December 1942: Roses at Christmas

Upon returning from the Russian front the first week of November 1942, the circle of friends who published those seditious “White Rose” leaflets regrouped. July 22, during the boisterous farewell party, they had furtively discussed what they needed to do once they were back in Munich. Those discussions had continued among the soldier students on the front lines.

They wasted little time. Over the three-week furloughs in their hometowns, the friends undertook exploratory visits with potential recruits, Willi in Saarbrücken and Ulm, Hans (and Sophie) in Ulm, Hans and Alex in Stuttgart and Chemnitz.

As soon as everyone re-reunited in Munich the week ending November 28, 1942, the utter gravity of their plans became evident. Under the guise of throwing a party for Christoph Probst, the friends gathered at the Scholl siblings’ new rooms on Franz Joseph Straβe. Sunday, November 29, 1942, marked the end of tentative preliminary efforts.

After reporting on ‘tentative preliminary recruiting efforts’ over that three-week furlough, Hans, Sophie, Willi, Alex, Christl, and Traute debated strategies and tactics. Anneliese, Willi’s sister, was also present. Since she was not involved in their resistance work, they took turns ‘babysitting’ her to keep her out of earshot of their plans. That did not bother Anneliese. She was taken by Hans Scholl, thinking him the handsomest fellow she had ever met, puzzled that he never gave her a second look.

Hans, Willi, and Alex filled Traute and Christl in on the discussions they’d had that summer, with time to kill on the Russian front, especially in Sosonovka. The expanded leaflet operation, graffiti, scattering operations… they talked about these ideas as matter-of-factly as which classes they had signed up for in the winter semester.

It is almost as if assignments were agreed upon, with a ‘You do this, you that.’

Traute’s assignment: Go back to Hamburg and test the waters with friends whom she knew to be trustworthy. And take a leaflet. Which meant involving Käthe Schüddekopf in their plans.

Willi, Hans, Sophie, and Alex would recruit potential co-conspirators. Because of the impending birth of Christl’s third child, and Herta’s difficulty with that pregnancy, Hans simply asked Christl to consider writing a leaflet for the expanded campaign.

And: No matter the assignment, they were all to raise money and find supporters who would donate supplies or equipment. They would not be able to fulfill their new goals with a hand-cranked duplicating machine and a few hundred sheets of paper and envelopes!

Willi Graf

Willi Graf’s Christmas in 1941 had been the worst in a string of completely awful Christmases. He was stationed on the Russian front, iced in near Moscow. Billeted on a family with other German soldiers, he had no idea how his family fared, or what was happening with the war. The German military left its frontline soldiers to fend for themselves in a typical Russian winter, for which they were not prepared.

Willi’s heart cries are gut-wrenching through that desolate Christmas. His isolation and depression would have alarmed a psychiatrist, had the German army provided therapists for their soldiers. He survived by sheer force of will.

On New Year’s Eve after dealing with Christmas loneliness, Willi Graf went outside for a short time into the clear and “unbelievably cold” Russian night. He gazed at the vast sky, a sky like none he would find in Germany. His eye followed moonlight’s glow on endless snow. Before the moment slipped from his grasp, Willi dared to dream about changes that could come in 1942, about aspirations for a better life in an uncertain future. Then he went to bed.

And what a difference a year made, at least on a personal level! Yes, German atrocities had worsened. Yes, most days Willi Graf still felt like an outsider. Yes, his battle over what he should do to save his country persisted, gave him nightmares.

But Christmas 1942, he had friends! Friends who were working on a wildly impossible leaflet campaign for January 1943. Friends like Hubert, Regine, and Otmar who shared his love of music. Friends he could fence with, go for long walks with. He even had a landlady who made him hot cocoa, stayed up late talking about classical music, and let him play with her toddler.

December 1942 in Munich, Willi Graf joined his Bach Chorale friends at concerts. Handel’s Messiah, Schütz motets, Wendling Quartet—Hubert: Hey, we should start our own quartet!—Edwin Fischer. All that emptiness in his soul vanished. Willi Graf was a new person.

And they sang carols, Willi and his Bach Chorale friends! One night after a particularly fun and wine-fueled Christmas party at Regine’s residence, after singing madrigals (neighbors be damned) and celebrating Josef’s passing the medical boards!, they wended their way home, stopping everywhere to sing canons. What joy, that music, those friends!

The Bach Chorale concert on December 20, 1942 was a roaring success, much to the relief of the performers. The dress rehearsal had been a disaster.

That night, Willi did not go to the after-party. Instead, he headed to the Scholls’ apartment, where he, Hans, Sophie, and Alexander Schmorell solidified recruitment plans for the holidays. Over cognac and tea, of course. Despite Christmas cheer, they were deadly serious.

Although Christmas break had “recruitment” as its primary goal, Willi Graf determined to delight in every hour of the year’s celebration with his family, making up for lost time.

At 5 pm on Christmas Eve, Willi met up with his old and true New Germany friends for Mass. Astounding that so many of them were home that year, at the same time, not spread all over Germany or the front lines. It had been too long since these high school and early university friends gathered on Christmas Eve. It was everything Willi wanted, and more.

Willi’s narratives regarding Christmas at home reveal immense disappointment and a realization that he and his family had little, if anything, in common. After supper on Christmas Eve, the family entered the father’s study to gaze upon the Christmas tree. “One senses little of the Mystery of his Advent,” Willi wrote sorrowfully. “It’s always been this way and will not change quickly, if ever.”

Still determined to enjoy this Christmas with his family, he sat with his parents and two sisters as they exchanged gifts and sang carols. He was happy to be home. But, his mind wandered. To Russia. To “the work.” To his recruitment tasks. To the young woman to whom he intended to propose. No matter how hard he tried, there was only emptiness in the company of his family.

On Christmas Day proper, Willi tried a different tack with his very-Nazi family. During a late-night walk, he told his father that he would like permission to earn a second degree, this one in philology, after he completed his medical studies. In response to his father’s “why” question, Willi mentioned… resistance.

The conversation grew heated. For once, Willi stood his ground to his Nazi father. Someone had to make a visible sign against Nazi tyranny, even if it “cost him his head.”

After the contentious walk, the Graf family sat together, “peaceful” and with no interruptions.

Willi spent the rest of his Christmas vacation recruiting friends and former classmates for White Rose resistance.

Traute Lafrenz

On Christmas Day 1942 as RAF bombers rested, the students of the White Rose did not. Traute Lafrenz chose to spend Christmas break with family in Vienna instead of with her parents in Hamburg. One Viennese uncle owned a large typewriter business. Traute hit him up with a request for a duplicating machine. The appeal failed, but her uncle comforted her with thoughts of the coming spring.

She had a bit more success with her aunt, Mimi Liebscher. Aunt Mimi’s deceased husband had been a professor at Universität Wien, the university in Vienna, and she had maintained contact with her husband’s former students.

During a small party at Aunt Mimi’s house among friends her aunt implicitly trusted, Traute told Mrs. Liebscher about the White Rose leaflets and what her friends in Munich wished to accomplish. She hoped her aunt could connect her to like-minded students in Vienna?

Traute rarely if ever spoke or wrote publicly about her family. We know next to nothing about how they celebrated Christmas. Merely that she chose to spend Christmas 1942 with “reliable” family in Vienna.

Alexander Schmorell

Over the holidays, Christmas 1942, the Schmorell family received the Monheim family from Aachen as guests in their home. Uncle Franz and Aunt Ella (related through his stepmother’s side of the family) seemed to be among Alex’s favorite relatives.

Although the exact nature of the relationship between the Monheims and White Rose resistance remains undefined, Alex did admit that he and Aunt Ella discussed the White Rose leaflet he had mailed them in the summer of 1942. According to Alex’s statements to the Gestapo, his aunt had handed the leaflet over to the Aachen branch of the State Police, because she disagreed with its contents.

The place or status of the Monheim family in White Rose history largely remains a mystery. Hans Scholl later told Hans Hirzel that the Monheims were major financial backers of their operations and that he had visited them over Christmas break. There is an entire story line involving a coat check girl at a theater in Aachen that had gotten copies of the leaflets from the Monheims and placed them in the pockets of theatergoers in that city. Truth? Fiction?

In Alex’s March 18 interrogation, he denied all connections between the Monheim family and White Rose activities. It is unclear whether he did so because there was no connection, or because he covered for family members he loved.

The Gestapo did not believe Alex’s denials, because evidently, the Monheims were well-known for their “signs of political opposition.”

At least that Christmas 1942, Alex had a favorite aunt he could talk to about politics. Without overt disapproval!

Hans and Sophie Scholl

As with Willi Graf, Hans and Sophie Scholl went into their final Christmas with mixed emotions. On the one hand, they could think of little but recruitment and the upcoming expanded leaflet campaign. Those thoughts were all-consuming. On the other hand, they seemed to intuit that they needed to enjoy this Christmas with their family.

Hans Scholl did not travel home until December 22, 1942. Sophie, however, took a detour to visit Otl Aicher in Bad Hall. Hans covered for her, knowing their parents would disapprove of Sophie’s visit with Otl, alone.

Once Sophie arrived on Christmas Eve, the Scholl family could begin their festivities. As a unit, they seemed pleased with the way things went, not noticing that Hans and Sophie seemed … underwhelmed. The Christmas meal, the Christmas tree, opening presents. They wanted to get on with “the work.”

Shortly after Christmas, the two took the short stroll across Münsterplatz, down Platzgasse, crossing Adolf Hitler Ring till they reached the Geyers’ modest walk-up flat on Syrlin Str. 16. While Hans talked quietly with Wilhelm Geyer—a painter who had long been Sophie’s artistic mentor and inspiration for her sketches and oil paintings—Sophie played with the Geyers’ five children. Clara Geyer was about to give birth to her sixth baby, due any day now. But Hans was on a mission with Wilhelm Geyer.

Would Hermann and Elisabeth like to come to our apartment for hot chocolate, Sophie asked the very pregnant Mrs. Geyer. Nine-year-old Hermann had a terrible crush on Sophie as it was. He thought she was simply wonderful. And now, an invitation to hot chocolate at their big, huge, monster apartment on Münsterplatz? What a merry Christmas this was!

In the meantime Hans spoke with Wilhelm Geyer about the work he (Wilhelm) would be doing in Munich. The older man told Hans he would be staying at an inexpensive hotel while he worked for Firma Mayer, designing stained glass windows. Hans said he could not promise anything just yet, but he knew an architect who owned a studio that sat empty most of the time. He would try to work something out with Manfred Eickemeyer.

Hermann remembered 1942 as one of his best Christmases. Magdalena Scholl honored the artists’ children (the oldest, Elisabeth, had just turned thirteen) with hot chocolate made from real cocoa, not an everyday treat even in the Scholls’ home. Hermann said it was so fine to sit at the Scholls’ big bay window and look down on the Christmas market on Münsterplatz. “Everyone looked like little ants from up that high.”

That was the last Christmas Hans and Sophie would sit at that big bay window.

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The above information is fully footnoted 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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