Joanna Roman

​​Traute Lafrenz, an early opponent of the Nazi Regime, was a close friend of Hans Scholl and his family. She helped to print leaflets of the White Rose and brought them to Hamburg and Vienna. After the war, Traute moved to the United States where she passed away at the age of 103.  

​​Traute Lafrenz was born in Hamburg on 3 May 1919. Her parents were politically national and conservative. After the Nazis came to power, Traute quickly developed a critical attitude towards the regime. Her open-minded teacher Erna Stahl in the Lichtwark Schule strongly influenced her.  

​In 1939 Traute began studying medicine at the University of Hamburg, where she met Alexander Schmorell. In summer 1941 she switched to the University of Munich. There she met Alexander Schmorell again and fell in love with his friend Hans Scholl. After their love affair, she remained closely associated with him and his family. Traute Lafrenz took part in reading evenings and political discussions of the circle of the White Rose. 

​When she received a leaflet in summer 1942, she recognized Hans Scholl as the author. She began to support the resistance activities. In November 1942 she brought two different White Rose leaflets to her former classmate Heinz Kucharski in Hamburg and later sent him another. Kucharski copied them and passed them on. At Christmas 1942, Lafrenz took a leaflet to relatives in Vienna and tried to organize a hectograph. Together with Sophie Scholl, she procured envelopes and stamps in January 1943. 

​On 20 February 1943, Traute Lafrenz travelled to Ulm and informed the parents of Hans and Sophie Scholl about the arrests of their children. She was also courageous enough to accompany the Scholl family to the funeral in Munich on 24 February. On 5 March, she herself was interrogated by the Gestapo for the first time, later arrested and sentenced to 12 month in prison by the Volksgerichtshof (peoples court).  

​In the course of the investigation against the “Hamburg branch of the White Rose”, the Gestapo arrested her again on 14 March 1944 and took her to the Gestapo prison in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel. Towards the end of the war, she and other women were transferred to prisons in Cottbus, Leipzig and finally Bayreuth, where she was liberated by US forces on 14 April 1945.  

​In 1947 Traute Lafrenz was invited by a Jewish friend to San Francisco. Here she met her future husband Veron Page in 1948. She finished her studies in the USA and stayed there. For 23 years she ran a school for disadvantaged children in Chicago. Since 1995 Traute Lafrenz-Page lived in South Carolina.

Sophie Scholl played an active role in the White Rose resistance group. She was exceptionelly politically minded and self-reflective. During the Gestapo interrogation she firmly denounced the Nazi regime and explained her resistance stance. She was the only woman of the group that was executed. 

​​Sophie Scholl was born 1921 in Forchtenberg, a small town in Württemberg of which her father was the mayor. In 1932 her family moved to Ulm. When Sophie was twelve years old, she joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel (Young Girls League), a Hitler Youth organization for girls, and became a group leader. As a result of the arrests of her siblings for forbidden activities of the free youth movement in 1937, she increasingly rejected National Socialism.  

​Hoping to avoid compulsory Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service), Sophie began training as a kindergarten teacher. Nevertheless, she was called up for Labour Service in the spring of 1941. The experience of enforced subordination and lack of freedom, as well as her intense interest in literary and religious themes, strengthened her opposition against the Nazi regime.  

​Sophie Scholl had a great artistic talent and had the idea of studying art. However, she began to study biology and philosophy in Munich in May 1942 and was accepted into her brother´s circle of friends. They established contacts with writers, philosophers and artists. The question of how to behave as a Christian in a dictatorship was one of her main issues. Because her boyfriend Fritz Hartnagel was a military officer, they frequently discussed whether war could be legitimate.  

​In summer 1942 Sophie had to perform auxiliary war service at a rivet factory in Ulm. During that time, her father was in prison for three months because he had made a critical remark about Hitler. In November, back at university, Sophie moved into a flat together with her brother Hans. From now on, she played an active part in the resistance group. She bought envelopes and stamps on a large scale, took part in the reproduction and distribution of the last two leaflets in Munich and took 3,000 copies by train to Augsburg, Ulm and Stuttgart.  

​On 18 February 1943, when Sophie and Hans Scholl handed out the sixth leaflet at Munich University, they were arrested. Four days later, the Volksgerichtshof (People´s Court) sentenced her to death together with her brother and their friend Christoph Probst. That same afternoon they were executed at the Munich-Stadelheim prison. ​ 

Kurt Huber was one of the few German professors who opposed the Nazi Regime. In December 1942, Huber joined the White Rose group. The defeat of Stalingrad at the beginning of February 1943 inspired him to draft the sixth leaflet.  

​​Kurt Huber was born in Chur, Switzerland, in 1893. Three years later his family moved to Stuttgart. After completing high school, Huber began studying musicology, philosophy and psychology at Munich university. He received his doctorate in musicology in 1917 and was habilitated in psychology in 1923. 

​Huber taught at the University of Munich from 1926 onwards. He dealt with theoretical phenomena of music and became a leading representative of international folk song research. In 1937 Huber was appointed vice president of department for folk song studies at the State Institute for German Music Research in Berlin. Hopes of a permanent appointment were dashed due to intrigues. He was accused of having an anti-party attitude. Huber returned to the University of Munich. There, too, he was considered politically ambiguous. He reluctantly joined the NSDAP in 1940 in order to secure a better income to support his family. He was then appointed as an associate professor. 

​Huber’s lectures were characterized by free thinking. That is why they were also attended by students critical of the regime. These included the Scholl siblings and Willi Graf. In June 1942, Huber met Hans Scholl at a private reading evening. Scholl anonymously sent him the first two leaflets of the White Rose. In order to maintain the connection with Huber, Scholl wrote him a letter from the medical mission on the Eastern front, which Graf and Schmorell also signed.  

​At the end of 1942, Huber became an active part of the resistance group. In January 1943 he added an important message about freedom to the fifth leaflet and drafted the sixth leaflet at the beginning of February. About 3,000 copies were printed and distributed by the group in Munich. 

​A few days after the Scholl siblings spread the sixth leaflet at the university, were arrested and sentenced to death, the Gestapo arrested Huber on 27 February 1943. The university expelled him and revoked his academic titles. Huber continued his academic project in prison, where he also drafted a defense speech. 

​At his trial on 19 April 1943, the People’s Court sentenced Huber to death, along with Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf. On 13 July 1943, Professor Kurt Huber was executed in the Munich-Stadelheim prison. 

​​Hans Scholl was the central figure of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi resistance group in Munich. Scholl, together with friends, wrote, produced and distributed six leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime. Hans Scholl was arrested and sentenced to death. Just before his execution he shouted: “Long live freedom!”. 

​​Hans Scholl was born in 1918 in Ingersheim, a small town in Württemberg. His father was the mayor there and at the family`s later place of residence, Forchtenberg. In 1932 his family moved to Ulm. Hans Scholl joined the Hitler Youth in 1933 when he was fourteen years old, although his father was against the Nazi regime.  

​Hans was responsible for a group of 160 boys. After a while he found the rigid structures of the Hitler Youth confining and began to follow the more liberal ideals of the forbidden Bündische Jugend (free youth movement). Hans was arrested during a wave of arrests aimed at these groups and was accused of homosexual behavior in April 1938. His rather small penalty was suspended due to a general amnesty. 

​Before Hans Scholl was allowed to start studying medicine in Munich in 1939, he had to complete the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service) and two years of service in the Wehrmacht.  

​As a student and soldier, he was assigned to the 2. Studentenkompanie (Second Students´ Company) where he met Alexander Schmorell in June 1941. They soon became close friends. They shared literary and artistic interests and encouraged each other in their critical attitude towards National Socialism. In June and July 1942 Scholl and Schmorell published four “Leaflets of the White Rose” numbering some 100 copies each. 

​From mid July to the end of October 1942 Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell and other friends served as medical orderlies with their Students´ Company at the front near Moscow. The impression of the criminal warfare strengthened their opposition against the Nazi regime. Upon their return to Munich, they convinced more friends to support their resistance activities.

In January and February 1943, the group distributed a fifth and sixth leaflet, now supported by Professor Kurt Huber and others. Several thousand copies were produced and spread in major German cities. Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell and their friend Willi Graf also wrote clearly visible slogans on facades in Munich and at the university`s main entrance: “Down with Hitler”, “Hitler Mass Murderer” and “Freedom”. 

​When Hans and his sister Sophie Scholl spread the sixth leaflet at Munich University on 18 February 1943, they were arrested. After only four days, the Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court) sentenced them to death, along with their friend Christoph Probst. That same afternoon they were executed at the Munich-Stadelheim prison.

Hans Leipelt was a student at Munich University. He received a copy of the sixth leaflet of the White Rose on the day the Scholl siblings were arrested. He and his girlfriend Marie-Luise Jahn copied it and passed it on with the added title “…and their spirit still lives on”. 

​​Hans Leipelt was born in Vienna on 18 July 1921. His mother came from a Christian family of Jewish descent. Hans and his sister Maria, who was born after their move to Hamburg in 1925, were raised Protestant. In 1935, the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Race Laws stigmatized the siblings as “first-degree Jewish half-breeds” and the mother as a “privileged full Jew”. After the death of Hans Leipelt`s father, the only “Aryan” family member, in 1942, they were left without any protection.  

​After performing compulsory Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service) Hans Leipelt joined the Wehrmacht and took part in the invasion of Poland in 1939 and the French campaign in 1940. In June 1940 he was decorated for his service but two months later he was dishonourably discharged from the Wehrmacht because he was labeled “half-Jewish”. This exclusion hit him deeply.  

​In 1940 Hans Leipelt began studying chemistry at the University of Hamburg. In 1941 he moved to Munich, where he found protection against anti-Semitism at the Chemical Institute under Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Wieland. At the institute he met a circle of like-minded people. They openly discussed literature and modern art and listened to forbidden music and foreign radio programs.  

​On 18 February 1943, Leipelt received a copy of the sixth leaflet of the White Rose and showed it to his girlfriend Marie-Luise Jahn. Until then, they had been unfamiliar with the White Rose and its acts of resistance. Both decided to copy and distribute the leaflet. During the Easter holidays they brought copies to friends in Hamburg. 

​On 8 October 1943, Hans Leipelt was collecting money for the destitute family of Professor Kurt Huber, who had been sentenced to death. The collection of money was reported to the Gestapo and he was arrested. Further arrests among friends in Munich and Hamburg followed. Leipelt’s sister, Maria, and mother, Katharina, were also arrested. Katharina Leipelt took her own life in a cell in Fuhlsbüttel police prison on 9 December 1943. 

​After a year in pre-trial detention, the trial of Hans Leipelt and six co-defendants took place on 13 October 1944 in Donauwörth before the Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court ). Hans Leipelt was sentenced to death. He was executed at the Munich-Stadelheim prison on 29 January 1945.