Intellectual History
Ten Mounted Photographs to Honor Sophie Scholl’s 100 Birthday
Charlestown, Rhode Island, May 5, 2021. Starting on May 9, BoP Gallery at 289 Narrow Lane will be showing ten historic photographs illustrating the heroic lives of Munich’s White Rose resistance group. Sophie Scholl, German teacher and student (1921-1943), was a principal figure in a cell that would grow beyond 23 members at the…
Read MoreSophie Scholl, Diary Entry December 1941
The following passage is an excerpt from “With You There Is Light: Based on the True Story about Sophie Scholl and Fritz Hartnagel.” Medical students at the University of Munich, Hans Scholl and Traute LaFrenz, met up with Sophie Scholl and together went skiing in Coburg, Bavaria. Sophie’s quote as expressed below is an actual…
Read MoreSeventy-Five Years Ago Today
Seventy-five years ago today Sophie Scholl sketched “FREEDOM” on the backside of her conviction for “treason.” F R E E D O M. She would die hours later, forgiving her executioners as the passageway to eternal life. (See: Pastor Alt’s eyewitness testimony to her last Communion.) If one wants to know this great hero of…
Read MoreDear Sophie from Fritz Hartnagel, sent from Occupied Poland, February 17, 1943
Context: Captain Fritz Hartnagel was one of the last Officers from the Sixth Army flown out of surrounded Stalingrad. Although this letter exists, it is doubtful that Sophie received it. It was written on the day before her last leaflet protest, capture and arrest. My dear…
Read MoreReading to the Religious: With You There Is Light
November 26, 2017 After Service at the St. James Episcopal Church, North Salem, New York The first excerpt I read last Sunday came from Chapter Three of “With You There Is Light.” Sophie Scholl attended St. Georges, the Protestant Church in Ulm, with her mother. Sophie noted reading Exodus 17:11 in her journal so I imagined…
Read MoreCivil Disobedience as Resistance
A Series of Posts (Part One of Four) On Political History, Context and President Trump Civil Disobedience As Resistance in America and Europe during the 19th and 20th Centuries “We should be men first, and subjects afterwards.”-Henry David Thoreau, American (1817-1862) “Laws change; our conscience does not.” -Sophie Scholl, German (1921-1943) It is doubtful that Sophie Scholl read the…
Read MoreSophie Scholl’s “Library” 1937-1943
Sophie Scholl gave us a very thorough “intellectual history,” often quoting from and mentioning the books she read in her letters and diaries. Sophie decided to engage in “inner emigration” by retreating into literature as the Nazi hold on society grew more restrictive. The Reich Cultural Directorate had declared many of Sophie’s books “degenerate or subversive.” She read…
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