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Anyone who thinks of Sophie Scholl has, directly or indirectly, almost always the same image in mind: a young woman with a serious look, a furrowed forehead, a severe parting on the right temple and the half-long hair as a great one attached to the left of the head with a clamp.
She wears a simple cardigan over the simple blouse to which a daisy is pinned.
In all three films about the Hitler opponent who was executed in 1943, the make-up artists of the respective leading actress orientated themselves on this appearance: both for Lena Stolze (in "The White Rose" by Michael Verhoeven and in "Five Last Days" by Percy Adlon, both 1982) as for Julia Jentsch (in “Sophie Scholl” by Marc Rothemund and Fred Breinersdorfer from 2005).
A collage of books on the white rose that use this motif
Source: Gerhard Paul
Many covers of books about the White Rose in general or Sophie Scholl in particular also use this motif.
It has become downright iconic.
There are also other photos that show Sophie Scholl in a completely different way - happy, with significantly shorter hair, smiling.
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The historian Gerhard Paul from the University of Flensburg, who almost single-handedly established the field of visual history in Germany through his publications, got to the bottom of the origin and use of this image in his most recent book "Pictures of a dictatorship".
The result is an extremely exciting look at a facet of Sophie Scholl, who was born on May 9, 1921.
Sophie Scholl at the fence of Munich's Ostbahnhof, taken on the morning of July 23, 1942
Source: George (Jürgen) Wittenstein / akg-images
You know exactly when, where and even in what situation the iconic photo was taken. On July 23, 1942, the medical student Hans Scholl waited with his friends Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf as early as seven o'clock in the morning for the transport to the field traineeship on the Eastern Front, a kind of internship for prospective doctors in field hospitals during the semester break. Since doctors were needed in large numbers during the war, the students were supposed to study on the one hand, and to be available to the armed forces on the other.
To see her brother off, Sophie Scholl had come to Munich's Ostbahnhof, where the members of the student company were supposed to board the train to the occupied Soviet Union.
Christoph Probst, another fellow student of Scholl and Schmorell, who was part of a student company of the Air Force in Innsbruck, also came;
therefore he wore civilian clothes.
Jürgen Wittenstein, another fellow student who drove towards the Eastern Front that day, pressed the shutter release.
Sophie Scholl - The last days
In February 1943, the young Sophie Scholl was arrested during a leaflet campaign at Munich University.
This was followed by interrogations that lasted for days at the Gestapo.
Sophie does not renounce her beliefs even if it could save her life.
Source: X Verleih AG
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The three main characters in this photo are Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst;
Alexander Schmorell is hidden and Willi Graf is only half visible from behind on the right side of the picture, which is why he is usually cut off.
The three look serious and are silent;
Probst makes a note of something.
That is what makes this picture so famous.
Because it shows those three young people who were sentenced to death almost exactly seven months later by the People's Court, who traveled to Munich under its merciless President Roland Freisler in a rushed trial for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, and on the same day, February 22, 1943 , were executed in Munich-Stadelheim.
Hans Scholl, together with Alexander Schmorell, was the center of the resistance cell that had put four leaflets into circulation in June and July 1942 that were signed “The White Rose”.
Sophie knew about it, but at the time she was only marginally involved;
Christoph Probst suspected something, stayed out of it, out of consideration for his pregnant wife and his two small children.
The fence on Orleansstrasse in Munich 2020
Source: Andrea Wieshuber
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The place where the photo was taken still exists today - at least it still does.
It is a siding on the edge of the Ostbahnhof in Munich parallel to Orleansstrasse.
Three quarters of a century later there is the same fence that Sophie Scholl is leaning against in another photo of Wittenstein.
Not for long, however: the siding, which has not been used for many years and which was last used by a car dealership, will soon be built on as the city becomes more densely populated on the outskirts of central Munich;
at least at this point, the fence is also likely to disappear.
What will remain is the picture that, according to Gerhard Paul's research, was published for the first time in November 1946 - on the front page of the Munich magazine “Wir.
A sheet of youth ”.
Before the end of the year, two regional newspapers, the “Main-Echo” and the “Hessische Nachrichten”, also printed the photo.
Since then it has appeared countless times, often reduced to Sophie Scholl, whose importance for the White Rose was thereby overemphasized.
It was primarily through this impressive snapshot that the 21-year-old became a “global youth icon”, as the historian Miriam Gebhardt put it in 2017, and the “German Joan of Arc”, as the magazine “Der Spiegel” wrote in 2018, or to "St. Joan of Resistance", as the "Frankfurter Allgemeine" critically expressed in 1982.
Of course, this overemphasized her actual, equally honorable role in the White Rose, at the expense of her brother and, above all, Alexander Schmorell.
As always, however, any mystification is a hindrance to serious discussion.
The more recent books on the White Rose, the Hans Scholl biographies by Barbara Ellermeier and Robert M. Zoske and the Sophie Scholl biographies, also by Zoske and Maren Gottschalk, endeavor to present the White Rose correctly as far as it is concerned can be reconstructed from the sources.
Gerhard Paul, however, deserves the credit of having deciphered the iconic image.
This is just one of more than three dozen examples of the value of visual history in his new book, some of them very well known, some of which are almost never seen.
Gerhard Paul: “Pictures of a dictatorship. On the visual history of the Third Reich "(Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen. 528 pp., 38 euros)
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