Sophie Scholl Blends Theory and Practice: Grappling with Eternity

A little more than a month prior to her death — prior to her brutal execution at the hands of the National Socialist government — Sophie Scholl already understood well the risks and dangers in her life. She faced them directly in her thinking.

As an active member of a resistance movement, Sophie could not engage in spiritual thoughts either as a purely intellectual exercise or as simply maintaining a familial or cultural tradition. In her environment, good and evil were concrete and specific factors in daily decisions; the intersection of life and death was never far away.

So it was that she, in journal entries probably intended only for her own eyes, could choose not to be drawn into long threads of speculative thought. Her extensive education made her well aware of historical debates about topics like ‘predestination’ and ‘foreknowledge’ and their complexities.

Sophie Scholl chose, however, to avoid the debate, and for the sake of practical action, to embrace the mystery. ‘Mystery’ and ‘practical’ may seem like odd partners. Yet accepting mystery frees the agent from complex argumentation — frees the human to act with full agency.

So it was that, on January 12, 1943, she wrote:

Die Prädestination und der freie Wille, diese beiden anscheinend nicht vereinbaren Gegensätze — jetzt machen sie mir eigentlich nicht mehr viele Schmerzen, obwohl ich sie so wenig erklären kann wie vorher. Daß Gott allwissend ist, daran glaube ich, und die notwendige Folgerung daraus ist, daß er auch von jedem einzelnen weiß, was nach seiner Zeit mit ihm ist, und von uns allen weiß, was nach der Zeit ist. Dies verlangt auch seine Eigenschaft als unendlicher Gott. Meinen freien Willen fühle ich, wer kann ihn mir beweisen! Doch was ich nicht verstehe, ist die Hölle, der Lazarus im Schoße Abrahams, der dem Reichen in der Hölle den Tropfen kühlenden Wassers aus seiner unendlichen Fülle verweigert.

Yet she was also willing to wrestle momentarily with the metaphysical concept of time. Too easily and too frequently people can forget, or forget to account for, what it might mean to be outside of time.

Concepts like predestination and foreknowledge are intrinsically temporal, and for this reason must be grasped in different ways, depending on whether they are being applied inside time or outside time.

Ich glaube, es ist schon ein Unterschied zwischen Vorbestimmen und Vorauswissen. Vorbestimmung läßt sich für mich viel schwerer, fast gar nicht eigentlich, mit dem freien Willen vereinbaren. Vorherwissen viel eher, obwohl es noch unbegreifliches Geheimnis bleibt. Übrigens ist »Vorherwissen« menschlich gesprochen, da Gott ja nicht an unsre Zeit gebunden ist, man müßte die Vorsilbe »Vorher« streichen und nur Wissen sagen.

Sophie Scholl knew well the probability that her actions would end with her own death. Only weeks prior to that death, her journal entries reveal how clear-eyed she saw that finality. She did not deny or avoid the thought of her destiny. She also did not get lost in an intellectual maze debates about the concepts of predestination and foreknowledge.

Instead she drew strength from meditations like these — strength which empowered her to continue her resistance work until the very end, despite all dangers.

Hans Scholl at Easter Time — Reflections on His Inner Condition in 1940

The reader will be aware of Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie, their friends at the Universität München and elsewhere, how they formed Die Weiße Rose, and how they worked heroically in that resistance group.

At the university, Hans met Hellmut Hartert. The two became friends, working together both at the university and in the army. On weekends and vacations, they sometimes stayed with Hellmut’s family in Bad Tölz, which was conveniently located near Munich.

Hans wrote to his mother in a letter dated March 22, 1940, about his experiences of Easter:

Meine liebe Mutter,
Da Du mir ein Deinem letzten Briefe so sehr ermahnende schöne Worte gesagt hast, muß ich Dir berichten, wie ich Karfreitag begangen habe. Du meintest, ich solle in irgendeiner Kirche das heilige Abendmahl empfangen. Das konnte ich nicht. Denn die Geste macht den Menschen doch nicht frei von aller Sünde. Es ist doch diese Handlung nur eine Äußerlichkeit, deren Sinn ich wohl zu verstehen glaube und die ich billige, da sie sehr viele Menschen eine gewisse Erlösung zuteil werden lassen kann. Nun habe ich am gestrigen Todestag Christi die Matthäus-Passion erlebt. Ich vermag in Worten den Eindruck dieses Musikwerkes nicht wiederzugeben. Auch ist verfehlt, über tiefe religiöse Gefühle zu sprechen. Doch Du wirst ahnen, daß diese Musik sehr tief in mich drang und manches umpflügte und erlöste, wenigstens für die Zeit des Zuhörens. Und nachher ging ich beglückt nach Hause, denn ich wußte, daß, obwohl der Leib gestorben ist, der Geist am dritten Tag wieder auferstehen wird von den Toten. —
Morgen werde ich hier in der Bergeinsamkeit Ostern feiern.

This letter reveals that Hans was still clarifying for himself some of these thoughts; they have not yet been worked out into a final form. He seems to be wrestling with what is merely symbolic and what has an actual power; what is external and what is internal.

Hans encountered the limits of human language. He has experienced things that can’t be put into words.

In any case, such experiences and such thoughts are almost certainly part of what prompted him and the others to start Die Weiße Rose and what empowered them to persevere in that work.

The Verb Hören and Related Usages

The verb hören is familiar to beginning students of the German language in situations like these: Jetzt höre ich Musik. Gestern habe ich das Radio gehört. Letzte Woche haben wir das Konzert gehört. Nächste Woche werden wir die Oper hören. In these contexts, the verb refers simply to hearing or listening.

Related forms show obvious connections to the root meaning: verhören refers to interrogating: Der Polizist hat den Gefangenen verhört. To emphasize focus and attention, the separable prefix zu- can be added: Wenn der Professor vorliest, müssen die Studenten gut zuhören.

But some forms seem to have little or nothing to do with the basic notion of hearing and listening. These forms can mislead the student.

For example, gehören can roughly be translated as “to belong to” — Das Geld gehört mir. Die Bleistiften gehören uns. The person to whom something belongs is in the dative case in these kinds of constructions.

The separable verb aufhören refers to stopping, quitting, or ceasing. Früher habe ich Zigarretten geraucht, aber ich habe damit aufgehört. Das Kind macht zu viel Lärm: er soll aufhören.

These three verbs — hören, aufhören, and gehören — pose a confusing challenge for the student of the German language!

Kann die Kunst uns retten? — Can Art Save Us? Hans Scholl and Die Weiße Rose

The name ‘Hans Scholl’ instantly calls forth associations with his sister Sophie, their circle of friends at the Universität München, and the resistance group known as Die Weiße Rose.

And this resistance group will prompt associations with other resistance groups, like the Freiburger Kreis and the groups around Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Claus von Stauffenberg, as well as individuals like Maximilian Kolbe and Oskar Schindler.

Pondering the many groups and individuals who resisted the Nazi regime and its murderous activities, questions arise about motives. Why did they resist? What gave them the courage and motivation? These networks and their people achieved great things, but did so at a terrible risk to their own lives — risks which often resulted in their deaths.

Among the Germans in Germany, as well as the ethnic Germans in nearby lands, there were many in the educated elite who prided themselves on being a Kulturvolk — a civilized, educated, and cultured group. This attitude was certainly one of the motivating factors in the early phases of the resistance movement.

The educated aristocrats considered Hitler and his Nazi thugs to be boorish and brutish, unsophisticated and anti-intellectual. They responded with disgust when Hitler’s National Socialist Party took over the government and began to manage and control cultural institutions. It was natural that they should resist.

But it was also natural that their resistance would be limited.

When it became clear exactly how risky it was to oppose the National Socialists, and when it became clear that the risk was so great as to be nearly suicidal, high culture and advanced education often did not provide sufficient motivation to face torture and death as consequences for smuggling Jews to freedom and safety, for underming the efficiency of the war effort, or for provoking one’s fellow citizens to critical thought about Hitler.

Those whose resistance was based simply on their academic and intellectual standards, and on their love of fine art, quietly acquiesced and stopped resisting.

Those who continued resisting, who were willing to risk their own lives, who were willing to endure torture and imprisonment, were those who found a deeper and higher reason for resistance: those who found a more profound motivation and who found empowerment from something, or someone, greater than themselves.

In his essay Wer hält Stand?, Dietrich Bonhoeffer expresses well the failure of lesser motives. Those who were prompted by ethics and aesthetics to resist Hitler ultimately found that these ideas or ideals were not enough to strengthen them as they faced evil.

In this analysis, Bonhoeffer echoes, knowingly or unknowingly, Kierkegaard’s paradigm, in which an individual experiences the collapse of the aesthetic realm, prompting him to rise to the ethical realm; the individual then experiences the collapse of the ethical realm, prompting him to rise yet again to the spiritual realm.

In this Bonhoeffer-Kierkegaard schema, those who objected to Hitler because he was coarse, unrefined, uneducated, etc., found eventually that this aristocratic opposition to Hitler’s National Socialism failed when they were called upon to risk their lives.

Likewise, a purely ethical opposition to National Socialism’s genocidal evil proved insufficient: many saw that Hitler was evil, but such mere knowledge did not move them to act, much less to risk, or even to sacrifice, their lives.

A letter written by Hans Scholl, who'd seen combat as a soldier, in August 1942 captures this thought well:

Die Kunst soll eine erhöhte Heiterkeit in die Welt tragen, hat Hubert heute zitiert. Ach, ich bin müde. Ich finde diese Kunst im Augenblick nicht mehr.
Wo ist sie jetzt? Bei Dostojewsky nicht. Hier nicht. Im Bunker nicht und nicht draußen in der Mondnacht. Ich habe keine Musik bei mir. Ich höre nur Tag und Nacht das Stöhnen der Gequälten, wenn ich träume, die Seufzer der Verlassenen, und wenn ich nachdenke, enden meine Gedanken in der Agonie.
Wenn Christus nicht gelebt hätte und nicht gestorben wäre, gäbe es wirklich gar keinen Ausweg. Dann müßte alles Weinen grauenhaft sinnlos sein. Dann müßte man mit dem Kopf gegen die nächste Mauer rennen und sich den Schädel zertrümmern. So aber nicht.

Hans mentions his friend Hubert Furtwängler, who’d quoted to Hans something which they’d probably read or heard as students at the university. What Hubert said was something that corresponds to Kierkegaard’s notion of an aesthetic phase, and something that would have been a common notion among the German educated elite of that time. But Hans rejects, or finds insufficient, the notion that art can save humanity. Hans finds himself in a grim reality in August 1942, and art seems impotent in that moment.

Hans, like most of his family, was certainly a Kulturmensch, his journals, letters, and conversations being filled with allusions to Dostoevsky, Aristotle, Dürer, Plato, Franz Schubert, Kant, Hegel, etc. Yet being a Kulturmensch failed to provide comfort, meaning, inspiration, guidance, or motivation in the face of horrific evil. Neither aesthetic reflection nor ethical reflection could sustain Hans in this situation.

In the end, it is only the presence and reality of a higher power that provides an Ausweg — a way out. Yet the “way out” is a “way in” — it leads Hans into a firmer conviction that he must be part of a resistance movement, even if it means risking his life.

Without the presence of a higher power, every grief would be grauenhaft sinnlos — horrifyingly senseless. Then one could only turn one’s self over to self-destruction.

Instead, Hans finds renewed meaning, renewed direction, and renewed empowerment. Like his friends in Die Weiße Rose group, like Bonhoeffer and Max Kolbe and thousands of others, Hans finds that which will sustain him and empower him to move forward in his resistance work, clear-eyed about the risks and about the ultimate price which Hans and his friends would pay.

Ludwig Erhard’s German Economic Miracle: Free Markets Create Social Justice

A student taking a serious economics class — one with lots of equations and graphs and charts — might be forgiven for wondering how economics could relate to the popular phrase “social justice.”

Another student, taking a superficial economics class — fewer charts, graphs, and equations, but more focus on policy and politics — will quickly see the connection to “social justice,” but will justifiably wonder if economics has any claim to academic rigor or intellectual respectability.

Ludwig Erhard showed that market economies lead to social justice, and that property rights lead to civil rights. He showed that when suppliers are free to creatively meet demands and consumers are free to choose, all parties in the marketplace benefit.

Alexander Kluy, writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau, summarizes Erhard’s thought with the slogan je freier, desto gerechter, roughly “more freedom means more justice.”

Who was Ludwig Erhard? A researcher, an academic, and a professor of economics, he was associated with two groups — the Freiburger Kreis and the Freiburger Schule — both of which opposed Hitler’s National Socialism. If free markets and property rights create social justice and civil rights, then Hitler embodied the opposite principle: regulated markets, price controls, govern-owned industries, and high rates of taxation led to war, genocide, oppression, and death.

The word ‘Nazi’ is an abbreviation of ‘National Socialism.’

Members of these two resistance groups — the Freiburger Kreis and the Freiburger Schule — took serious risks in opposing National Socialism, and some were in fact rounded up by the Gestapo and later executed.

At the war’s end, Germany was in a situation called Stunde Null: the “zero hour” of a massive economic reset. The nation’s infrastructure was almost entirely gone: roads, bridges, running water, sewage systems, telephone lines, electrical service, etc. Civilian Germans had died during air raids, Jewish Germans had died in concentration camps, and young Germans had died on battlefields. This devastation was the result of National Socialism.

Some observers speculated the Germany would be permanently relegated to a third world status.

After the war ended in May 1945, Ludwig Erhard and others worked to undo Nazi policies. They worked to deregulate the economy, reduce tax rates, and privatize industries previously owned by the National Socialist government.

In 1949, when control of West Germany moved from occupational armies to a freely-elected government, Konrad Adenauer became the country’s first chancellor, and he appointed Ludwig Erhard as Bundesminister für Wirtschaft, the federal minister for economics.

From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, Erhard was largely responsible for the Wirtschaftswunder — the “economic miracle” which lifted Germany to the status of the strongest economy in Europe, and the leading manufacturer in Europe.

As Alexander Kluy writes, Erhard was associated with prosperity in the public imagination. He had given the nation hope, and he had given it the vision and opportunity to rebuild through hard work:

Der dicke Mann mit der Zigarre war zum Monument geworden in einer fragmentierten Gesellschaft. Kaum jemand verkörperte das Wirtschaftswunder-Deutschland so wie Erhard (1897-1977). Der exponentiell ansteigende Wohlstand der 1950er und 1960er Jahre in der Bundesrepublik ist auf das Engste mit dem Namen des Kaufmannssohns aus Fürth verbunden. Wohlstand für Alle, Titel seines erfolgreichsten Buches, wurde zum Signum einer Ära, zum Schlachtruf der Christdemokratischen Parteien, die in vielen Wahlkämpfen auf Erhards rhetorische Begabung, seine Reputation als Ökonom setzten und in den Fünfzigern mit dem bestechenden Satz »Erhard hält, was er verspricht« auf Wahlplakaten warben.

For Erhard, creating economic justice in the wake of Nazi oppression was a central task. From his Freiburg days, he used the concept of der sozialen Marktwirtschaft. The German language contrasts sozial, meaning something like “socially conscious,” with sozialistisch, meaning socialist.

The postwar government rejected the national-sozialistische government of Hitler, and instead implemented Erhard’s soziale Marktwirtschaft.

Erhard explained that a market economy is socially conscious because, as suppliers seek to sell to every demand, then every consumer benefits from the competition to offer better products at a lower price. Everyone is a consumer, and everyone is part of the economy’s aggregate demand. In a competitive market economy, every supplier wants to meet as many demands as possible, and suppliers will lower their prices and raise quality in order to sell to those demands.

A market economy creates social justice because it improves the standards of living for everyone in the nation, as Alexander Kluy writes:

Sie sei sozial gewesen, weil sie den Verbrauchern und somit allen nützte. »Die Lösung liegt nicht in der Division, sondern in der Multiplikation des Sozialprodukts«, so Erhard. Bedürftigkeit werde durch Wachstum beseitigt, Ungleichheit durch Wachstum irrelevant. Der Markt sei sozial, weil er die Bedürfnisse der Menschen befriedige und ihren Lebensstandard anhebe.

In 1963, Konrad Adenauer stepped down, and Ludwig Erhard became Chancellor of West Germany. But Erhard’s most significant work was already done by that time. His chancellorship was an afterthought. Between early 1947 and October 1963, Erhard was the brilliant economist who created postwar Germany.

Undoing the Bureaucracy of Nazi Oppression: Ludwig Erhard Dismantles Hitler’s Apparatus

When the European part of WW2 ended in May 1945, Germany faced its Stunde Null — its “zero hour” when it had to restart an entire nation from nothing. Although relieved to be liberated from the oppression of the Nazi government, the Germans were living in conditions which threatened to permanently relegate the country to a third world status.

The physical infrastructure was almost entirely gone: telephone, radio, paved roads, bridges, railways, water supply, sewage systems, etc., functioned only sporadically in a few places. The food supply was devastated: some Germans actually starved to death.

The population was utterly traumatized: although the term ‘PTSD’ wasn’t invented until decades later, it would have accurately applied. German civilians had died in air raids, German Jews had died in concentration camps, and German young men had died on battlefields.

Germany needed to rebuild, but it also needed leaders who were untainted. It looked for gifted and qualified individuals who had not been a part of the National Socialist regime. The word ‘Nazi’ means ‘National Socialist’ and encapsulates Hitler’s political ideology.

Individuals who had resisted Hitler’s National Socialism were sought and found to lead the new postwar Germany. Konrad Adenauer became the country’s first chancellor, and Theodor Heuss was vice chancellor.

Perhaps the greatest and most brilliant postwar leader in Germany was Ludwig Erhard, who courageously defied the National Socialists, as Charles Moritz’s Current Biography Yearbook notes:

In 1944 Erhard, forseeing the collapse of the Nazi regime, formulated an elaborate plan for the economic rebuilding of postwar Germany on liberal principles. The program was based on the premise — considered treasonable in the eyes of the Nazis — that Germany would be totally defeated in the war. Erhard sent copies of this document to several trusted friends, including Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, a former mayor of Leipzig. Goerdeler, who was later executed for his role as a leader in the anti-Hitler plot of July 20, 1944, had slated Erhard for a Cabinet post in his projected post-Nazi government. Fortunately for Erhard, the Nazi authorities neer saw his incriminating economic plan.

Ludwig Erhard represented the opposite of Hitler’s National Socialism. Where the Nazis wanted high taxes, Erhard lowered them, after he became Bundesminister für Wirtschaft — Federal Minister for Economics — in September 1949.

Where Hitler demanded that the central government control wages and dictate retail prices, Erhard created a market economy, in which customers and businesses were free to set prices, negotiate, and make mutual compromises to establish prices and wages beneficial to both sides.

The Nazis had demanded government ownership of certain economic sectors. Ludwig Erhard released those sectors so that individuals and groups could own their own small businesses, or own shares of larger companies.

The result of Erhard’s work was an amazing economic rebound. Many observers had guessed that Germany would be perpetually downgraded to the status of a third world country. Instead, the nation experienced the Wirtschaftswunder — the economic miracle. Standards of living and income levels rose for all citizens, and especially for those at the bottom of the wage scale.

Within less than a decade, Germany went from being the weakest economy in Europe to being the strongest. It soon became the second strongest industrial power in the world. Ludwig Erhard deserves credit for much of this advancement.

Erhard’s insistence that ordinary individuals in the lower and middle classes be able to own and operate their own small businesses, and be able to purchase shares of larger companies, gave significant opportunities to German workers. He undid the Nazi policy that decreed that certain industrial sectors must be owned by the government.

Not only did this privatization create chances for ordinary people, but it also improved the efficiency and quality of industrial manufacturing. Historian Germa Bel writes that the word ‘privatization’ itself was created to describe Erhard’s policies and their implementation:

The Oxford English Dictionary (second edition, 1989, volume XII, p. 521) suggests that the earliest written record of the word “privatization” in English occurred in 1959. On July 28, the British newspaper News Chronicle reported: “Erhard selected the rich Preussag mining concern for his first experiment in privatisation.” Ludwig Erhard was at that time Vice-Chancellor and Minister for Economic Affairs of the German Federal Republic. However, the compilations of Erhard’s writings and speeches around this time do not include the word “privatization” (Erhard, 1958, 1963). The OED (volume XIII, p. 666) also suggests that “reprivatize” was used in 1959. The April 4, 1959, issue of The Economist gave information about the first sale of state-owned shares of the Preussische Bergwerks- und Hütten AG, commenting: “A whole series of political and legal hurdles will have to be taken before the way is clear to denationalize, or reprivatise, in earnest” (CXCI, 6032, p. 53).

There were certainly other thinkers who contributed to Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder: in addition to Adenauer and Heuss, American economists like Walter Heller and Lewis H. Brown, and American officials like George Marshall and Lucius D. Clay played a role in the reconstruction of Germany.

Without Erhard, generations of people would have been subjected to misery and poverty. The brilliant economy of Germany in the second half of the twentieth century would have been impossible without the policies and actions of Ludwig Erhard.

Ludwig Erhard, the Man Who Saved Germany

In mid-1945, Germany was a devastated nation, and was in danger of permanently becoming a third-world country. The war had ended in May, and while the people were relieved to liberated from Nazi oppression, they were desperate for the basic necessities of life: food, water, clothing, housing, and medicine.

The nation was mostly destroyed. German civilians had died in bombing raids. German soldiers had died on the battlefields. German Jews had died in concentration camps.

The physical condition of the country was pathetic. Thousands of houses, stores, schools, churches, and factories had been demolished. Infrastructure was mostly gone: there were hardly any usable roads or bridges. Electricity, running water, sewage systems, and telephone systems were mostly absent.

The Nazi government was gone, and the country was ruled by the occupational armies of the four victorious Allies: England, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. While these four countries had defeated the Nazis, they oddly kept Nazi regulations in effect.

The Nazi policies were responsible for death and destruction on a massive scale. Those policies included high taxes and government controls on wages and retail prices. The government dictated exactly how much each worker would earn and exactly what the price of retail goods would be.

Of course, the word Nazi is an abbreviated form of ‘National Socialism’ which was the official name for Nazi policy.

With these policies still in place, even though the Nazis who implemented them were long gone, the German people had no chance to recover from the damage the Nazis had done to them.

There was, however, one man who saw a path to recovery. Ludwig Erhard had been a professor of economics, a business analyst, and a dedicated opponent of the Nazis. He had risked his life by networking with those who attempted to assassinate Hitler.

This moment in history is known as Stunde Null, the zero hour, the gigantic reset of the German economy. It had been almost entirely destroyed, and something new would have to be put in its place.

Erhard saw that, with the war over, Germany’s chance to succeed would be found in a complete rejection of the Nazi policies. Erhard first had to convince the Allied occupational officers to abandon the high taxes and regulated markets which were the core of Nazi policy.

A skeptical American army officer was willing to give Erhard a chance. In June 1948, Erhard headed the introduction of new economic policies. Taxes were reduced. He worked energetically and thoroughly to eliminate government regulations on any type of buying, selling, or other business activity.

The result was the Wirtschaftswunder — the economic miracle. The nation which had been in danger of being permanently a third-world country was now prospering. The quick rise of the German economy amazed people around the world. Charles Moritz’s Current Biography Yearbook notes:

Under Erhard’s guidance, the West German economy continued its upward trend. Aided by generous tax concessions, reductions in tariffs and import duties, and the absence of controls, manufacturers steadily increased their output, and by 1952 production had passed the prewar peak of 1938. During Erhard’s fourteen years as Economic Minister, West Germany became the second industrial power and the third trading nation in the world. Exports increased by 700 percent to a total of $14 billion; unemployment practically disappeared; the German mark became one of the world’s most stable currencies.

Ludwig Erhard had brought Germany from a zero to a leading economic power in the world. It would have been amazing for any nation to do this, but for a nation which had been utterly destroyed only a few years before, the meteoric rise seemed miraculous.

The currency used in Germany at that time, die Deutsche Mark, became a valued international currency, and Germany’s industrial output was second only to the United States.

For the German people, who’d suffered under more than a decade of Nazi dictatorship, the sense of freedom and sense of prosperity were euphoric, and were due largely to Ludwig Erhard.