Wikipedia and the White Rose

Did you know that Hans and Sophie Scholl led the protest march after Professor Fritz-Joachim Paul von Rintelen was dismissed from his teaching position in Munich purely for political reasons? And that this protest took place in early 1941 in front of Rintelen’s house in Munich?

From Wikipedia.de: From 1936, he taught in Munich, but his teaching activities were increasingly restricted until he was completely removed from his position in 1941 for political reasons. In February 1941, Gauleiter Adolf Wagner abolished Rintelen’s professorship for the purpose of “uniform alignment of National Socialist education” and Rintelen was “granted leave of absence until further notice.” For this reason, and because there was a risk of arrest due to complaints filed against him, about 70 students, led by the Scholl siblings, staged a demonstration in front of Rintelen’s house to express their solidarity. On June 11, 1941, he applied for membership in the NSDAP and was accepted on July 1 of the same year (membership number 8,801,145).

The above text would have made Jürgen Wittenstein’s head explode. Wittenstein long claimed close, personal friendship with Rintelen. His story about Rintelen’s dismissal varied wildly over the years, as is often the case when a liar cannot remember what he said last. But the one consistent “fact” that Wittenstein trumpeted: He—alone, or with one friend, or with a bunch of friends—led the protest march to Rintelen’s house. Oops, apartment. No, house. Apartment. House. In later life, Wittenstein almost always claimed that he alone led the march.

It also makes my head explode, but not because I believe Wittenstein’s version. Rather, because I believe Christian Tilitzki’s research.

Easy part first. Sophie Scholl was in Ulm, not Munich, the first part of 1941. On March 22, she received notification that she would be serving her Reich Labor Service duty in a week or two. Hans indeed was in Munich that winter/spring semester 1941. But he spent much of his time that winter and spring in Bad Tölz, in the mountains. Not one of Hans Scholl’s letters—that we are allowed to read—mentions Rintelen.

The real story regarding Rintelen has been carefully documented by Christian Tilitzki, whose PhD dissertation detailed the hirings and firings of philosophy professors from 1918-1945. Tilitzki first relates Rintelen’s postwar words about himself, then annihilates them with fact.

For example, Rintelen claimed he was persecuted while teaching in Munich because he was not a member of the NSDAP. Tilitzki agrees that Rintelen was not a member of the NSDAP until 1941, but points out that Rintelen himself bragged during the war that his ‘independence’ granted him extraordinary influence with both Hitler and Hess. He was an invited guest in Berchtesgaden as early as 1932, when Rintelen counseled Hitler on how to frame his “movement.” His boast was true, not fiction. Rintelen understood how to leverage his Catholic connections and his extreme nationalist views.

Tilitzki points out that Rintelen survived the first major ideological, political purge of 1939. Kurt Huber did as well. At least one professor was dismissed because when he did his genealogy, they discovered a Jewish ancestor. That was enough to disqualify him in 1939.

In the end, it was not Rintelen’s politics that caused his chair to be discontinued. Rather, throughout Germany the NSDAP eliminated the so-called Concordat Chairs (Konkordatlehrstühle, professors called Konkordat-Philosophen). It was nothing personal regarding Rintelen or his political beliefs. And the chairs were not abolished or eliminated. They were “shut down,” or stillgelegt. Semantics are a tyrant’s best friend.

Rintelen’s “Concordat” philosophy position was transformed into a secular course of study. Chancellor Wüst brought a professor emeritus named Max Buchner—a historian, not a philosopher—to fill the vacant position. Other German universities similarly converted “Catholic” philosophy teaching positions into other disciplines: Psychology, eugenics, military history, economics.

Rintelen lived out the rest of the war as a member of the NSDAP, working privately on his philosophical writing. Like the Wikipedia article linked above, his obituary leaves out inconvenient truths regarding Rintelen’s true political and religious beliefs, omits the work he did reconciling Nazi racial ideology (including antisemitism) with eugenics and Catholic theology. That obituary skips straight to his dismissal from the university in Munich in 1941, wrongly linking him to White Rose, Kurt Huber, and resistance. None of which is true.

What, you may ask, does the Rintelen Wikipedia article have to do with White Rose? I can hear you: You just said he wasn’t White Rose, so why are you using Rintelen to discuss Wikipedia strengths and weaknesses?

Because: It’s a lot less ‘inflammatory’—understatement!—than using Scholl or White Rose in general.

This post has been simmering for over a year. Recent essays by Stephen Harrison and D. F. Lovett (David) pushed me over the edge. If you are interested in how Wikipedia works, I recommend both articles. Stephen’s Nine Based Takes on Grokipedia, and David’s Larry Sanger’s Nine Theses on Wikipedia, Ranked, are both long, and both worthwhile. Two different approaches to the beast we all know and love-hate.

I’ll therefore (mostly) use the Rintelen Wikipedia article, my observations, along with Stephen and David’s expert advice and opinions. These White Rose-Wikipedia gaps have bothered me for a while.

First: Insufficient cites

The entire Wikipedia paragraph quoted above has exactly two cites, neither of which seems to apply to much (if any) of the supposed facts presented. Footnote 3 is a valuable reference and there should be a hyperlink to the Bundesarchiv’s database, War Opa ein Nazi? That supports Rintelen’s NSDAP number.

The second footnote cites a print copy of a book about Heidegger, not about Rintelen. I searched Google Books and could not find an eBook to see what Leaman’s “Volume 5” says about Rintelen.

When the article was first submitted (apparently in 2014), or when that paragraph was added to the article (when?), I am surprised that Wikipedia history editors in Germany did not demand support for that paragraph. “Nightdiver” did in fact ask—in 2020!—if the bit about Scholls wasn’t legend. No movement on it.

While writing this post, I replied to Nightdiver (this link takes you to Nightdiver’s question and my reply). Who knows if my comment will ever be read?

So for White Rose, I see Issue #1 as insufficient verification of “facts” presented by editors and contributors. It’s as if the mere mention of White Rose or Scholl shuts off rational thought. Is it fear? After all these years? Fear of being blackballed for telling the truth?

Second: Learning curve

I was going to delete the sentence about Scholls and Rintelen. Despite reading the Wiki and following links to everything I could find about edits and deletes, I couldn’t locate either the “code” or the delete icon on the edit page. And yes, David, I am logged in!

Wikipedia needs to make it possible for historians to edit. Not simply digital PR people or techie types! Edited to add: Despite spending more time on it in 2026, I still find it hard to edit Wikipedia articles.

Third: Expertise

The Rintelen article, at least the part related to 1918-1945, should be edited by Christian Tilitzki, if he has time and energy to do so. His magnificent two-volume opus tracks all personnel decisions during the Weimar Republic and Third Reich. I don’t think the man missed a single scrap of paper anywhere. His dissertation took him twelve years! Respekt!

He notes in his book/dissertation that he deemed personnel files more accurate than public statements or newspaper announcements or memoirs. They are cut and dried. Same goes for the classes professors taught, their publications, and even their PhD dissertations, which were made part of their personnel files.

But according to Wikipedia’s own rules, Christian Tilitzki may not edit Wikipedia articles and cite himself. He may not even cite the primary source materials he used to write his dissertation. Wikipedia does not allow authors to cite their own works, nor does Wikipedia allow primary sources as footnotes or “proof.”

Stephen writes, “Wikipedia, by contrast, favors third-party reporting such as newspapers, books, and academic sources. The theory among Wikipedia editors is that third-party reporting is more likely to be neutral; or at least, there is not the inherent conflict of interest of the first-person perspective where the individual would be tempted to self-promote.”

What are we to do when Tilitzki (regarding philosophy professors) and I (regarding White Rose resistance) did ground-breaking research that is rarely cited, but oft-plagiarized? I don’t want to cite Sönke Zankel, whose White Rose book reads like a German translation of my own, phrased in literaturwissenschaftliche (academic literary) speech. Nor do I wish to cite Ulli Chaussy, who cited Zankel! It’s my work, my labor, my processing tens of thousands of pages of primary source materials, translating them, putting them into my relational database, and figuring out what really happened. Zankel, Chaussy, et al simply piggybacked off my hard work. (Here’s how I carried out and organized my research.)

So I would like to edit White Rose, Scholl, Graf, Schmorell, Lafrenz articles that are so full of legend as to be worthless. And I would love for Christian Tilitzki to edit the articles about Rintelen, about Kurt Huber, Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Heinrich Lützeler (the Bonn professor Willi Graf admired, but whose ideology raises questions), about Hans Alfred Grunsky (the professor who actually taught the Leibniz and Spinoza classes in Munich, not Huber!), about Karl Alexander von Müller (Huber’s close friend, who was in Hitler’s inner circle).

I could read all 1,473 pages of Tilitzki’s book and make the edits. But he knows the material with his eyes closed, just as I do White Rose.

I see this as a Wikipedia weakness. Or at minimum an unaddressed quandary.

Fourth: Unreliable sources

David touched on this briefly, but in a little different direction. Larry Sanger, one of the two cofounders of Wikipedia (no longer with the company), issued his Nine Theses, which David dissected in his Substack post. Thesis #3 reads, “Abolish source blacklists.” Sanger thinks Wikipedia editors have gone overboard with their definition of banning sources they don’t like and sees it as an ideological shift. David named the two “blacklists” referenced by Sanger, noting that only one is a true blacklist, and it consists solely of spammers. The second one is a list of deprecated sources. (Half of my earliest—1998-2002—Center for White Rose Studies URLs no longer exist, because we changed platforms that used different naming conventions for hyperlinks. Our material is still there. The URLs are different.)

I see it as a dissimilar dilemma. There are about twenty books about the White Rose that simply should never be cited. Almost all rely heavily on Inge Scholl’s fairy tale about her siblings, a fairy tale that Fritz and Elisabeth (Scholl) Hartnagel fought because it was, yes, a fairy tale.

Those books are, and a link means there’s already a book review; no link, a book review is pending:

Detlef Bald. Die Weisse Rose: Von der Front in den Widerstand. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2003.
Detlef Bald (Ed.). “Wider die Kriegsmaschinerie” – Kriegserfahrungen und Motive des Widerstandes der „Weissen Rose”. Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2005.
Barbara Beuys. Sophie Scholl: Biographie. Berlin: Insel Verlag, 2010.
Fred Breinersdorfer, ed. Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage (Das Buch zum Film). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, 2005.
Klaus Drobisch. Wir schweigen nicht – Die Geschwister Scholl und ihre Freunde. Berlin, DDR: Union Verlag, 1968.
Annette Dumbach & Jud Newborn. Shattering the German Night: The Story of the White Rose. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1986.
Barbara Ellermeier. Hans Scholl: Biographie. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2012.
Christine Friederich Hikel. Sophies Schwester: Inge Scholl und die Weisse Rose. 2013.
Anton Gill. An Honorourable Defeat: A History of German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1994.
Richard Hanser. A Noble Treason: The Revolt of the Munich Students Against Hitler. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979.
John J. Michalczyk (Ed.). Confront! Resistance in Nazi Germany. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2004.
Michael C. Schneider & Winfried Süβ. Keine Volksgenossen: Der Widerstand der Weiβen Rose. Munich: Rektoratskollegium der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 1993.
Inge Scholl. Students Against Tyranny: The Resistance of the White Rose, Munich, 1942-1943. Translated by Arthur R. Schultz. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1970.
Barbara Schüler. “Im Geiste der Gemordeten...”: Die ‘Weiße Rose’ und ihre Wirkung in der Nachkriegszeit. Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2000.
Harald Steffahn. Die Weiβe Rose. Hamburg: 1992.
Hermann Vinke. Das kurze Leben der Sophie Scholl. Ravensburger Buchverlag Otto Maier GmbH, 1980.
Die Weiβe Rose. Munich: Weiβe Rose Stiftung München e.V., 1993.
Anything by Jürgen Wittenstein, aka George J. Wittenstein
Sönke Zankel. Die Weiβe Rose war nur der Anfang. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2006.

If you like sweet, sappy, feel-good stories, the above books are for you. Just keep in mind their foundation is laid on lies and misrepresentations. They are not historically accurate.

And yet more than half the Wikipedia articles about White Rose, Scholls, Huber, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, draw from these unreliable sources. A few of them had good intentions. Harald Steffahn, Richard Hanser, and Christian Petry did not have the luxury of the Gestapo interrogation transcripts and other primary source documents. They relied on Inge Scholl and Jürgen Wittenstein because prior to 1989, those were the only known sources.

So Stephen and David, how can unreliable texts not be blacklisted as such, but denoted as “unreliable” along with their errata? With that permanently affixed to the articles for future contributors?

Fifth: Unknown “facts”

David highlighted Sanger’s second thesis, “Enable competing articles.” I agree with David that this is a bad idea. Using White Rose as example, Sanger’s world would have an Inge version of the White Rose and a scholar’s version. As David wrote, “This sounds like a mess. Seriously, this just sounds like a total mess. And I do not understand how ‘neutrality within its own framework’ could possibly function. Imagine how confusing of an experience this would be. My suspicion here is that Sanger worries he won’t get his way on some of the other theses above, so he’s throwing this one out as a Hail Mary. …”

I would rather see—both for White Rose and for general articles unrelated to White Rose or history—dissenting opinions within an article. Not where a fact is well-established. For example, if someone writes that the second White Rose trial took place on July 14, 1943, there’s no “dissenting opinion” for that statement. It’s simply wrong. The trial date is well-documented. April 19, 1943.

A good example would be the date of the recruiting trip to Chemnitz undertaken by Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell, trying to win Falk Harnack for their cause. Before my histories (2002+), that date was solemnly stated as January 1943. Book after book used the January date for the Chemnitz trip.

Databases treat historical data same as other data points. When every weekend in January was accounted for through letters or diary entries—and not just those of Hans and Alex, but Willi Graf’s notes about their activities—it became clear it had to be November 1942. One specific weekend in November 1942. Power of logic, eliminating impossibilities.

Interestingly, Falk’s Wikipedia page ignores the meeting in Chemnitz as if it did not happen. Guess that is one way to deal with it! The German Wiki for Falk is no better. Alexander Schmorell’s Wikipedia article also ignores the Chemnitz trip and wrongly claims that Alex and Hans Scholl made contact with Kurt Huber in December 1942 (it was Willi Graf and Hans Scholl). Hans’ page likewise ignores Chemnitz.

Although I feel fairly confident in my powers of deduction, I would still rather “Chemnitz visit” be in those articles, with my dating and reasoning for the dating in the footnote. But making it clear in the “Talk” page that if anyone finds better information, they should and MUST edit!

My database used the assumption from letters and diaries that they went on a weekend. What if they cut classes and went during the week and wrote “weekend” in their diaries as subterfuge? Then my deduction would either be positively edited, or if still based on assumptions, separate deductions with reasoning noted.

Dissenting opinions, when valid, strengthen a debate. Edited to add: They also strengthen a PhD dissertation or Master's Thesis!

SIXTH: ANONYMITY

Both Stephen and David addressed this issue and I can see the arguments for and against anonymous posting on Wikipedia.

From David’s post:

This [forcing identities to be public] is dangerous and undemocratic.

The first thing I think of, reading this, is the story of Osama Khalid. If you aren’t familiar, Khalid is a medical doctor and Wikipedia editor who is currently serving a 32 year sentence in a Saudi Arabian prison for editing Wikipedia.

There are multiple people in prison right now for editing Wikipedia. Belarus, Saudi Arabia, and Syria have all imprisoned people whose Wikipedia edits upset their governments. In the case of Bassel Khartabil, he was executed by the Syrian government for editing Wikipedia.

I’m going to translate what I think Sanger is suggesting here: “If you don’t reveal who your volunteer administrators are, the government will be forced to take control of your non-profit organization, seize your servers and shut down your operation.”

Maybe I’m wrong. It certainly doesn’t sound like something a libertarian or traditional conservative would advocate for. (And I think that’s what Sanger is.)

I don’t even know which government he’s referring to. But “government may have to act” is frightening stuff.

Meanwhile, I will say that I edit Wikipedia without any attempt at anonymity. I used to try to keep some distance between the name I use for editing and writing (D. F. Lovett) and my professional and personal name (David Lovett), but that ship has sailed. I would like it if all editors felt safe to do the same, but that’s not the world we live in. And I don’t think threats of government intervention is the answer to making Wikipedia editors and administrators feel safer.

How gawdawful than we must think like this! In the good old days—2024—I would have argued that at least American citizens did not have to fear government censorship. Wow. How naïve we were!

Stephen’s comments:

On paper, transparency sounds reasonable, but anonymity is important for practical reasons. Many of the editors in these leadership roles receive harassment, threats, and sometimes worse. I have interviewed several of them over the years, and have seen some of the death threats they receive online. Sanger himself acknowledges the safety issue and suggests that the Wikimedia Foundation should offer stronger support to targeted volunteers. Even so, I suspect that most editors in these positions would rather keep their anonymity than rely on uncertain protection from a nonprofit organization.

At the same time, total anonymity has real drawbacks. I have written about how anonymity can enable conflicts of interest and how easily it can be abused. More recently, location data from X revealed that several major political accounts were operated not by the patriotic Americans they claimed to be, but by troll farms in Nigeria and India. Anonymity creates opportunities for manipulation. The real challenge is finding the right balance between transparency and safety. My guess is that online platforms will continue moving toward a real ID framework. It is an open question whether Wikipedia will follow that trend.

Re-read Stephen’s second paragraph. That expresses my viewpoint. On the one hand, I get the security issue. Until we have an administration that respects data privacy and citizens’ rights, maybe we should all create fake profiles for Wikipedia and not post under our real names.

The issue of self-promotion and conflict of interest and political talking heads moves me to the no-anonymity column, at least for non-inflammatory wordsmithy. I don’t want another author pushing his or her viewpoint on Wikipedia, pretending to be neutral. To move away from White Rose for a minute, can you imagine if Karoline Leavitt created a Wikiprofile or two or three and manipulated current events articles?

I want to write my White Rose edits as Denise Elaine Heap (DeniseHeap2025). If I cannot stand behind my work, my work is worthless. I feel the same about other writers who post as contributors on Wikipedia. What if someone named TrueWRStory posts to my Rintelen comment, “I am absolutely 100% positive that Sophie and Hans led the protest march!” And TrueWRStory turned out to be the Scholls’ publicist? We should know who is editing these things.

In closing: There’s a lot of work to do

White Rose-related Wikipedia articles are woefully bad and inaccurate. So many middle and high school students use Wikipedia for their essays about White Rose. They are learning it wrong. Unlearning is hard.

There ARE good books in addition to mine out there! You can either read my book reviews or subscribe to this Substack. One day I will indeed finish the Historiography! It’s on my to-do list!

Believe it or not, there’s even an Inge book on the “good” list: Sippenhaft: Nachrichten und Botschaften der Familie in der Gestapo-Haft nach der Hinrichtung von Hans und Sophie Scholl. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, 1993.

I appreciated two professors who sponsored excellent anthologies: Rudolf Lill, Hochverrat? Die “Weiβe Rose” und ihr Umfeld; and, Hinrich Siefken, Die Weiβe Rose: Student Resistance to National Socialism 1942/43, Forschungsergebnisse und Erfahrungsberichte.

Anything by Lothar Drude, Gernot Eschrich, Gerda Freise, Lilo Fürst-Ramdohr, Clara Geyer, Martin Hake, Hildegard Hamm-Brücher, Bernhard Hanssler, Thomas Hartnagel, Hans Hirzel (in spite of everything), Susanne Hirzel (memoir only, sadly), Eckard Holler, Inge Jens, Inge Jens, Inge Jens!, Igor Khramov, Michael Kissener, Arno Klönne, Anneliese Knoop-Graf, Hermann Krings, Silvester Lechner, Gisela Linder, Harold Marcuse, Christiane Moll, the Probst family, the Schmorell family, Christoph Schnitzer, Peter Schuber, Kerstin Sonnenwald, Peter Steinbach, Carol Stulberg, Johannes Tuchel, Andrea Übelhack, Hildegard Vieregg, Robert Volkmann, Helmut Zenz, Armin Ziegler, and Rainer Zimmermann…

These people are golden. They care about getting it right! If you know of others, please either message me or leave a comment. I’m always excited when the “good” list grows!

Now we must simply fix White Rose on Wikipedia. It’s a daunting task… David, Stephen, advice?

PS for Stephen: NONONO to using AI to determine what is factual and what is not. AI doesn’t know the difference between Harold Marcuse and Anton Gill, between Michael Kissener and Michael Schneider. I received a Google Alert last year advertising an AI-generated movie about “the brothers Hans and Sophie Scholl.” So just no. Arm wrestle you!

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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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