an ideal solution. But just before our move my husband was suddenly firmly convinced that we should go to Imshausen, his home. It proved very difficult for me. However, we soon saw how right he had been in his unshakable conviction about this change of heart: the apartment that had been earmarked for us was requisitioned for the Swedish Embassy, and soon after our arrival at Imshausen a new wave of refugees arrived from the Saarland to whom all the remaining space was allocated. Also, after the coup on 20 July we would have been a life-threatening presence for any friend who had taken us in. Q: As a result of this you followed your husband's activities no more than sporadically?

A: What troubled me most was that our exchange of ideas was disrupted. We must not forget the censorship. As Adam once remarked, we had to find the material for our exchange of news from outside of our daily work. There were times when I was afraid that the many experiences that could not be mentioned might grow into a dividing mountain between us. I remember that I asked him to

keep a route open for me along which I could quickly find him again. And by ‘finding again’ I meant noticing and understanding the changes that our forced separation had brought about. Q: And what happened in the days prior to 20 July?

A: Basically he made repeated allusions to the impending coup.

Around Easter 1944 he spoke of two important changes; one of them was the appearance of a ‘fiery young officer’ due to whom the stalled preparations for the coup had been given a new lease of

life. I am certain that he was speaking of Stauffenberg. When | asked him indirectly at the beginning of July why it had not been possible to get Moltke — who had been arrested six months previously — out of prison, Adam replied in part: “The seeds are now

germinating everywhere and heavy clouds have appeared on all

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horizons. This is the time to test and prepare one’s heart for final decisions.’ And on 19 July he wrote: ‘It may be a long time during the next few weeks before you get news from me.’ It was a deeply moving letter that was permeated by a both a sense of farewell and the hope for the fulfilment of a great goal. The letter arrived on 21 July, and I could copy and keep no more than a few lines; the letter itself was destroyed immediately. Q: Do you remember what you did on 20 July?

A: Yes, very clearly. I had not yet received his letter, which was

supposed to prepare me. Oddly enough, however, it was precisely that morning that I called him, for the first time without a specific reason. Just for fun, as you could say. Underlying this was a sense that soon it might no longer be possible to use the telephone. He later told a relative that he took all of this as a sign of a wordless bond. Something totally different then happened around lunch-time. One of the village dogs had gobbled up a cake that I had made for my brother from irreplaceable iron rations. We expected him to arrive in the afternoon on a leave from the Italian theatre. I was genuinely upset and complained to the owner of the dog. This

was at about the same time as the bomb plot failed at Wolfsschanze. I still feel ashamed at my ignorance whenever I think about the trivialities that agitated me on that day. In the evening I showed my brother round the village, pushing the pram and holding two-year-old Verena by the hand, when one of the farm workers passed by and asked if I had already heard about the Attentat on the Fithrer. However, he added, the Ftihrer had survived. I knew immediately: ‘This is it.’ I had to hide my feelings at that moment, but also quickly calculated that Adam, as a civilian, had probably not yet become involved and hence there was a slim chance that he might get away. In fact we were able to talk on the phone every day thereafter, but of course only with the utmost caution. I had written to him in a coded letter that I did not expect any explanations. As I learned later on, this apparently made him very happy. His long-planned vacation in Imshausen was to begin on the following weekend. On 25 July he sent Emma, his maid, as the advance guard, as it were. He probably wanted to prevent this elderly woman from being subjected to interrogation. I collected her in a horse-drawn cart from Bebra railway station. I froze when during the ride she began to talk about the one-armed officer who had frequently visited

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Herr von Trott. Since she was deaf and thus spoke very loudly, the

coachman was able to overhear everything. I quickly had to change the topic of conversation. Q: When was your husband arrested?

A: On 25 July, that same day. I had been meaning to telephone him to tell him of Emma’s safe arrival the following morning. But

the reply was: ‘The connection has been made, but there is no reply.’ I then spent the entire hot and beautiful summer day next to the telephone, using some pretext or other. On 27 July my brotherin-law Werner called very early and said simply: “Adam is ill.” And I replied: ‘Tam leaving without delay.’ And so I travelled to Berlin. Q: I am sure that you were hoping to see your husband one more time and therefore knew what the coded message from your brother-inlaw meant?

A: Of course. However, I felt totally lost in Berlin. I had calculated that I could not visit or even call anyone without endangering that person. I truly don’t remember a thing about those frightful days. They have been deleted from my memory. I could not do anything off my own bat, such as making enquiries with the authorities; I had to stay alive for the sake of my little daughter.

Only later did I ask myself why I had not followed my heart and gone to my husband in Berlin straight away on 21 July. I believe that we all felt caught in such a tight net of surveillance that we avoided any movements that would arouse suspicion. There is yet another question: Why did I only speak about Adam to my brother-in-law until I was myself arrested? That I kept even

the most trustworthy relatives in the dark is probably rooted in the same, almost instinctive realisation that others could not learn immediately how to put up the necessary facade. Q: You travelled to Berlin for a second time?

A: Yes, my brother-in-law collected me at Imshausen on 11

August; he had learned that the trial would take place on 12 August. It was a miracle that Werner had retained his freedom. We were hoping that it might be possible to get through to Adam. On the morning of the trial — it was by then Tuesday, 15 August —

Werner came to say that I could not go back to the apartment because a warrant had been issued against me. While I packed my

toothbrush, nightgown and umbrella, I noticed that my tongue was sticking to my palate. I remembered a psalm of David that

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describes the same reaction, and I thought, that’s how scared you are. I had evidently not been conscious of it up to this point. We

met with Alexander Werth, who then took me to the Superior Court building where the trial by the People’s Court was being held. On the way, Alexander Werth told me that the children had been taken and sent to an unknown destination. I can still see that

moment. I knew that I had to choose between losing control of myself or forcing myself to forget. It helped me that I still had to see Adam and so I walked on as if half dead. In the court building I asked a woman for directions to the trial chamber. I ended up in a corridor with two enormous doors in the distance, each guarded by two sentries. Freisler’s evil and loud voice was audible from the inside. I hoped to be able to wait behind the columns until the

defendants were led out. But a woman had followed me and attracted the attention of two of the sentries to me. I was called over. Who was I? Identification, please! I have always been reluc-

tant to repeat my exact words during the fifty years that have elapsed since then because they sound so melodramatic. I said: ‘I am an unhappy person. And you are a good person. And now I'll disappear again.’ What I meant to say was: ‘I am a relative and have nothing dangerous on my mind. You can’t reconcile it with your self-image to harm me. You want to be a good person. I will not cause you any further trouble.’ Then a miracle happened. I got my ID back, and the man went with me to show me the exit. He mumbled: ‘We sympathise with everything.’ Encouraged by this, I said that I would very much like to see my husband again. He led me to a window from where we could see a prison van parked in the courtyard. I went a step further and said that my husband would never see me up here. The man actually wanted to take me to another window, but the woman was following us again and I had to leave. Today I keep asking myself why I hoped to have a calming effect on Adam in this place of horror. Subsequently, I

applied to the People’s Court for a visiting permit, which was refused on Thursday. Through a number of fortunate coincidences I then succeeded in seeing Harald Poelchau, the minister at Tegel prison. He was unable to deliver my farewell letter, but he advised

me, with good reason, to go underground. However, I felt incapable of doing so. QO: When were you arrested?

A: On Thursday 17 August. Paradoxically I felt a sense of relief when the prison door closed behind me. It seemed more tolerable

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to me to be behind tangible bars and walls instead of desperately and vainly searching for solutions in pseudo-freedom outside. Of course I tried not to think of the children. And yet it was a good time at heart; all the women knew about each other. We recognised each other during our daily walk in the prison yard. We felt

closer than ever before. By comparison the nights with the air raids, when we were kept locked up in our cells, became less important — as did the cockroaches and the hunger, at least during

those six weeks that I spent there. All I was scared of were the interrogations, but I was spared those. Q: When did you see your children again?

A: Contrary to all pessimistic expectations, only one week after

my release. Barbara Haeften, Annedore Leber and I were suddenly released on 30 September. Even today we do not know why this happened. I had learned through Poelchau that a physician,

Frau Dr Westrick, was very close to finding out about the children’s whereabouts. She knew that they were in a Children’s Home. I stayed in Berlin in order to stay on their trail, if at all pos-

sible. I then learned that the children had been taken back to Imshausen. Little two-year-old Verena had gone into the house through the kitchen door announcing: ‘Here I am again!’ However, for three years after we were reunited I found it impossible to

console her. She sobbed without interruption. Later I heard that they had been given the names Gretel and Berta Steinke in the Children’s Home. Q: When did you first talk to your children about your husband's death?

A: I certainly did not broach this topic on my own initiative. It

was a fact for the children that they were growing up without their father. Adam’s many friends and my family who helped take care of the children have mitigated this irreplaceable loss. And I was quite proud when Verena asked me at age thirteen: ‘Mum,

what actually happened on 20 July? All I know about it I have learned from Brigitte.” This was a classmate whose father was a history teacher at her school. It meant that I had not been overfeeding the children with their father’s historical role. Q: And you yourself, with whom did you talk about these things?

A: It’s odd that you should ask that question. I have the feeling that I really had no one. I had a very good and serene relationship

with my mother-in-law. I admired her. Through her faith she

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coped with her mourning in a way that seemed closed to me. My feeling of having no one is apparently more related to the lack of a deep bond and familiarity. In order to gain intellectual direction in a changed world I then found an ideal discussion partner and

woman friend. The friendship with her and subsequently also with her husband finally took me into my career as a physician and psychoanalyst. Q: In the years after the war, did you sometimes have the feeling that all had been in vain?

A: I would not have been able to bear that. I allowed myself to be carried by the sense that we had been asked to make a sacrifice for others and that this sacrifice had been accepted. When Poelchau told me of my husband’s death while I was in prison and I

asked him in despair how God could allow that the best people were being taken away from us, he replied: ‘It would not be a sacrifice from which new seedlings could grow if he merely called to Him the elderly and worn-out men.’ This may not have a rational logic, but I probably continue to believe in such notions. Q: May I enguire once more after the meaning, the significance of 20 July?

A: This would mean launching into a philosophical discussion. Is our need to make sense more than a subjective psychological necessity? What, for example, is the meaning of 20 July for you? Is it not also your impression that most people try to avoid this problem? I must admit that I still cannot accept as final the fact

that an event such as the action of this group of friends has not found its place in the consciousness of our people. They had succeeded in deliberating on their divergent political ideologies and traditions in order to engage in joint planning and action. Success eluded them, but they set standards. In some ways I see them as the intellectual fellow-travellers of those who want to rouse today’s world vis-a-vis new lethal dangers. This means that I cannot detect political repercussions in the spirit of the men of 20 July, if that is what you had in mind when you enquired after the meaning of this risky event. It seems to me that the Widerstand has been used successfully in the international

arena. In contrast, at home it has been the Allied re-education, frantic reconstruction, "economic miracle’, rearmament and the Cold War that have contributed to our nation’s not recognising the treasure that the Widerstand has bequeathed to us with its history.

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QO: How was it that you were one of the first systematically to collect material and to build up an archive?

A: I began to collect things ‘following a dire need rather than an impulse’, as we tend to say. In 1955 I had completed my medical exams and my doctorate and had given myself a break because that is what my adolescent daughters and our family life needed. Up to that point I had always rejected the idea of writing a biography of Adam, an idea put to me by his most loyal British friend in 1948. What is a biographer supposed to write about, I thought? Who Adam had been was something that frequently radiated from conversation about him, but it was not possible to write about it. It was not just the complex nature of his impact on people, but also that sources written by him were lacking. He was twenty-three when the Nazis came to power and with them came censorship. Nor was it possible for him to work in public. However, in 1956 David Astor drew my attention to the danger of serious misinterpretations concerning Adam slipping into the biographies of his contemporaries at Oxford. To this must be added that misunderstandings had to be anticipated, particularly among foreign scholars, now that the files of the German Foreign Office were being published. Up to this point, I had either remained ignorant of these misrepresentations or they had seemed to me to be too misguided to be taken seriously. I now had to confront these developments. For the next two years I became absorbed by the contents of a large antique chest in which Adam’s papers, letters and other documents had survived the war. I went through this material and put it in order. I wrote letters and finally produced a manuscript in which I collected all that I had found in the way of relevant dates and documents. I did not want to publish this manuscript. Rather it was to serve as a draft for the biographer whom my British friends were trying to find. I later came to regret my reluctance, since the manuscript, by including many quotations, probably says more about Adam’s character than those biographies, whose main focus is on politics. This would also be the impact of a publication of the many reports, memoirs and ‘in memoriam’ letters. Q: And what were those British misunderstandings? A: It’s a long story. What it involved was the sequence of friend-

ship, followed by suspicion and finally remorse in the face of Adam’s death and later the need for self-justification at my husband’s expense. Basically what it was about was that many British

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friends no longer understood that a passionate German patriot could be a confirmed European at the same time. They found it even less comprehensible that someone could want to further the destruction of a regime from inside rather than from exile. And finally it must not be forgotten that there were no more than two or three friends with whom it was possible for him to talk completely frankly. His trip to the United States after the beginning of the war, his return to Germany and his entry into the Foreign Service were taken as proof that he was not to be trusted. Now, it has to be admitted that Adam, in his bold attempts to turn the AngloSaxon governments into covert allies of the German anti-Nazi opposition, probably tried to transgress the limits of the possible. It must be added that, living in isolation in the Far East, he had probably lost the feel for the changes that were taking place in Europe. That’s all I can say in this context. I believe that the basic

problem continues to be topical. Fortunately the carefully researched biography by H.O. Malone has completely undermined the above-mentioned unfortunate errors. Q: How, in retrospect, would you describe the three to four years with your husband?

A: There is a line in the psalms: ‘A thousand years in your sight

are but yesterday.’ This phrase occasionally went through my mind during the Berlin years of our marriage when I wondered why, in my heart, there were no caesuras in my relationship with my husband. I felt that I was constantly moving towards him and this resulted in an ever-growing mutual understanding. The years with Adam were a unique and single gift. This is also true of the circle of friends into which we were integrated. After his death, my second life began, which led to my independence. I think at times that it was only through this development that it would have been possible to build the marriage such as the one he once described in a letter written at the end of 1943. The inner bond has never been disrupted, and thus he has also remained a presence in the lives of my daughters and their families.

Chapter Eleven

COUNTESS NINA SCHENK VON STAUFFENBERG

IL DE

N inaProtestant von Stauffenberg was bornvon in 1913, the daughter the Consul General Lerchenfeld and hisofwife Annie, Baroness von Stackelberg. She grew up in Bamberg and attended the local Lyceum; later, she went to a girls’ boardingschool in Wieblingen near Heidelberg. In 1930 she met Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, to whom she became engaged in the same year; they were married in 1933. Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg was born in 1907, the son of Count Alfred Schenk von Stauffenberg, who was a court

official in Wiirttemberg and, later, Marshal of the Court to the King of Wtirttemberg. Close bonds of friendship linked Claus with his brother Berthold, who worked in Berlin as an expert in international law until, at the beginning of the war, he was called up by the naval command to serve as an adviser on matters pertaining to the conventions of war and international law. Berthold was killed in August 1944 for his part in the events of 20 July. Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, after completing his Abitur in 1926, began his officer’s career with the 17th (Bamberg) Cavalry

Regiment. Between 1936 and 1938 he was trained as a General Staff officer at the War Academy in Berlin, and in 1938 he was transferred to Wuppertal. He participated in the occupation of the Sudetenland (autumn 1938), the invasion of Poland (1939), the campaign in France (1940), and the operation in Africa (1943), from where he returned with life-threatening wounds: he lost his

right hand, an eye and two fingers of his left hand. In 1943, he was appointed Chief of Staff to Army Headquarters in Berlin under General Olbricht.

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Politically, Stauffenberg initially sympathised with the National Socialists and their goals, but he consistently rejected dictatorship and oppression of any kind. His world-view was informed by his encounter with Stefan George, who, after the First World War, proclaimed to a select circle his visions of a new Reich — a spiritual rebirth of Germany. Although Stauffenberg was no supporter of Hitler’s war policy,

he refused to take part in the conspiratorial plans of 1939/40. At the time, he was convinced that, as an officer, it was his duty to defend Germany’s security interests abroad. As late as January 1942 he believed in a possible victory over the Soviet Union. But in

that same year, the ineffectiveness of the army leadership in the General Staff and the hopelessness of the military situation convinced him that Hitler would have to be eliminated. For this reason, at the end of August 1943 he participated for the first time in Henning von Tresckow’s schemes to overthrow Hitler and to prepare systematically for a coup d’état, using the ‘Valkyrie’ plans for a military state of emergency in the event of internal unrest as the foundation of their own planning. During the course of this work, Stauffenberg developed into the dominant personality within the Widerstand.

At the end of June 1944, when Stauffenberg was appointed Chief of Staff to General Fromm in Berlin, he took on personal responsibility for carrying out the assassination. From 1 July, he was the only one of the younger officers committed to the deed who had access to Hitler when the military situation was being discussed. Despite his heavy disabilities, he was determined to carry out the Attentat personally on one such occasion. The course of events on 20 July, first at Wolfschanze (the Ftthrer’s headquarters in East Prussia) and subsequently in Bendler-Strafse in Berlin, has often been described. The coup failed, and that same evening Count Stauffenberg, his adjutant Werner von Haeften and sev-

eral other conspirators were shot in the courtyard of the High Command in Bendler-Strafse, on orders from General Fromm in

accordance with military law. Himmler swore revenge on the Stauffenberg family, down to ‘its last member’. Countess Nina Stauffenberg and her four children, along with many of her relatives, were taken into Sippenhaft. Her fifth child, Konstanze, was born while she was in solitary confinement. Only

at the very end of the war was she set free; she then managed, with the baby, to make her way to the home of relatives. In later years, she became involved with a citizen’s initiative to preserve

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Bamberg’s ancient inner city. She continues to live in Bamberg, in her parental home.

Interview Q: What do you think Germany would have looked like if the Attentat of 20 July had succeeded?

A: Well, everyone who was involved in the preparations was clear that an occupation of Germany by the Allies was inevitable. Everyone counted on this, but no one could prophesy what would really happen. Q: Already for a long time, there had been nothing more to ‘save’. One merely sought to keep more people from dying ...

A: And to demonstrate to the world, that there was a Widerstand. I think it is misleading to say that Widerstand only began when people noticed that all had been lost. Q: What did your husband think were the chances that the Attentat would succeed? A: Fifty-fifty. QO: The fact that he, as head of the military conspiracy, had to carry out

the assassination attempt himself surely didn’t increase the chances of success. In your opinion, could someone else have carried out the Attentat? After all, your husband was desperately looking for someone who could take over the execution of the plan.

A: That is the way things turned out; but the fact that he had only one hand surely meant that he was not exactly predestined to be the

one to place the explosives. Above all, the way things happened meant that valuable hours were lost for all concerned, because virtually nothing occurred while he was flying back from East Prussia to Berlin. But I only know that from the literature, it’s something I read and heard. Many things get blurred by the passage of time, so that I can no longer say for sure: this I knew and this I did not know. QO: What did your husband tell you?

A: I did not know that my husband was going to conduct the Attentat himself. I knew that a bomb would be planted and that renewed attempts were always being made. My husband mentioned no names. In case the Attentat should fail, he had forbidden

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me to remain loyal to him. The most important thing was that one of us should survive to look after the children. I regarded that as an order and acted accordingly. I passed myself off to the Gestapo as a

stupid little housewife taken up with children and nappies and dirty laundry. In the last days, my husband came over from Berlin to Bamberg fairly regularly, about one weekend in three; and would travel back again on Sunday or Monday night. He brought his dirty clothes with him and, now and then, papers that had to be burnt. In October 1943, I came back from a wedding with a rucksack full of plans, and these I dutifully burned here. My brother-in-law’s flat in Wannsee had central heating, and the presence of the porter made it impossible to do anything there that might attract attention. QO: What kind of papers were they?

A: I didn’t look them over — that would have been far too much trouble. QO: Your husband was the only one who entered into the Attentat situation more than once, who repeatedly took on himself all the preparations and the entire nervous strain. Did you know anything about your husband's despair in those last days?

A: We no longer saw one another any more then. True, we spoke on the telephone, but on the phone one couldn’t say anything more than: ‘Are the children well?’ and ‘What are you doing?’ Up to a cer-

tain point, my husband was the moving spirit of the Attentat. He didn’t see himself as such, but rather considered men like Olbricht and Beck to be the leading personalities. Beck was his great role model, and also Leber, whom he regarded as a key figure. QO: Weren't you anxious about your husband when you heard about the bomb?

A: Certainly I was afraid; anything was now possible. But as I have told you, I didn’t know that he himself was going to do it; I didn’t particularly connect it with him. I don’t even know when the decision was taken that my husband should personally carry out the Attentat. When my husband and I were together, I always knew immediately whenever he was involved in something important and secret, such as in 1939 and 1943. I said to him directly: ‘Are you playing at conspiracies?’ He confirmed that I was right. In 1939 he pulled back because, after Hitler’s successes in Poland, no sympa-

thy could be expected from the public. What happened during the times that the war separated us, I naturally do not know.

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Q: What was your reaction to the fact that your husband, after he was wounded in April 1943, wanted to take on new tasks and pressed for the Attentat to be staged, although he had just escaped death?

A: Let us say, it was a kind of turning point for him. I remember how he said, when I visited him in his hospital bed in Munich: ‘It is time for me to save the German Reich.’ And I answered, ‘You're in ideal shape to do that now!’ I dismissed his remark as a joke, but perhaps it was at that moment that the decision to become actively involved personally ripened in him. Q: Did you not want to hold him back?

A: Yes, naturally, that is clear. | mean, we talked about it, and once I realised that it was essential for him and also that it was important and necessary, I agreed. What he had to do, he had to do. I never tried to talk him out of it. Q: You were a young woman then. Do you still take the same view today?

A: I was engaged for a very long time before we married, and

that was good training for our marriage. During that time I learned that service always comes first, but my mother did not understand that at all. Every time I got angry because my husband hadn’t come home in the evening, I nonetheless stuck up for him and said, ‘It just has to be that way’, whereas my mother kicked up a fuss. By the time I got married, I already had all that behind me. I always was bad at being a soldier’s wife, but there were two things I did know: first, that service always takes priority — service and duty — and second, that one must keep one’s mouth shut. My husband knew that I could keep things close to the chest, could keep mum. In any event, my husband spoke little with me about service matters. Q: That was very considerate ...

A: For me, it was very sad. The planned Attentat always hung over me like the sword of Damocles. My father died at the begin-

ning of January 1944 and my mother had the impression that I did not grieve properly — that, for me, it didn’t constitute such a catastrophe. She couldn’t have any idea that a stone had fallen from my heart, because it would have been terrible for my desperately ill father to discover that his son-in-law was at the centre of a conspiracy — irrespective of its outcome. I couldn’t tell my

mother; she only sensed it and undoubtedly blamed me for it. That was very distressing.

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QO: In 1933, when the political changes took place, you were only nine-

teen years old. When did you begin to understand?

A: Politics never interested me much. One read the papers, talked about this and that, but it didn’t really touch me. I had my baby, and then a growing brood of children. Things happened, but I didn’t particularly concern myself with what was going on. QO: With whom could you talk, later on, when your husband began to intervene politically?

A: Essentially, nobody. And besides, I had learned that there are

some subjects that one didn’t talk about. My mother-in-law, for example, never tried to hide that she was opposed to the regime all along. The entire family was constantly afraid that her lack of caution would land her in a bed of nettles. Berthold and my husband finally took her aside and said that things were only half as bad as she thought, that everything would turn out all right. My other brother-in-law, Alexander, was also always openly against the regime and had to be cooled down a bit by his brothers. When the Attentat then took place, it was a great shock, because he had the feeling that he had been underestimated by his brothers. He

undoubtedly sensed that they had not let him into the secret because he, too, was much too careless. Q: How do you see your role in the entire enterprise?

A: In practice, to support my husband, not to fetter him, but to fulfill my own duties, not to stand in the way or be a burden to him. Actually, I never really had the feeling that I was playing a role. I did what was expected of me. Q: It seems to me that this is a strength that probably enabled your husband to develop his own strength. A: I don’t know about that. For me, it is simply the essence of a

good marriage that the partners back each other up and that each can rely totally on the other. That seems to be the essential thing. Q: Looking back, would you decide this or that differently if you were again faced with the same situations?

A: Naturally, I was then — and remain — against every kind of

killing. That just goes against the grain; but I am still convinced today that the Attentat was right and necessary. Of course, there are some things about which you get angry in retrospect: you

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would not be human, if you didn’t make the occasional mistake. But I can’t point to any serious differences. Q: Did you admire your husband? A: Yes, indeed. Q: From the very beginning?

A: Actually, it was my mother who first told me about him admiringly, how good his manners were and how correctly he kissed the ladies’ hands. At the time I was sixteen and I met him at a ball. My girlfriends were enthusiastic too: ‘That Stauffenberg, he dances so well’, and such like. So, to be contrary, I was dead set against him at first. But that quickly changed, as things do, and then we became engaged. QO: We frequently hear that your husband was very nationalistic and that he thought in military categories. What should people of my generation think about that?

A: I don’t know how I should explain it. One was just brought up to be extremely patriotic, and military concepts of honour such as loyalty and discipline counted for a lot. Q: But for many officers, it was precisely this code of honour that made it impossible for them to take part in the attempt on Hitler’s life — they felt bound by their personal oath.

A: True, that was a barrier for many of them, and my husband respected it. QO: But it was this deficient morality, the fact that the officer corps was

so little inclined to stand up to Hitler, that is said to have disillusioned your husband. He spoke of a lack of backbone.

A: Indeed, this pained him. But, as I’ve said, we never spoke about these things. The only unfamiliar name I heard from him was that of Julius Leber. QO: What did you tell you?

A: He didn’t tell me anything, only that Leber was a great personality and that he valued him greatly. Q: The friendship with the charismatic Leber was surely important to your husband. His only relationship of equal intensity was that with his brother Berthold, his elder by two years.

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A:I don’t know if that comparison is valid, but the relationship between the two brothers remained very close until the end. You know, my husband lived with his brother in the last months; my sister-in-law had moved to Lautlingen with her children, while I remained in Bamberg. The two brothers saw each other every day in Tristan-StrafSe, where both lived and slept. QO: It was in this dwelling that, on the evening of 16 July, leaders of the Widerstand met to talk over the details of the coup once more. On the previous day, ‘Valkyrie’ — the code-name for the operation — was cancelled at the last moment because your husband apparently was unable to place the explosives in time. Between 6 and 20 July, on at least three occasions he had

the explosives with him, but every time something happened to prevent him from carrying out the Attentat. This reveals an incredible strength of will and concentration; no one else had to carry this mental burden.

A: I know so little about what actually happened in those days. After all, we no longer saw each other. QO: But you did telephone. Was he able to say ‘goodbye’?

A: No, actually not. I was still able to phone him, we always telephoned on Sundays. It happened on Thursday, so our last telephone conversation was on Sunday 16 July. On that occasion he said that he really did not approve of us going away just then — I was about to travel with the children to visit my mother-in-law in Wtirttemberg. ‘Sorry’, I said, ‘but my luggage is already en route, and the tickets have been purchased.’ It was very hard to travel in those days, especially if one had a whole ménage in tow — a nurse-

maid, a housemaid and four children. On Monday or Tuesday he phoned my mother in Bamberg to ask if we had got away all right. And on Wednesday he called her again to tell her that the brotherin-law of a cousin, who was in the local regiment, had been killed, and that she should pass the news on to my cousin. That was his last phone call, but I only heard about it afterwards.... O: Was it hard to endure, the instinctive awareness that the critical moment was approaching?

A: Oh, you know, during all those years I had become accustomed to this. Q: And then, on top of this, the secrecy? How could one organise oneself?

A: It wasn’t a matter of organising anything. One simply wasn’t allowed to say anything, to say or to write anything. Besides, you

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mustn’t forget that my husband had only a fortnight’s annual vacation. The rest of the year I sat there alone and had to cope with the food shortage and deal with all the other urgent problems involved in running a wartime household with four children. Q: How did you hear about the Attentat?

A: Someone came to me who had heard about it on the radio. We had just arrived in Lautlingen, where we were planning to spend the summer holidays because of the children. My sister-inlaw and I - she, of course, already knew - sat outside as one of the servant girls ran out of the house and said an Attentat against the Fiihrer had been carried out. At that point, we only looked at each other and said: ‘This is it!’ QO: That same night the name Stauffenberg was broadcast over every German radio station. Hitler spoke of a very small clique of ambitious

officers who had planned the Attentat, and he mentioned the name of your husband. What were your emotions at that moment? A: I only heard about it the following morning. The my mother-

in-law’s brother, Count Uxkiill, went to the village, and someone there had heard on the early morning news that Stauffenberg ... Then, sometime between seven and eight o’clock, my mother-inlaw came to tell me about it —I was still in bed. That’s how I found out. I didn’t know, though, that he had done it himself. Q: It must have been a shock for you.

A: Yes, naturally, but that was one of many strokes of fortune. I

had two days to come to grips with what had happened and to sort things out with myself. On the 21st they came to our home in Bamberg, but found only my mother there. Only early on the 23rd did they turn up in Lautlingen and take me away. Q: What did you do with these two days?

A: I took long walks and somehow managed to compose myself. Those two days were a gift from heaven. Q: You first went to a prison in Rottweil. How were you treated?

A: Nobody was positively nasty to me. Some were friendlier,

some less friendly, but everything considered, I survived the whole episode remarkably well. The eight days in Rottweil were an idyll. I was given tea out of a cup on which was written ‘The Silver Bride’. I was, as it were, a guest of honour! Three years ago,

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I took a trip through the Black Forest with my grandson, and on that occasion we also visited Rottweil, which is, after all, a beauti-

ful city. ‘The prison must be around the corner somewhere near here’, I said to my grandson, and so it was. We rang and were at first received officially and then shown around with enthusiasm. Just as though a lost daughter had finally found her way home again! My grandson had to control himself well, so as not to laugh out loud, so ridiculous was the whole thing. On the other hand, it was also quite touching. Q: From Rottweil they took you to Berlin.

A: Yes, first to the notorious Prinz-Albrecht-Strafe, where my

personal details were recorded, and then to the prison at the Alexanderplatz. That was not so good. It was a very old prison, and bug-infested — an experience I wouldn’t wish on anybody. When the aid raid alarm sounded, we all had to go down to the ground floor — there was no air raid shelter — and there one could talk a bit with other people whom one didn’t really know. Actu-

ally, I had nothing to complain about as far as human relations were concerned. The head warder, in particular, an incredible woman who dated from the time when one still took up social service out of idealism, had the institution firmly in hand. But living

conditions were indescribably awful. The only thing there was enough of was hot water, and once a week we were allowed to take a bath. Once I was bathing at the same time as Frau Thalmann: she had one tub and I the other. Frau Thalmann was completely beside herself, because she had learned that day that her husband had ‘passed away’. While walking in the courtyard she had overheard two prisoners in the workshops — which were housed in the basement — talking about it. In this way, Frau Thal-

mann had learned about her husband’s death, and she was completely distraught. She was an energetic individual with tightly curled locks. I encouraged her and tried to comfort her, as one does in such a situation. Q: Did you actually know just how your husband was shot on the evening of 20 July?

A: That I can’t remember anymore. Afterwards, I learned so much that eventually I was no longer able to distinguish what I

knew and didn’t know at any particular time. Gradually one forms a very general picture. I learned about it pretty quickly, but just how, I can’t say today.

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QO: How long were you at the Alexanderplatz?

A: Three weeks. Q: And you were interrogated there?

A: Yes. Above all else, the Gestapo wanted to know with whom I had been acquainted. I gave them the names of those I knew well, but I said nothing about people I didn’t know personally, or about whom I was not questioned. Also, I didn’t sign anything that I didn't want to sign. At the end of August I was transferred to Ravensbriick. To the so-called bunker. There I spent five months, again in solitary confinement. A little later my mother also landed up there; she could see me through a crack in the door when I was led past, but I couldn’t see her; I only discovered that she was in Ravensbrtick from other prisoners. After three weeks my mother and the entire

Stauffenberg family were taken into Sippenhaft and that was the beginning of a real odyssey through numerous camps, concentration camps and others. My mother died at the beginning of February in an SS penal camp. The other members of the family were taken by the Americans at the end of the war and transported to Capri. Q: Five months of solitary confinement — and besides, you were late in

your pregnancy and had just lost your husband. How did you endure under these circumstances?

A: It was a matter of organising oneself. That sounds crazy, but it’s the truth. There was the day when I darned stockings, the day when I practiced shorthand, and so forth. When the lights were turned off at nine in the evening, I occupied myself with literature or made music. That is, I tried to recall compositions or to recite poems. That’s when I discovered that that which I had once learned by heart had ‘stuck’ — Schiller’s ‘The Bell’ for example. QO: If I have things right, you managed to establish firm rhythms for yourself, and in this way developed a daily ritual.

A: That’s about it. In the morning came breakfast; then I had to clean my cell — I was thankful for anything I was compelled to do. Also, I played a lot of patience. I made cards out of cigarette boxes — one packet was enough for four cards — and with this I managed to pass a lot of time. Q: So that sorrow would not overwhelm you?

A: Oh no, that has nothing to do with it; the two things run in tandem. I can understand how people in bygone days withdrew into a

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cloister. In the moment that you are placed in solitary confinement or

imprisoned, all responsibilities fall away; you no longer have to worry about anything, because there is nothing you can control. So you can simply switch the whole business off. You can turn to inner affairs, or occupy yourself with outward trivialities. You surrender to God’s will, and that is, in itself, a great support. It is no longer necessary to agonise about the coming day, and what you will and must do. That all begins again when you come out of prison and suddenly have to take action once more. It is much easier to accommodate yourself to unaccustomed circumstances than to return to normal life. Q: Did you get any news from the outside?

A: My sister-in law Melitta (the wife of Alexander) who was a

pilot and therefore was freed again after only six weeks, concerned herself very intensively with the family, and I was allowed

to correspond with her. She made it possible for me to get fruit and carrots from relatives, and clothes, for winter came and my stomach was getting bigger all the time. QO: Was any allowance made for your pregnancy?

A: Yes, I was even given the customary food ration supplements. Q: And to what extent were you influenced by the fact that a child was growing inside you, that death and life stood side by side?

A: I said to myself, you must remain sensible and calm whatever happens — for the child’s sake. Perhaps it would have been harder without the child: it meant I had a task, a duty. QO: Were you dealt with badly in Ravensbriick, or even maltreated ?

A: No, I was always treated correctly there. Once I had a comical experience. I needed ink for my pen and was told I should get it for myself from the writing room. So I went along to the office and asked the Sturmbannfiihrer for ink in my customary polite way. Whereupon he hurried in the direction of the ink bottle, then suddenly jerked to a stop, having realised that I was a shabby prisoner, and yelled at me: ‘Here’s the ink!’ In general, I came to the conclusion that the best thing to do is deal with people as one is accustomed to doing; above all, one must not show oneself to be fearful or intimidated. Q: Did you eventually bring the child into the world in Ravensbriick?

A: No, at the beginning of January I was sent to a National Socialist maternity home near Frankfurt on the Oder. This was a

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home to which pregnant women went in order to have their babies in peace, and then to recuperate a little. I was still kept in isolation, but at least my door had a latch and I could switch the light on and off as I pleased. Incidentally, my name at that time was Schank. Q: You had to take a different name?

A: Yes, but as I never was given an identity card under that name, I occasionally had to use my driver’s license or my fishmongers’ ration card, and on those I was still Stauffenberg. People

always regarded the Gestapo apparatus as a machine that functioned with fantastic efficiency, but in reality it had considerable loopholes, and some things didn’t function at all. At the end of January, only a few days before I gave birth, the home abruptly had to be evacuated. The expectant mothers, who

had hoped to give birth in peace, were sent away. I was transferred to Frankfurt on the Oder. But because of the stream of refugees from Posen, there was no longer any room there. It was bitterly cold. And again I had a stroke of luck. I found accommodation in a private clinic run by a women’s physician because I was supposed to be alone, in solitary confinement. There, the food was wonderful, because everyone had the feeling that the war was nearly over and so plundered the store cupboard to the last bottling jar. My daughter was born on 27 January. The delivery went well, but after that I got an infection. Eight days later all the hospitals and clinics in Frankfurt were evacuated. I was taken to Pots-

dam in a hospital train and unloaded there, bundled out like a crate of goods. I ended up in St Joseph’s Hospital, but with an eight-day-old infant and the infection. It hurt a lot; I couldn’t stand up. I remained there until the beginning of April. The doctor in charge knew who I was and put off my discharge as long as he could. And then the baby also became ill, developing erysipelas and bronchitis. Somewhere around 8 April I was collected to be taken to the other Stauffenbergs, who were en route somewhere in Germany. I was accompanied by a military policeman who had managed to wangle his way home with skill and trickery, and was not at all happy to find himself chased all across Germany with a woman and a child in tow. The other family members who had been in Sippenhaft had meanwhile reached Dachau from Lauenburg by way of Buchenwald. Our common objective was Schénau in the Bavarian Forest. There ensued an endless changing of trains, and it was pretty unpleasant. In the courtyard dead people were hanging from trees, with a placard that read ‘Deserters’, and a car

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was standing there with a sign, ‘Flying Court Martial’. No one knew what to do with us. After an adventurous journey we finally landed in Trogen. There I said to my policeman: ‘I’m just out of

hospital; I simply can’t continue on foot. I’m not leaving this place.’ He wasn’t exactly pleased with the situation either. I wrote

him a testimonial to the effect that he had done his duty to the end, and with that, much relieved, he took off. Naturally, I too, was relieved. The Americans were only a few kilometres away, and because some very good friends of my father lived in the immediate neighbourhood, I was able to find lodging. Q: And your children?

A: From there I tried to discover what had happened to my children. The last thing my sister-in-law had told me, before her plane crashed, was that my children had been taken away from the children’s home at Bad Sachsa. Supposedly, they had been taken to Buchenwald. But while they were on their way to the Nordhausen station, the latter was destroyed by a bombing attack. And so the children were taken back to Bad Sachsa. But I didn’t know this yet. It was June before I finally got to see them again. One day, just as I was about to start out on my search, a car drove up and in it sat a female acquaintance of my aunt — with my oldest son; they had been looking for me. This aunt, the head of the Red Cross, Countess Uxkiill, had organised a wood-powered bus and had driven to Bad Sachsa, where she found the remaining children, including those of the Hofackers, the Goerdelers and the Lindemanns. She took them all with her and brought them home. It was an unholy mess, but eventually everyone ended up where they belonged. Three days later the Russians entered Bad Sachsa. QO: So, you were a prisoner virtually until the end of the war?

A: Yes, I never was officially released. I simply stayed put in Trogen and sent my policeman away. Q: And how were things after the war ended? Wasn’t your name synonymous with treason among wide sectors of the population?

A: No, I can’t agree with that. What my husband had done was

respected right from the start. But perhaps I can’t say anything else because, while I sat in Lautlingen, I was pretty far from the centre of events. There, Stauffenberg was a name to conjure with from the first. Also, the fact that we were in the French Zone of Occupation gave us a certain advantage, because the French knew

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something about Widerstand. The Americans hadn’t a clue. But to the French, it signified something. Q: Do you still remember how you told the children about the death of their father, and how they reacted to it?

A: Yes, they were naturally shaken; I told them right away — that was before my arrest on 23 July. I didn’t have much time. Of course, I couldn’t say to them, your daddy is a hero; rather, I said that he made a mistake. For I had to count on the children being interrogated: ‘Providence protected our dear Ftihrer.’ Q: Isn't it hard to say something like that to the children, because it almost amounts to betraying your entire personal history? A: Yes.

QO: Did the children understand?

A: The older ones did. Berthold was ten and Heimeran was eight; both of them knew what this meant all right. Q: Did you ever feel that you had been singled out for a special fate?

A: Yes and no. After all, this fate has been with me for nearly fifty years. One gets used to it. You can’t think about your terrible lot for fifty years.

Q: Nowadays it would be said that you endured a great deal as a young woman.

A: At that time, many people went through a lot. It was usual for those around one to die or be wounded. What happened to me was essentially the same thing, only with different outward markers. One is left behind, has the children, and must figure out how to wangle and fight one’s way through. It is pretty much the same thing. Q: Perhaps it is a certain comfort if one knows, as in your case, that one’s husband incurred death in full consciousness of what he was about.

A: I never thought anything like that. QO: But 20 July certainly did bring you endless grief.

A: I mean, I knew beforehand what might be coming to me. Naturally, I didn’t anticipate that I would disappear for months on end, and I also didn’t expect that it would be so hard with the children,

that I would have struggle so to survive. But I never questioned

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what my husband had done. Sometimes I even had the feeling that what happened was the best thing for him, because I couldn’t really imagine how he would have survived knowing how things had turned out. Q: So you mean that it was good that the Attentat failed?

A: Yes, but even if it had succeeded, I don’t know how he would have coped. All in all, seen from afar, it was best that the business ended as it did. QO: What do you mean?

A: I mean, if the Attentat had succeeded, the ‘stab in the back’ legend would have gained currency once again. And then, disappointment was sure to follow, for the Widerstand brought together very different people who, after a successful Attentat, would at once have split into many groups. There would have been endless wrangling. My husband was spared all that. Q: In the event, it 1s highly unlikely that everything would have come to pass as the leaders of the Widerstand had imagined. But surely you would nevertheless not go so far as to call the entire enterprise in question?

A: No, for of course the Attentat could have succeeded. For example, if the briefcase with the explosives had been a bit closer to Hitler, it might have come off. But in fact, it did not. QO: Were the sacrifices therefore in vain?

A: No. And I repeat once more: I never doubted my husband, neither before nor after the event. Q: | noticed that your husband left behind hardly any notes, letters or other documents.

A: My husband never wrote a lot, and I don’t possess a single letter from him to me. The few letters that I received from him are lost. I had organised them by years, along with my own letters, and bundled them up nicely. My letters were a kind of diary for myself, especially about the children’s development, and for that reason I wrote to my husband often. But they’ve all gone. QO: When did the letters disappear?

A: After 20 July our house in Bamberg was completely emptied.

Who knows what happened to the things; anyway I never got

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anything back. The only thing I was able to get to safety in time, by giving it to an acquaintance, unfortunately was burned. O: What was that?

A: It was a notebook, just an ordinary thick notebook that my husband had given me in the autumn of 1938 as a sort of substitute for the unwritten letters. In this notebook, a kind of diary, he

had entered what moved him during that autumn. Those were the months when leading military men planned for the first time the overthrow of Hitler in detail. Because war was averted at the last minute through Chamberlain’s intervention at the Munich Conference, all the coup plans had to be abandoned. The notebook stated that Hitler had exceeded all bounds of hubris; and there was a sentence that I never forgot: ‘It is a remarkable feeling, to have to put the sword that has already been drawn back into its scabbard.’ Q: Did you later discuss this with your husband?

A: No. I don’t know to this day whether and to what extent my husband knew about the plans for a coup. I only knew one thing: that I had to make this notebook disappear, for if it had been found, I would not have been able to claim that I knew nothing about it all. For this reason, I gave it to acquaintances, but as luck would have it, their house was searched. The Gestapo didn’t actually find the note-

book, but as they drove away, the wife took the notebook and burned it. Probably, I would have done the same thing. Q: That this notebook was lost seems to me to be a great loss.

A: Naturally these notes would have been extraordinarily enlightening, for in retrospect one could have read many things with quite different eyes. Above all, it is not true that the Widerstand only awakened in 1943, as it were at five minutes to twelve, as people always say. That is simply untrue — just as untrue as the assertion that my husband was at the outset an uncritical supporter of National Socialism. Naturally one welcomed a number of things, for example the rebuilding of the army or the repudiation of Versailles; but to say that my husband was an enthusiastic Nazi is without any foundation. Q: I think your age also played a role. You were still young.

A: In 1933 my husband was twenty-six. We married that year, six months sooner than the military regulations allowed.

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Q: Your husband was first and foremost a soldier?

A: He did his service and enjoyed it very much. At that time he also was given his first small command, a mortar platoon that he

had to build up from scratch and for which he had to train the crew himself. Also, he was a passionate horseman who often rode in tournaments. This interested him. True, politics interested him as well, but it didn’t initially take top priority. He grew into poli-

tics; it happened over a period of years. The decisive point at which it clicked for him was the Blomberg / Fritsch affair in February 1938. Q: The way that the Minister of War, von Blomberg, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, von Fritsch, were dismissed from their posts was a signal for many people in the military. A good four weeks after the upheavals in the Wehrmacht command, Germany marched into Austria and, in the autumn, Hitler engineered the Sudeten crisis. In that year, 1938, everything pointed to war.

A: At that time, my husband was in Berlin and obtained additional background information, and that more or less wrapped it up for him. His main informant, incidentally, was Fritzi Schulenburg, who, as vice president of the Berlin police, was in a pretty good position to know how the whole thing was set up. Q: Since you mention the name Schulenburg, it seems as though he and Stauffenberg (apart from Tresckow and Olbricht) were the ones who, from the summer of 1943, pressed most energetically for the Attentat. All descriptions of your husband focus on the urgent and the active. On the other hand, they also repeatedly stress his musicality, and the fact that he emerged from the Stefan George circle.

A: All three brothers were musically gifted, and they played as a trio. My husband played the cello and organised small concerts; later, he wanted to become an architect. It was a surprise to the whole family when all of a sudden he decided to become a soldier

because leadership interested him. He always enjoyed dealing with people and was an educator of genius. All who knew him were committed to him, whether they were soldiers in his regiment or civilians. He always wanted to be certain that people understood what they were doing. Thus, for example, he explained to his men exactly how the mortar worked — he was very gifted mathematically — and he was very proud when his platoon excelled in a shooting competition because they knew what they were doing.

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Q: On the one hand, so artistically gifted, on the other, so rational ...

A: My husband wasn’t someone whom one could put into a box in order to write on it, ‘this is so-and-so and he reacts in such-and-such a manner’. He let things develop and then took his decisions. Also, every one of us goes through transformations. Besides, he had a quality of loving to play devil’s advocate. Conservatives were therefore convinced that he was an extreme Nazi, and Nazi extremists were convinced that he was an arch-conservative. He was neither. He simply had fun seeing which arguments the opposite side would use. Q: So, a game ...?

A: ... in order to provoke, to reveal what kind of person he was dealing with and what they thought. QO: Was your husband courageous?

A: There are a number of anecdotes. I don’t know if they are accurate. Yes, I guess I would say that he was essentially a brave man — except when it came to wasps. Whenever he saw a wasp, he

immediately disappeared under the table! QO: I ask because it required extraordinary courage and will to pack up the explosives time and time again, and be in Hitler’s immediate presence with them. Your husband must have had strong nerves.

A: Yes, he truly did have an extraordinary ability to concentrate. When he was home and had to work, the children could romp around and play trains between his legs, and it didn’t disturb him at all. On the contrary, he found it amusing. When he came home from work in the evening, I often told him all sorts of trivialities that had happened during the day and from which I just wanted to unburden myself. He read the papers, and I just

chatted on. Now and then, however, there was something he really had to know. On such occasions I said: ‘Claus’; he didn’t hear me. Louder: ‘Claus’; he still didn’t hear me. And then I said: ‘Stauffenbereg!’ “Yes, what is it?’

He could nap at any time of day, provided there was somebody there to wake him. He would just lie down and go to sleep. When there was an air raid alert, my husband would be warned by telephone in advance. So he was prepared for the ring of the telephone and woke up immediately. Once he was visiting my sister-in-law, who didn’t have an air raid shelter. When the advance warning came over the telephone, my husband told everyone, put

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his boots under his arm, went into the split trench and continued his sleep on a chair. After the ‘all clear’, everyone returned to the house, and he lay down on his bed and slept some more. That particular night there were two further alarms. According to my sister-in-law, no one had a wink of sleep — except Claus. This ability to switch off was a great source of strength. Q: I would like to ask you once again about Stefan George. When George died in the Swiss Tessino in December 1933, your husband was one of the closest confidants who held vigil over his body. Did he tell you about his encounters with George? This must, after all, have been a significant experience for him.

A: No, actually we didn’t talk about it. That was against the rules. QO: Against what rules?

A: Against the rules of the George circle that said one must never speak about it to outsiders. The friends were really only allowed to meet at George’s, and not, for instance within their families; the Master didn’t permit that. So one of my husband’s best friends, Frank Mehnert, who sculpted a very fine bust of him, never visited our house when I was present. QO: Isn't that strange?

A: Well, the Master just didn’t wish it. Q: At that time, from where did you and your husband draw your strength? A: That I just don’t know. You either have it in you or you don’t, I would say. Q: His life exemplifies a remarkable logic. From the ideals of the George circle right over to the practice of tyrannicide.

A: I think that’s how he was, that was in him. Q: Have you carried the spiritual legacy of your husband into your

future? A: I can’t define it. It is a particular attitude. My life was shaped by him and continues to be shaped by him to this day. He is still

with me daily in a practical way, but not placed in a shrine. Through all these years, at just about any time that I have been faced with a major decision, I have asked: ‘How would he have decided?’ or ‘What would his attitude have been?’ Perhaps he

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would have decided some things differently, but anyway, I always

tried. To live for the future in his spirit, that seems the essential thing to me. Q: How do you see the 20 July events in the context of your whole life?

A: July 20 was a decisive turning-point for me. Q: Did you try to influence the image that the public has of your husband? A: No. QO: That means you've let history take its course?

A: On the contrary, I always barred myself from it. After my first experiences with journalists, I’d had enough. I’ve always given information when it related to historical questions, even when I found it hard to do. I also never closed myself off from schoolchildren and students, because I think it is important to speak with young people. But interviews.... Q: That almost sounds a bit disappointed.... Did it take you a long time to construct a life for yourself? A: I had no time for that. When one has five children, that’s just

how it is. I had to figure out how I could come to terms with my story. You know, | actually prefer to be solitary. Iam always sorry for those couples who get old together, and then one of the two dies. I have the feeling that this is actually much worse than my situation. Naturally, in one way it is terrible to become a widow so early, and to be left behind with five children. I would gladly have lived a lot longer with my husband. But after his death I had a task. I had to stick it out; I had to move ahead and I accustomed myself to that. And now I am old, and don’t mind at all that no one is with me any more. I like best to be alone.

AFTERWORD

LE T hedynamic interviews in this volume are ordered according to an inner that has nothing to do with historical criteria. Rather, the structure can be thought of as a painting: The reader enters a house with many rooms. The interview with Emmi Bonhoeffer introduces the visitor to the

atmosphere that coloured the actions and thinking of the time. Her stories illuminate the conflicting situations that characterised the 20 July events. Elisabeth Baroness Freytag von Loringhoven reports how heavily the obligation to secrecy weighed upon her, but, at the same time, reveals how essential secrecy was for the protection of her family.

In the interview with Brigitte Gerstenmaier, we see how her somewhat strategic calculation regarding the “human weaknesses’ of a National Socialist contributed to the salvation of her husband. Freya von Moltke shows us the Kreisau Circle in the round: how

the group of friends came together; what united them with one another; how the women were drawn into the circle and yet remained ‘the wives of their husbands’; how each interpreted the duties that went with this role and fulfilled them; how they supported their husbands, both intellectually and practically. Rosemarie Reichwein describes the initial situation of the Social Democrats who eventually came together in the Kreisau Circle. From the interview with Margarethe Countess von Hardenberg, we

learn about the problems of the military resistance and about the desperate fear of a woman who is asked, along with her friends, to participate in an assassination attempt and a coup d’état. Regrettably, the chapter about Anni Oster, who smuggled food

into the Dachau concentration camp and spirited out decisive

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information, was never completed, because the interviewee, when it came to the point, decided that she was not yet willing to make her story public. Marion Countess Yorck, in whose home many meetings of the Kreisau group took place, and Clarita von Trott lead us through distinct sets of arguments and different modes of spiritual overcoming

that allow us to become acquainted with the Kreisau Circle of friends in all the variety of their temperaments and personalities. Charlotte von der Schulenburg traces the transformations of her

life in the course of describing her husband’s path and her personal experiences. Both in her husband’s family and in her own, she was surrounded by loyal National Socialists with whom she had to develop a relationship, although, in the final analysis, this naturally always remained a conflicted one. Barbara von Haeften tells how her husband, like many other Kreisau members, opposed the assassination attempt because he regarded it as a wrong path, and also because he thought it unre-

alistic to hope that Hitler could be overcome and that a subsequent coup d’état would prove successful; at the same time, she makes the Christian basis of his convictions very understandable. As late as January 1944, her husband advised his brother Werner against undertaking anything of the kind; nevertheless, half a year later, Werner von Haeften, together with Colonel Stauffenberg, attempted to carry out both assassination and coup d’état. Because it was her husband who dared to take the decisive step toward assassination and coup d'état, the report by Countess Stauffenberg comes last. Only in a very limited sense is this a book for historians, because it approaches the material in a way that presumably will not match

their expectations. There are both scholarly and biographical reasons for this. Thus, the orientation of the questions was essentially sociological, informed by the tradition of the Frankfurt School, and this tendency was reinforced by the curiosity of a journalist: What do the widows and colleagues of the men who, in the widest sense, ‘participated’ in the attack on Hitler’s life have to relate today? Forty-five years after the event, many of them were, for the first time, questioned extensively about their own perceptions. That this was so is apparent in many of the responses, which were often tentative and somewhat defensive. In their humility, and focused as they were on the men of 20 July, these women had clearly never

asked themselves certain questions. Of course, they interested themselves in the extensive historical research on the Resistance,

Afterword | 207

and this influenced their outlook. Partly because of this, I proceeded on the assumption that the wives had, more or less, already

told everything that historians wanted to know from them. My own questions, therefore, did not aim to reconstruct history, but to explore how these individuals overcame it. Here, we are dealing with life as it is lived — with political, social and psychological presuppositions, and with retrospective interpretations. My role as a conversational partner differed from one person

to the next. The women showed themselves open and, for the most part, forward-looking; sometimes it almost seemed as if | were standing in for their absent daughters and sons. With several, I sensed that they were really glad that someone had finally come to question them — the women; for, previously, it had always been the ‘others’ who commented on 20 July. Occasionally, I also

felt like a kind of trustee to whom something was being confided so that it would not be entirely lost. In these conversations, ulti-

mate truths that had hitherto been hidden came to light at the very last moment: Three of the interviewees died while this book was in preparation. Precisely because the accounts of these women shed light on the ‘other side’, the ‘hidden history’, they belong to the interpretative history of 20 July. I was unable to question all the wives, not

even everyone who contributed significantly to the bourgeois Resistance. Some, like Annedore Leber, were deceased. Several, for example the sister of Father Delp, were not prepared to grant an interview. Even most of the women whose stories are included in this book hesitated a long time before they stepped forth into the public view. For this reason, I want, here, to thank them explicitly for the information they eventually gave me despite their initial misgivings. I recall very lively and intensive encounters. Often, on those long weekends, I demanded a great expenditure of energy from these intellectually alert women. Naturally, the conversations, which often lasted for up to nine hours, revealed regularly recurring themes, as well as nuances of the kind that inevitably get lost in a published book. However, I was able to use some of these statements and impressions in my

Introduction, where I summarise and clarify points that could only be intimated in the book itself. The responses of the interviewees were subsequently analysed with the assistance of a psychoanalyst, Professor Jacqueline Nieder,

and a historian, Hans Sarkowicz. Out of our combined efforts developed the interpretative thread that determined the scenario

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for abridging the interviews. Each interview focuses on what is particular to the individual. I have made no attempt to develop a typology. In every case, the conversational context would seem to be revealing; this applies even to those occasions when interviewer and interviewee apparently talked past one another. All this must be preserved and made comprehensible. My special thanks go to the historian Katharina Grundmann for her thorough research and, ‘last but not least’, to Philipp, Rosy,

Georg, Huberta and Maya von Boeselager, Stefan Jaeger, and Nicole Rodrigues, each of whom made a substantial contribution to the development and the completion of this book.