Christoph Probst's Christmas: Hope ever more, and trust
Through 1936
Growing up, Christmas may not have been quite as big a deal for Christoph Probst as it was for others among the White Rose circle of friends. For one thing, his father Hermann followed Eastern mysticism. If you had to label him, perhaps you could say he was a deist who embraced all forms of spirituality, and absolutely no religion.
After Christl’s parents divorced, his father married his mother’s best friend (really!). Elise was Jewish. Even at the time of their marriage, that was a risky proposition. Christl’s noncommittal attitude towards Christmas continued.
Hermann Probst suicided on May 30, 1936. Christl had been at his new school in Schondorf for only a month, boarding as a “resident pupil” instead of living at home. It had to have been jarring for Christl, going from the relative freedom of the New Gymnasium in Munich—where he met his soon-to-be best friend Alexander Schmorell—to an institution where the headmaster tried to out-Nazi the most fervent Nazis around.
Instead of counseling and comfort, the headmaster and many teachers told Christl to buck up. They reminded him that he was supposed to be strong as Krupp steel, not a wimp. Christoph Probst withdrew into himself, seeking solace along under the Bavarian night sky. He developed a lifelong love of astronomy, perhaps as a way to connect to his father.
The earliest we read of Christmas presents? Unsurprisingly, that same year, 1936. Christl’s mother had given him a pair of binoculars for his seventeenth birthday in November. Thoughtful friends and family members similarly honored his passion at Christmas. Presents “under the tree” included a stellar map, an atlas of the skies, and an astronomical handbook.
His sister Angelika remembered how the night sky could hold him enthralled. “Many winter nights, he would sit up on the roof until he was frozen—with his astronomy book, flashlight, and telescope, enshrouded in a great cloak.”
Whether he felt closer to his father, alone under the night skies, nothing between him and the heavens? It’s hard to know.
But in the same letter that told of appropriate Christmas presents, seventeen-year-old Christl returned to the comforting messages he often shared with his stepmother. “Never worry about base human things such as money and the like. They cannot touch those who are trusting! And when death comes, what is it? A threshold to the greatest joy that there can be for us. Being reunited, interpenetration, becoming one.”
1938 to 1941
Christl’s life changed, and how! In late 1938, Herta Dohrn bumped into Christl at a concert in Munich. She found it funny and interesting that the brother accompanying her at that concert was also named Christoph. And he knew Christl. And of course, made an introduction.
After the concert, Herta and her brother dined at the Hungaria Restaurant in Munich, and who should be there but Christl and his mother! The Probsts invited the Dohrns to join them for wine.
Over the next few months, Christl and Herta “kept running into one another.” They soon discovered that two of Herta’s cousins boarded with Christl’s stepfather and mother, people close to Christl’s heart. Herta said Christl would approach her “with arms open wide, truly happy, cheerful, merry, as if he had somehow always wanted to meet her—just being himself.”
By June 1940, Christl and Herta were an “item,” head over heels in love. Herta’s adoptive father Harald Dohrn—more papal than the Pope himself—didn’t exactly approve of their relationship.
Summer 1941, still not married, Herta and Christl had one son with a second on the way. Apparently, Christl would not wed until he felt certain he could provide for his family. The soldier/medic’s life seemed transitory, with no firm foundation. Besides, church?!
He eventually gave in. August 19, 1941, Christoph Probst and Herta Dohrn married. A real church wedding. A real Bavarian church wedding. Harald Dohrn was finally happy!
As White Rose friends made plans for Christmas 1941, someone said that Christl would be keeping close to his wife Herta, since she was expecting their second child. They should not expect to see him around over the holidays.
Alexander Schmorell was pleased that his best friend had asked him to be godfather, though where he would find Bavarian suspenders to wear to the christening, he did not know.
1942—Christl’s last Christmas
One of my favorite White Rose stories centers on Christl’s December 1942 letter to his half-brother Dieter Sasse, serving on the Western Front in France. It’s one of those stories that restores my faith in humankind.
With Christmas fast approaching, Christl paused to write his brother—and Dieter was always a brother, never a stepbrother!—a note of encouragement. Dieter had the great good fortune of having remained in France, not deployed to the Russian Front after completion of Reich Labor Service duty.
Still, Dieter would be far from home and family. Christl remembered what “exile” felt like, what it meant to spend the “beautiful days” of Christmas alone. “They will be quite melancholy and sad for you, because of the flood of nice memories,” he wrote. “But there is an external and an internal Christmas. The beautiful holiday consists in its least measure of the enjoyment of material joys, of giving and receiving.”
Christl reminded Dieter of the true meaning of Christmas, less a theological treatise than an experiential one, avoiding religious pitfalls to see “Christ” as bread of life, preaching love and the true brotherhood of mankind. The suffering of that Christ-child—a suffering born out of pure goodness—pointed Christl to “life after death” and the deeper meaning to his own suffering... Suffering because of war and the destruction it brought to earth.
For Christoph Probst, the true meaning of Christmas was found in love. His love was not some abstract, feel-good emotion. Real love brought peace, life, joy, harmony. “Cultures depend on [love], cathedrals have been birthed from its womb; it is the bond of one person to another, that which enables all the joys of life—because what would a person be if he were alone?”
He and Herta had talked about it, Christl said, and they had decided that in Dieter’s honor, in solidarity with the loneliness they knew he would face on Christmas Day, they too would spend the holiday quietly, no champagne corks popping—champagne “which we don’t even have,” he said, that sense of humor bubbling through. “Perhaps it will even be somewhat of a sad holiday, since so many must spend it sadly, many are disconsolate, and their lives are in danger.”
Christmas break permitted Christl to spend uninterrupted time with the wife and children he loved so deeply. From their tiny home in Lermoos, Christl could look up and see Daniel Mountain, the highest peak in the Ammergau Alps, and recall the strenuous hike he had enjoyed with Dieter. “I never think about you without pleasant anticipation of days we will be able to spend together in the future and experience in deep, indelible brotherhood.”
Money was tight that year, so the Christmas present Christl offered his younger brother was the promise of something to come. “I would like to give you something nice from my things. You can pick it out next time you are here!”
Always and forever, Christoph Probst looked to the future, to the time after the war when life would once again be good.
Christl also wrote a letter that day to his sister Angelika Knoop. Primarily a “thank you” for the St. Christopher she had given him and Herta for Christmas, the document provides a rare glimpse at Christl’s good-natured teasing of someone he held dear. After the thank-you, and “Christmas was nice,” and best wishes for the new year, he poked fun at Angelika’s husband Bernhard. “Tell Bernhard I would think about him a lot, but I won’t until he takes the time to write to me.”
Almost as an afterthought, Christl added a postscript to his letter that—in retrospect—is chilling and heartwarming all at once.
“A little piece of worthwhile advice: Continue to live inwardly as though nothing were wrong! Could a bomb have fallen long ago in Marienau [their residence]? Couldn’t we have long since been dead?
"There is only one difference: Hope ever more, and trust.”
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© 2025 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote. Image credit: Daniel Mountain in the Ammergau Alps. Photo by Octagon], CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. (Thank you, “Octagon,” for this beautiful photograph!)
More about Christl Probst's Christmas celebrations can be found in our White Rose histories. Please purchase them for access to that material! To order digital version of White Rose History, Volume I: Coming Together (January 1933-April 30, 1942), click here. To order digital version of White Rose History, Volume II, click here. WRH1 is © 2002, 2003, 2007 by Denise Elaine Heap. WRH2 is © 2002, 2007 by Denise Elaine Heap.
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