White Rose Christmases

Even in the worst of times, life goes on. Babies cry, couples dance at weddings, children jump rope and skin their knees. Even in the worst of times, we laugh, we cry, we hold our loved ones close.

In December, Black Americans light the seven Kwanzaa candles. Jewish children play with dreidels as parents relate the story of oil that didn’t run out. Christians of most denominations gather round the Christmas tree. Buddhist faithful meditate on Bodhi Day. And I dare say that some may even air their grievances around a Festivus pole.

The world may be falling apart around us, but we hold fast to our traditions.

This was also true of our White Rose students and the adults who worked alongside them. More often than not, we think of them as noble warriors. Yet just as we do, they celebrated according to their family and religious customs. Here’s a taste of their lives. Enjoy!

The Graf family

The first note we have regarding Christmas in the Graf household comes from a letter Willi wrote in January 1937. He was thrilled that someone (don’t know who) gave him a “complete Bible” for Christmas (1936), so he could read it all for himself. Pretty daring pre-Vatican II! Reading the Bible for oneself was still off limits.

We don’t see Willi at Christmas again until 1939. He had just had the best December of his life. He had landed a tutoring assignment for the elder sons of the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in Munich. Their mother praised Willi’s efforts. For the first time since his forced transfer from Bonn to Munich, Willi Graf wasn’t alone.

For some reason not revealed in published letters, Willi Graf did not go home for Christmas in 1939. He would have been granted leave, same as other students. But he did not take it.

Christmas 1940, Willi regretted that decision. His comfortable tutoring post had ended with his transfer to the Western Front. This was the second Christmas in a row he was alone, away from family. Since the fighting had stopped and there were no war wounded, Willi was stuck in Burgundy, France, making house calls in far-flung places.

It bothered Willi that he was in a place where ‘Christians’ should be celebrating Christmas, war or no war. But no one did. Nothing set either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day apart. No tree, no midnight Mass. No one sang carols. It was just another Wednesday, one more day to get up and perform minor medical tasks. Worse yet, he was missing the wedding of hometown friends Otto and Maria Vieth!

Nothing holy or sacred about these silent nights.

And in 1941, for Willi Graf, Christmas was even worse. 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, 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. As I worked through his diary and letters while writing White Rose History, Volume I, I could not help but feel his isolation and depression. It’s almost scary.

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, Edwin Fischer, Wendling Quartet – Hubert: Hey, we should start our own quartet! 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 made 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, that December 20, 1942, 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. But despite the Christmas cheer, they were deadly serious.

Christmas 1942 is the only Christmas where Willi’s published letters and diaries permit us a glimpse into Graf family dynamics over the holidays. Although Christmas break had “recruitment” as its primary goal, Willi Graf determined to delight in every hour of the year’s celebration, to make up for lost time.

At 5 pm on Christmas Eve, Willi met up with his 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 had 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 around that Christmas tree.

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, 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 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.

The Hirzel family

In Susanne Hirzel’s extensive memoirs, she mentioned only one Christmas at home. Her grandfather visited the family for Christmas. During the festivities, he chatted with Susanne and her brother Peter about this and that. He startled them when he confessed, “I know the truth, but I cannot bear it, because I am powerless. So sometimes I rather prefer to let myself be lulled to sleep with news I know to be lies.”

When bombs fell in the years and months ahead, Susanne and Peter Hirzel were not surprised to learn that their grandfather took poison capsules with him to air raid shelters in case he were buried alive and yet lived. Nazis had stripped him of hope for the future.

Traute Lafrenz

On Christmas Day 1942 as RAF bombers rested, the students of the White Rose did not. Traute Lafrenz had chosen 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 the University of Vienna, and she had maintained contact with Professor Liebscher’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 also 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.

The Schmorell family

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 Alex’s 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 the White Rose 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 had 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. Who knows whether it’s true?

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.”

This is the only “Christmas” story we have from the Schmorells’ home.

The Huber family

December 1942. It had started off as a social call. Hans Scholl accepted Professor Huber’s invitation to Christmas tea in their apartment. Klara Huber was there, as were Brigitte and Wolfgang, Huber’s two children. Brigitte (12) and Wolfgang (4) did their part to keep the conversation moving with their childlike innocence. Wolfgang, however, had whooping cough, hence Klara asked about remedies for that ailment. Everything was so, so Christmassy.

When Klara and the children left the room, Hans’ conversation with Kurt Huber took a more serious turn. Hans quickly picked up on aspects of Huber’s political beliefs that had escaped him in more public settings. First, he realized that Kurt Huber was a committed nationalist, a patriot who placed great stock in German culture and ideology. Huber also regarded Bolshevism as “the destroyer of European culture,” and like many German nationalists at the time, wrongly equated Bolshevism with Judaism and Jewish citizens. “[Huber] holds strong antisemitic views,” said Hans.

Their long conversation convinced Hans that Kurt Huber could be trusted with their secret. He reminded Huber of the two flyers he had received in June and early July, editions one and two of the White Rose leaflets. Huber knew what he was talking about. Hans then revealed the fact that he and Alex had written and distributed those leaflets.

Apparently, shortly after Hans dropped that bombshell on Kurt Huber, he left. He did not ask Huber for money or paper or envelopes. He seemed to be aware that this knowledge was all that Huber would be able to bear at the moment.

Note: No other record of Christmas with the Hubers.

Lilo Ramdohr

Lilo Ramdohr’s horrid 1940 ended splendidly when the Harnacks descended on her apartment in Munich. Falk brought along Arvid and Mildred, and his mother “Muhmi” as well. They celebrated Christmas in the cramped quarters of her residence. Falk had been concerned about Lilo after the death of Lilo’s guardian Willi Ramdohr. He had stayed in touch throughout December, writing her words of comfort and cheer, reminding her how rich her life had been with her beloved guardian.

And now the family was with her in the flesh! Lilo’s admiration for Mildred intensified the better she got to know that middle-aged American woman. Mildred and Arvid had been offered the opportunity to remain in the United States out of harm’s way. They could have left Germany and carried out their resistance activities in safety. Mildred’s mother worked in Washington, D.C., and her connections to American Senators and Congressmen were impeccable. It had to have been tempting, that offer of shelter from danger.

Over Christmas, Lilo got an inkling of the ideas that motivated Arvid and Mildred Harnack, of the political principles that made him more than an economist and her more than an editor. They spoke of liberating Germany, of the need for political change. Since Hitler had responded well to advice from others in his government regarding the war in France, Arvid apparently remained fiercely optimistic that Hitler could be persuaded to modify his positions if he were surrounded by adequately crafty counsel.

But barely a year later, Hitler’s renewed war effort also meant that Otto Berndl’s three-week December 1941 leave to spend time with his wife had been revoked. When Otto advised Lilo that he would be spending Christmas on the Russian front, it was neither that news nor her fears for his survival that overwhelmed her. Lilo’s husband, he who had spoken so eloquently against the Führer, now wrote that his fighting in Hitler’s war was a “wonderful fulfillment of duty.” His changed attitude gave him “new strength to fulfill every job, every duty that is given me here.”

She was aghast as she read on. When they first met, he had been angry with her for not revolting against her assignment in a military hospital. Now Otto Berndl, who claimed to have seen the “big picture,” said his wife should volunteer for duty before they drafted her again.

But somehow, 1942 had managed to grow even darker. Arvid and Mildred Harnack, those souls who had graced Lilo’s apartment Christmas 1940, had been arrested for their “treasonous” activity.

December 22, 1942, Adolf Hitler ordered the execution of the first thirteen condemned men from the Harnack-Schulze-Boysen resistance movement. Arvid Harnack was among those who would die by hanging that same day at Berlin-Plötzensee.

When Falk heard about his brother’s death, he fell to pieces. “[It] took almost every ounce of my life energy,” he said later.

Prison officials allowed Arvid to pen one final letter to his family, a letter the guards mailed to Arvid’s mother in Neckargmünd as soon as the censors were done with it.

Arvid told his family that he knew his death was imminent and thanked them for the tangible love they had demonstrated to him. “Thinking of it made all heaviness seem light.” He contemplated the beauty of nature, reciting poetry that gladdened his soul. “Above all, I think of the fact that humanity is advancing.”

He congratulated Falk and Lilo on their (supposed) engagement, specifying that the signet rings should indeed be used to pledge their troth. Arvid assured his family that before his execution, he would hold a small pre-Christmas celebration, reading the Christmas story for himself, alone in his cell. That would prepare him for “the moment of departing.”

Closing with hugs and kisses, Arvid asked his family to “celebrate Christmas really well. That is my last wish. And also sing, I Pray to the Power of Love.”

Days later, Christoph Probst’s admonition to “hope ever more, and trust” could have been uttered in the warmth of the Harnacks’ living room in Neckargmünd. From the moment Falk picked Lilo up at the train station, she was conscious of the depth of his grief. He would not want her to see him cry or say anything that would demonstrate weakness. He would have to be strong.

So when Falk put his arm under hers and gripped her hand tightly, Lilo knew that was the closest he would ever come to expressing his grief. It was enough to hold her hand and have her close.

As soon as they arrived at “Muhmi’s” home, Ansa Harnack (one of Falk’s sisters) took Lilo straight to the brokenhearted mother. “Mrs. Harnack sat still as a rock in her chair,” Lilo recalled. “She nodded at us. Her eyes were wide open, with a perplexed expression peering into the depths of the emptiness that had torn her son away from her. The pain of this dear woman was indescribable. And yet, with what superhuman greatness she bore that sorrow! ‘What kind of poor souls are they who must carry out such a death sentence?’ she said almost inaudibly.”

Lilo was shaken, speechless at Muhmi’s declaration. She had sympathy for the executioners? She did not wait until they asked for forgiveness? Hitler had taken her son from her. Muhmi was not supposed to forgive! And suddenly, for the first time since Alex had cautiously told her what they planned to do, Lilo understood. She finally, finally felt a personal association with Schurik’s plans.

But Muhmi had collapsed. “She appeared awfully tiny to me in her chair. Her beautiful blue eyes burned in their dark caverns. Death was near her, in her, around her. We hardly dared to move, lest we touch her frailty with our youthful power.”

This was the woman the Gestapo feared so much, this “Muhmi” who could not move from her chair? They called her a “gasbag,” ridiculed her political views. She had once vowed that her sons would never fight the Russians. And now she sat unmoving, forgiveness on her lips, life drained from her body.

Lilo observed the helplessness with which Falk and Ansa regarded their mother. There was so much pain in that room, it had almost become tangible. “Pain too great for tears,” Lilo noted. No one dared wonder aloud what would become of Mildred. At her trial, Hermann Göring had said she looked like an angel, then followed that statement with invectives so horrible, they could not be repeated in mixed company.

Though Lilo knew she would have to tell Alex about Arvid’s death, she privately vowed never to tell him the full story. She felt “bound to silence” by the “quiet horror” of those days, that Christmas of 1942.

The Scholl family

Like the Graf, Schmorell, and other White Rose families, we know very little about Scholl family traditions.

In 1936, there is no mention of Christmas, only Hans Scholl’s camping trip to lower Gemstal Alm with his Hitler Youth troop. That trip was noteworthy primarily because Hans Scholl exchanged addresses with an “SS-Man” allegedly from Dresden, with whom he corresponded for a while.

The next Christmas (1937) was marred by the arrests for bündische activity, and in Hans Scholl’s case, for Section 175-2 homosexual offenses, especially sexual assault of a pre-teen in his Hitler Youth group. It’s truly odd, though. This very serious criminal case was hanging over Hans’ head, and the Scholls acted as if everything were all right.

Sophie and Annelies Kammerer tried to get their parents to take their families to the same resort the Hartnagels would be Christmasing at. Their plot failed, but the two teenagers had fun wheedling their parents. Inge threw a massive Christmas party for her Bund deutscher Mädel [League of German Girls] people, with Charlotte (“Scharlo”) Thurau guest of honor. Sophie was beside herself with excitement that Scharlo would be there. Scharlo was one of the most highly respected BDM leaders in Ulm!

Despite his arrest, Hans’ Commanding Officer granted him leave to spend Christmas with his family.

With all the Scholls gathered in one place that Christmas, not one word about how they celebrated. Sophie simply mailed the leftover Christmas candles to Fritz Hartnagel, and to Scharlo.

By 1938, Fritz and Sophie were barely on speaking terms. Sophie mailed Fritz Christmas candles anyway. She also narrated the Christmas party at the nursery where her sister Elisabeth worked. “The pastor was telling a story about a little boy who wrote a letter to the Christ child, and the boy was named Peter,” she wrote Fritz. “One of the little boys yelled out, ‘That’s me [des bin i’]!’ He accompanied the rest of the story with the happiest exclamations.”

Sophie’s mood changed and she relaxed. Thinking about the children and their unfeigned joy put her in better spirits, renewed her perspective. Christmas was only three days off, and she finally felt like she could celebrate.

And then the push-pull, the veritable emotional yo-yo to which Sophie would subject Fritz for the next 4-1/2 years. “I wish I could be there when you read it [the book she gave him for Christmas]. In general I would like to be alone with you a little. There is still so much that needs to be resolved.”

Sophie ended that letter to Fritz with Happy Holidays, not Merry Christmas.

Finally, in 1939, that window cracks open a bit and we can see the Scholls enjoying the holidays. Sophie seemed so completely at peace with herself and those around her. She retreated into the comfort of ritual, with candle-lighting and carol singing soothing her spirits. Her youngest brother Werner impressed her with improved violin skills. Music in the parlor, calling up hymns and melodies that gladdened dreary evenings, became a highlight of her life.

Sophie reached out to Fritz, extending to him a whiff of the things that made her happy. She fashioned a special Advent wreath for him, complete with little red candles and a brief reminder about when and how to light them. The Christmas package included apples that the Scholls as a family had polished for him, chocolates, and a precious, rationed beeswax candle. We have to laugh at the image of Werner Scholl eating beeswax candles and Mrs. Scholl imploring him not to, now that candles were hard to come by.

We understand that for Fritz, a soldier who knew he was about to face battle, Sophie’s little stories about things like brothers who ate beeswax candles and where they hung their Advent wreath that year were priceless gems. She wrapped Fritz up in the physical presence of people who cared for him. This tenderness was a Christmas present unparalleled, and Sophie’s gift of sensing another’s needs valuable beyond words.

As Sophie’s physical beauty faded and she lost the perky prettiness of her teen years, she retained this tough softness that always made her appealing. She was hardly perfect, and you will understand her flaws in time.

But from the deepest core of her being, Sophie could feel another’s pain, could experience another’s agony, and instinctively knew how to caress the wound and bandage the hurt. No navel-gazing here. Sophie’s eyes were generally fixed on the person across from her.

Once Hans arrived in Ulm, Sophie’s joy knew no bounds. The siblings went for long, snowy walks, testing the ice on the Iller River. In 1939, we see for the first time that Hans and Sophie together as team were different than when they were alone. It’s doubtful that either would have crossed the frozen (?) Iller without the other.

1940, Christmas was less relaxed and enjoyable. Hans was studying for medical exams. It’s not clear how much time he spent in Ulm that year. Fritz sent Sophie almonds for their annual baking. She wrote him about their preparations for Advent, the hanging of the green, and all that baking! Including Swabian hazelnut bread, which Sophie shared with Fritz.

By 1941, the Scholl family hardly is in view. It’s as if they rushed through Christmas, trying to get to the New Year’s ski trip. Since Elisabeth could not join them for the ski trip, much less travel to Ulm for Christmas, the family postponed opening presents and whatever celebration they had until she was in town.

This was also the Christmas that Hans Scholl declared was his “first Christmas as a true Christian!” Before plagiarizing Carl Muth’s article on poverty.

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. (Inge would have been livid.)

Once Sophie arrived on Christmas Eve, the Scholls could begin the festivities. The family seemed pleased with the way things went. As with Willi Graf, Hans and Sophie were 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 see if he could work something out.

Hermann remembered that 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.

Postscript: Fritz Hartnagel spent Christmas 1942 on the front lines in Stalingrad.

The Probst family (I saved the best for last)

Christl’s mother had given him a pair of binoculars for his birthday in November 1936. 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.

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.”

It is not clear whether he felt closer to his father, alone under the night skies, nothing between him and the heavens. But in the same letter that told of appropriate Christmas presents, 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.”

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. Alex 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.

One of my favorite White Rose stories, Christmas or not, 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 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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Image credit: Top photograph--Gettysburg town square, November 2023. © 2023 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact us for permission to use. Second image--Shopify, public domain for platform users. Third image--Münsterplatz, 1924.  Public domain. The Scholls' house is on the righthand side of the picture. Fourth image--Shopify, public domain for platform users. Bottom inage--Shopify, public domain for platform users.

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