The definition of love

In September 2024, I embarked upon a series initially entitled Why I Love My White Rose Families. The first two posts attracted the wrong sort of attention. I rechristened the only two posts uploaded to date as White Rose families as I knew them. Geyers. Grimminger. Tilly Hahn. Hirzels. Traute. and White Rose families as I knew them: Lilo.

I paused after the second post. It’s still important to me to narrate their stories like you’ve never heard them before. But history cannot be a hagiography, and I worried that writing about these families from a personal viewpoint could be misconstrued as such.

On the one hand, I do genuinely love these families. Partly because of my mother, who was closer to their age as we sat with them over coffee and cake, or dined on their homemade white asparagus. Partly because we respected their wishes and stopped taping when they asked, when we sent them transcripts of our conversations to proofread, when we asked them non-White Rose questions — when we behaved towards their “people” as human beings whom they loved with their hearts and souls, they in turn opened up to us.

They took us into their homes, treated us as family. In December 2019, I spoke to a board meeting of the Weisse-Rose-Institut in Munich in the days before infighting tore it apart. The grandchildren of Erich and Herta Schmorell, of Christl and Herta Probst, the children of Kurt Huber and Hubert Furtwängler and others did not know the real-life stories their own “people” had told us.

On the other hand, our association with these families went far beyond a personal connection. Over Spargel and Riesling, we pondered whether the wishes of Angelika Probst must be honored, as before her death she asked that the love letters between her and Schurik be destroyed. That wish divided the Probst and Schmorell families, who believed the letters should be published, from Anneliese Knoop-Graf, who had married Angelika’s then-husband Bernhard Knoop after the war. Anneliese’s friendship with Angelika, dating to their days in Gestapo prison together, put her on the opposite side of the debate.

Erich and Hertha Schmorell, together with Herta and Micha Probst, argued that the minute a family put their loved one’s life into the public arena, they lost the right to block uncomfortable details. Respekt!

In Ulm, after coffee and cake — every Thursday at 2 pm! — we worked through boxes upon boxes of Wilhelm Geyer’s papers. His wife and children held nothing back. I took copious notes, while my mom shot footage of Hermann’s studio and his father’s paintings that got him blacklisted. On our last day in Ulm in April 1995, the family gave us “family only” collections of Wilhelm’s art, along with a couple of excellent biographies of that man who disrupted a Nazi rally… in 1933!

No questions were off limits. With them, we talked about the complexity of history. Probably no family knew the Scholls better than the Geyers. Wilhelm Geyer mentored Sophie Scholl’s artistic endeavors. Magdalena Scholl had a soft spot for Clara, Wilhelm’s wife, ensuring the Geyers had groceries.

The Geyers enjoyed a love-hate relationship with the Scholls. Sophie, Elisabeth, and mother Magdalena, the Geyers had only kind words for those three women. Hermann recounted his nine-year-old’s crush on Sophie, sweetness personified. Although they did confirm Wilhelm’s fear that Sophie’s suicidal ideations led to the arrest on February 18, 1943.

But they’d also seen the dark side of the Scholl family. They had suffered at the hands of Inge and told us where we can find evidence to back up their claims. That project is still on our to-do list.

Interestingly, Dr. Klaus Krippendorff (March 21, 1932 – October 10, 2022) — then-professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication — stumbled across a post I wrote about Inge Scholl and Wilhelm Geyer. Our subsequent correspondence, wherein he confirmed the Geyers’ assertions, made my day. He wanted to know how an American had figured out Inge Scholl and substantiated the Geyers’ claims that Inge never recanted her Nazi ideology. Because Klaus was a student at the design university in Ulm that Inge co-founded with Otl Aicher. He knew her non-White Rose face, the impious face. He even footnoted me in his account of life under Inge’s tutelage. Thanks to the Geyers and their honesty.

Those conversations with 95-year-old Clara Geyer and her children Elisabeth, Hermann, Martin, and Wilhelm Junior helped me think through historical complexity. How to reconcile the occasional good that evil people do and the harm that good people can cause. You will see that golden thread running through my White Rose histories. Birthed over coffee and cake with people I, yes, love.

Or the afternoon near Ammersee with Herta Probst and son Micha, follow-up years later with Herta and other family members. In addition to engraving themselves on my heart, they also opened my eyes to the politicization of White Rose idealism. I had no idea.

When they referred me to the 2000 book about Christl [Volkmann, Robert, and Gernot Eschrich, Peter Schubert (Eds.). “…damit Deutschland weiterlebt!”: Christoph Probst (1919-1943). Gilching, Germany: Christoph-Probst-Gymnasium Gilching, 2000] and I eventually obtained a copy, the conversations on their patio and in their living room made even more sense. How many other White Rose families talk out loud about the hard things? That Christoph and Herta “bought” a slave from the forced labor market to help Herta with the kids. That Christl did indeed join Hitler Youth and his selfish reasons for doing so. That Angelika detested — no, feared — Hans Scholl and worried about what would happen to Christl because of Hans.

Herta and Micha made sure I knew and understood completely that the White Rose story is not black and white, that it’s complex as hell, that their idealism without teeth was a liability at the same time it was noble. No hagiography, no matter how many wannabe scholars make believe it is.

So what is my definition of love regarding White Rose families?

Well, pretty much the same as “love” regarding people in my life in 2025. I hold great affection for these families. I cared about their daily grind, about projects they were undertaking, about their travels. I worried when I heard someone was ill. I grieved their deaths almost to the same extent as I grieved the deaths of family members (in some cases, more). I looked forward to spending an afternoon or evening with them, talking about White Rose and not-White Rose. We stayed in touch, corresponded, emailed, and when I was in Germany, talked on the phone. We shared doubts about newly-released books and compared nightmare stories about people with works in progress.

As with people in my life in 2025, my love for these families went beyond affection or common interests. I deeply respected their integrity, their ethics. I could tell when the conversation was moving in a difficult direction, because their unpleasant memories grieved them deeply. And they shared them anyway.

My disgust at people who claim “inner emigration” came from these long talks. Because often the deep-seated hurt that never healed came from those who stood at the forefront of White Rose speechifying, from Inge Scholl, from Franz Josef Müller, from Jürgen Wittenstein. The first time I heard one of these stories, I worked hard to conceal my shock. After a while, there was shock (and suspicion) when someone recommended anything written or spoken by those three and their minions.

During our April 1995 conversation with Fritz and Elisabeth, my mother made some comment about “good Germans.” Those two reacted so fast and so furiously, we were taken aback. There were very few ‘good Germans,’ almost everyone was a co-conspirator. It was also those two, Fritz and Elisabeth, who told me that the things Inge wrote were false, because she wasn’t there and I was (Elisabeth). Who recounted the many times they had asked Inge to correct false statements in her writings and she would not. It was Elisabeth who ensured I had copies of everything Inge had quashed for decades.

So yes. These families and friends of the White Rose circle who made themselves vulnerable, who spoke the truth, who remembered funny stories and hard things alike — I do indeed love them. I cherish the time I had with them. There are some days I want to dash off an email to Erich or send Lilo a sweet Papyrus card with a question or call Traute with a “really?” or write a quick letter to Micha with a query about Harald Dohrn or put together a well-crafted formal list of gaps for Anneliese. And I hate it that I cannot. (I do still bug Domenic occasionally, who is his grandmother Lilo’s mini-me and my buddy. I wish every White Rose family had had grandkids like Domenic.)

But for now, as long as hagiographies continue to flood the market and “love” is misunderstood, I will simply title these posts: The White Rose families as I knew them.

Comment worth keeping

I will have to reflect on your writing for a while before I say anything other than thank you for sharing these memories, Denise.

--sixmorecharacters, May 28, 2025.

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