When Hans and Sophie Scholl’s parents arrived worriedly at Munich Central Station on February 22, 1943, the trial of the People’s Court in the Palace of Justice had already begun. Four days earlier, on February 18, the Scholl siblings were discovered during a leaflet campaign at Munich University and arrested by the Gestapo. Of course, if the parents had arrived before the start of the hearing, they would have been denied entry because of the missing entry card. But since they arrived very late, they were able to enter the hall, which was filled with Nazi bigwigs, unhindered.
Elisabeth Hartnagel, Hans and Sophie Scholl’s sister, later said that her brother Hans had twitches when he saw their parents. Her presence must have touched him beyond measure. According to Hartnagel, the parents heard that the nefarious defense attorney said he had not read the files at all. If he had known that this process was about high treason, he would not have accepted the mandate in the first place. When Robert Scholl heard this, he made it clear to the judges that he would take over the defense of his children if the lawyer did not. He was then expelled from the room.
In historical retrospect, the parents of the Scholl siblings naturally receive less attention than their children. But the appearance in court reveals quite clearly that Robert Scholl was also a person who did not allow himself to be intimidated, especially not when it came to his children. The question of the extent to which these were shaped by him and his attitude is very justified.
All the more interesting is a chance find that recently came to light in a house in Brazil and was made available to the Munich historian Suzane von Seckendorff. It is a photograph, a letter and a printed sermon. This material was discovered by the artist Luise Weiß, with whom Suzane von Seckendorff is friends. While rummaging through old family records, she found records of her grandfather, who had emigrated to Brazil in 1924. The documents were in a folder, nobody in the family could have done anything with them, says Luise Weiß. It was only she who took a closer look at these sources. Her Jewish grandfather absolutely wanted to fight the Nazis, she recalls.
The funeral sermon for Magdalene Scholl. Her husband had sent them to his friend from the days of the First World War.
(Photo: Luise Weiß)
The photo is from the time of the First World War and shows two young soldiers sitting on a ramp and looking at the camera in a friendly, distant manner. Presumably they belonged to a medical train, the man in front is wearing a Red Cross band on his left arm. He is the doctor Dr. Fritz Weiß, the said grandfather of Mrs. Weiß. The young soldier next to him is Robert Scholl, the father of the Scholl siblings. So both got to know each other in World War I, where, according to his records, white was used in Russia, Italy and the Austrian Orient Army.
Robert Scholl was denounced by his secretary to the Gestapo
That letter in the portfolio proves that the acquaintance of Weiß and Scholl lasted a lifetime. Robert Scholl wrote to Dr. Weiß, who had condoled him on the death of Magdalene Scholl. Scholl sent him the funerary sermon so that he might see from it “of what kind and whose spirit the deceased was. And of this kind were my children too,” he wrote to him. He complains that “only a small part of our German people has shown an understanding of the corruption and the fatefulness of the Hitler era.” According to Scholl, out of self-righteousness and complacency, many did not want to admit that they had taken the wrong path and were guilty of the calamities of the world and their own people. “We can say with some certainty that without the rule of the National Socialists our world today would be healthier and more peaceful.”
In his letter to his friend in the 1950s, Scholl complained that “only a small part of our German people has shown an understanding of the corruption and the fatefulness of the Hitler era.”
(Photo: Luise Weiß)
At the said sermon on the death of Magdalene Scholl on April 2, 1958 in Ulm, the pastor paid tribute to the deceased, “whose life demands the greatest respect and deepest respect from us, whose name has become a comforting symbol for the greatest disgrace of our people.” The name of the Scholl siblings, he continued, “at that time, in the greatest self-inflicted disgrace of our people, gave many Germans the belief that there was still another Germany than that which destroyed itself in the rampage of megalomania and millions more tore others into the abyss. “
Both the sermon and Scholl’s letter prove that many Germans at that time were not yet self-conscious. The name Scholl was still contaminated for many yesterday’s people. It is all the more important to the historian that these unpublished sources in the year of the 100th birthday of Sophie Scholl be made public. She was impressed that Robert Scholl maintained contact with the Jewish doctor, with a “brother in spirit”, as Robert Scholl called him, despite the distance and the hatred prescribed from above. For Suzane von Seckendorff, one thing is certain: “That shows another facet in the way the Scholl siblings were shaped – the pacifist parental home.”
Robert Scholl was hostile to the Nazis from the start. In August 1942 he was served four months in prison after his secretary denounced him to the Gestapo that he had denounced Hitler. After his release, he was banned from practicing his profession. After the execution of Hans and Sophie Scholl on February 22, 1943, the family’s situation deteriorated noticeably. In May 1943 Robert Scholl was sentenced to 18 months in prison for listening to foreign broadcasters.
After the war, Scholl held the post of Lord Mayor of Ulm from June 1945 to 1948. In the 1950s he founded the All-German People’s Party (GVP) together with the later Federal Presidents Gustav Heinemann and Johannes Rau. He dedicated the rest of his life to the legacy of his children until his death in 1973. The grave of the Scholl family is in the Perlacher Forst cemetery in Munich.
So far, Ms. Weiss has not been able to find any other Scholl letters in Brazil. It should be mentioned that the name Scholl has no meaning in Brazil, but that many Nazis found refuge there after the war. Suzane von Seckendorff therefore did not want to rule out that the Weiss family had hidden further letters out of concern. In their most recent conversation, however, her friend Luise Weiß categorically ruled this out. That is not the case, she said. “The Scholl family is hardly known to anyone here.”