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Munich (dpa) - The name Sophie Scholl stands like no other for the resistance against National Socialism.
She belonged to the circle around Alexander Schmorell and her brother Hans.
The White Rose denounced the crimes of the Nazis and distributed leaflets to shake people up. On February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl were arrested during an action in Munich and executed four days later. Above all, Sophie Scholl became an icon. But around her 100th birthday on Sunday (May 9th) the picture changes - towards a young woman who had courage and strength, but also weaknesses and contradictions and who is therefore more approachable than ever.
Thomas Rink from the NS Documentation Center in Munich thinks this is overdue.
"Sophie Scholl was not born a resistance fighter."
If you look at her entire life story with all its contradictions, ambivalences and developments, the myth of a "saint without contradictions" is taken away from her.
"She is going from the resistance icon to a person."
This is also welcomed by Josef Schuster, President of the Central Council of Jews: «There are no perfect people.
And if they are placed on a pedestal, they are no longer suitable as a role model.
Because then they become unreachable ».
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According to Hildegard Kronawitter of the Weisse Rose Foundation, young people in particular could deal with this contradiction.
Young people often experienced themselves as contradicting themselves, says the chairwoman.
So if an idol like Sophie Scholl also contains contradictions, you could understand that.
The Instagram project “@ichbinsophiescholl” shows how this works.
For ten months, the channel shares videos, photos and impressions of the last ten months in Sophie's life.
Luna Wedler plays the student who films herself in everyday life.
Wedler was impressed: “She is a modern woman.
For me she has become an incredible role model. "
Scholl was born on May 9, 1921 in Forchtenberg, Baden-Württemberg, and grew up with four siblings.
Her parents' home was liberal and Protestant.
A lovely childhood with games, freedom and nature.
After a short stop in Ludwigsburg, the family ended up in Ulm in 1932, while the Nazis became more and more present.
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But while their parents were critical of the brown ideology, older siblings like Hans and Inge were active in the Hitler Youth. Sophie also became an enthusiastic young girl at the age of 13. In her biography "How heavy a human life weighs", Maren Gottschalk describes the student at this time as daring and provocative, with short hair and her cheeky manner very different from the braided Hitler girls. She secretly smoked and was in love with Fritz Hartnagel, whom she had met when she was 15 and to whom she wrote her probably last love letter on February 16, 1943, filled with purple flowers.
Cycling tours and excursions with people of the same age, staying overnight, sitting by the campfire - that created a space that girls like them would not otherwise have, explains Kronawitter.
Only gradually did Sophie learn that it was not about freedom of choice, but that everything was linked to an ideology.
The theologian and historian Robert Zoske speaks of a long and sometimes painful development process.
"The person Sophie, as he confronts us from the sources, had many facets, of which the death-defying prisoner, as she ends up at the People's Court, is just one of many," he writes in the book "Sophie Scholl - It regrets me nothing ».
The fact that she achieved such an iconic significance is explained by the stubbornness and unconditionality with which she stood up to her deeds to the very end.
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Stimulated by discussions and books, Sophie's doubts about the Nazi regime grew, and her enthusiasm for war put her off.
During her studies of biology and philosophy in Munich, Hans brought her into contact with like-minded people such as Schmorell, Christoph Probst, Willi Graf and Kurt Huber.
The friends discussed, read forbidden books and wrote leaflets in which they criticized crimes such as the mass murder of the Jews.
"We are not silent, we are your guilty conscience, the White Rose will not leave you alone!" It says in the fourth leaflet.
Sophie got on enthusiastically. On February 18, 1943, she and Hans laid out the sixth leaflet at Munich University. They were escaped and arrested, as were others in their circle. Sophie and Hans Scholl as well as Probst were sentenced to death and executed on February 22, 1943, further death sentences followed. A sentence has come down to us from Sophie that she is said to have said the day before the execution. “What a lovely, sunny day and I have to go. (...) what is the matter of my death when thousands of people are shaken up and awakened by our actions. "
"Sophie Scholl is an example of the courage to stand up for one's own convictions and to oppose the Nazi dictatorship," summarizes historian Rink. But movements like the “lateral thinkers” are taking over their memory. In autumn 2020, a woman publicly compared herself to Sophie Scholl because of her resistance to the Corona measures.
"This presumption in relation to the victims of National Socialism is repulsive and unbearable," criticized Josef Schuster, President of the Central Council of Jews.
It relativizes the Holocaust and mocks the victims.
Rink therefore sees a major task: "Even if we live in a democracy today, everyone needs commitment and moral courage in order to position oneself against threats to democratic society and not to silently accept inhuman ideologies such as racism or anti-Semitism."
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210507-99-504720 / 3
@ichbinsophiescholl
White Rose Foundation
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Federal Agency for Civic Education on Sophie Scholl
Biography How heavy a human life is
Biography Sophie Scholl - I have no regrets
Central Council of Jews in Germany