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Graduate Studies Legacy Theses
2012 Gender, Resistance and National Socialism in Contemporary Film
Fell, Hannelore E.
Fell, H. E. (2012). Gender, Resistance and National Socialism in Contemporary Film (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/13369 http://hdl.handle.net/1880/50001 master thesis
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Gender, Resistance and National Socialism in Contemporary Film
by
Hannelore E. Fell
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF GERMANIC, SLAVIC AND EAST ASIAN STUDIES
CALGARY, ALBERTA
SEPTEMBER, 2012
© Hannelore E. Fell 2012
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Abstract
This thesis investigates the role of gender in representations and constructions of resistance to the Third Reich in two films. The White Rose (Verhoeven, 1982) tells the story of university students distributing anti-Nazi leaflets in Germany. The group leaders,
Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, are executed in 1943. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
(Rothemund, 2005) concentrates on the Gestapo interrogation of Sophie, and culminates in her trial and execution. The findings suggest that Verhoeven's focus on Sophie Scholl's gender intensifies the discrepancy between the Nazi regime and the resisters, advances political discourse and change, and garners public affection toward Sophie Scholl. While
Rothemund also converges gender and resistance in Sophie Scholl's character, he de- historicizes the plot, making it timeless for an international audience not familiar with
German resistance. Rothemund employs representations of Sophie Scholl to create a type of heroism that can be substituted to challenge any terror regime.
ii Acknowledgements
I wish to thank everyone associated with Germanic, Slavic and East Asian Studies
(GSEA) for the opportunity, guidance, support, and help with an incredible journey, which undeniably needs fellow travellers. To begin with, I thank the friendly staff Sabine
Gale and Amber Berg who assisted proficiently with administrative matters.
The striving for excellence, enthusiasm, and passionate pedagogy of the professors in the
German department inspired and motivated my fellow students and me. I am extending my gratitude to my supervisors, Dr. Florentine Strzelczyk and Dr. Sandra Hoenle, for their expertise, dedication, kindness, patience, encouragement, and compassion. I am grateful for the regular meetings, appropriate suggestions, and timely discussions that kept the thesis moving. I would like to thank Dr. Mary O'Brien and Dr. Horst Mastag for learning from the best as they provided leadership and guidance with my teaching assistantship. Dr. Hermina Joldersma's motto to the effect that only a finished thesis is a good thesis helped me stay focused.
Many thanks to Rosvita Vaska, Taylor Family Digital Library (TFDL), for her indispensible timely assistance with my library search, and I appreciate the prompt advice from Leslie Potter, TFDL, and Keith Fewster (friend and fellow student) regarding thesis formatting. I am grateful for the financial support from the Faculty of Graduate Studies and GSEA, which helped me immensely every step of the way.
My dear husband Manfred and family (Ben, Martine, Mackenzie, Madison, and Emily) provided a source of strength with their love, support, and interest in my endeavours.
Thank you! I feel that all of the above words do not give justice for my gratitude, but with everyone's help, I am thankful that this is a finished thesis.
iii Table of Contents
Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgements ...... iii
INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Forms of Memory, Post-War Memory Discourse, and Memory Contests ...... 2 Forms and Nature of Resistance ...... 9 Film – History – Resistance – Gender ...... 14
THE WHITE ROSE ...... 21 A Brief Historical Overview ...... 21 Summary of the Leaflet Action of The White Rose ...... 34
DIE WEISSE ROSE ( THE WHITE ROSE, 1982) ...... 35 Film, Politics, History, Controversy ...... 38 Risky Actions ...... 43 Your Heads Will Roll Also ...... 49
SOPHIE SCHOLL: DIE LETZTEN TAGE (SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE FINAL DAYS, 2005) ...... 54 Gender, Emotions, Drama, Suspense ...... 59 Visual-Verbal Duels ...... 63 Constricting Spaces ...... 70
CONCLUSION ...... 77
REFERENCES ...... 81
iv
INTRODUCTION
Film creates a world of history
that stands adjacent to written and oral history.
Robert A. Rosenstone1
Since the end of World War II, the era of National Socialism has been a focal point for filmmakers in Germany and abroad. Films, representing a multitude of genres, have dealt with the subject matter surrounding the Nazi regime and its implications. These films engage with this most atrocious chapter of German history and thereby respond to the different, conflicting and complex ways in which Germans and Germany as a nation have memorialized and remembered this era of their history. One of the means through which
Germans today confront the National Socialist past is considering resistance to the Third
Reich. A number of recent films have taken up this topic. Among the German resistance, the student group The White Rose2 has been one of the foci of recent German memory.
The group's only female member, Sophie Scholl, has received particular attention as a symbol for the courage of German resistance. My thesis explores the connection between gender, resistance, memory, and film in two films about Sophie Scholl and The White
Rose.
1. The White Rose (Die weiße Rose), written and directed by Michael Verhoeven,
1982
1 Rosenstone, Robert A. Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995. Print. 2 The White Rose (not italicized) refers to the historic group or the representation of the historic group on film, and The White Rose (italicized) refers to Verhoeven's film. 1
2. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Sophie Scholl: Die letzten Tage), written by Fred
Beinersdorfer, directed by Marc Rothemund, 2005
These films, by different directors and from different eras, can tell us about the shifting emphases of memory, about the connection between gender and resistance, and about the continued presence of the Nazi past in Germany today.
Forms of Memory, Post-War Memory Discourse, and Memory Contests
How the Nazi past should and could be remembered has been the subject of considerable debate in Germany, essentially from 1945 to the present. Bill Niven and Chloe Paver provide a wide-ranging investigation into Germany's memorialization and its many forms of commemorating the German past, mostly in response to the atrocities committed under
Hitler's regime from 1933 to 1945.3 "By and large, the focus of these memorials is on the commemoration of suffering and dealing with guilt. They provide a framework for mourning, ritualized statements of the need to prevent the recurrence of war and genocide, and, increasingly, nationally self-critical engagement with the legacy of Nazi crime."4 Over the post-war decades, this self-critical assessment shifted from a concentration on Germans as the victims of the Third Reich to the horrendous suffering of the Jewish people through the Holocaust, to Germans who opposed National Socialism and fell victim to the regime, and then this evaluation shifted back to Germans as victims after 1990.
3 Niven, Bill and Chloe Paver, eds. Memorialization in Germany since 1945. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2010. Print. 4 ---. 399. 2
During the 1950s, both the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal
Republic of Germany (FRG) addressed the Nazi past in very different ways. In the GDR
"the cult of memory"5 concentrated on framing Communists as heroic victims who sacrificed themselves for a new Socialist Germany. Robert G. Moeller writes that "East
Germans of all ages […] saw Thälmann's6 story at the movies, and films that underwrote the ideology of anti-fascism offered didactic tales in which soldiers came to understand the perfidy of National Socialism, or martyrs spilled their blood in the struggle against the Hitler regime."7 At the same time, the FRG's official memory cult attempted to recognize Jewish suffering, but mostly focused on victims of expulsion, bombing, and imprisonment (Allied prisons and Soviet internment camps) carried out by Nazis,
Stalinists, and Allies, respectively.8 West German Trümmerfilme9 of the early post-war years, which depicted life in the destroyed urban centers, were followed by films that portrayed the flights of expelled Germans, the plight of POWs, the battle of Stalingrad, and told stories about the struggle of survivors who rose above hardship and were instrumental in post-war reconstruction. Thus, the 1950s concentrated on Germans as victims.
The student movement of the 1960s brought about a change in memory discourse shifting from victimhood "to a greater awareness of the need to remember and reflect on
5 Moeller, Robert G. "The Politics of the Past in the 1950s: Rhetorics of Victimisations in East and West Germany." Ed. Bill Niven. Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany. New York: Palgrave, 2006. 22. Print. 6 Ernst Thälmann, a Communist leader imprisoned by the Nazis in 1933 and killed in Buchenwald in 1944. 7 Moeller. ---. 30. 8 Niven, Bill. Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany. New York: Palgrave, 2006. Print. 9 Rubble films. 3
German perpetration."10 This change coincided with an increased satisfaction of West
Germans with the political elite, positive economic developments, and trials of former
Nazis. Among films and documentaries about the horrendous suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis was the American television series Holocaust that aired in Germany from January 22 to January 26, 1979, and received an extra-ordinary amount of public attention—much more than the previous 34 years of Holocaust education had achieved.
With this film the term "Holocaust" had been introduced to the German population and became the number one theme overnight, thus attesting to the power of historical representation on film.11 In the '60s, '70s, and '80s, as West Germany began to deal with the Holocaust, East and West Germany were not on equal terms with regard to National
Socialism and blamed each other for their common past during the Third Reich. In the
West, Germany's and the Germans' Inability to Mourn, as the title of Alexander and
Margarete Mitscherlich's groundbreaking study from 1967 so aptly stated, became the dominant discourse of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the German past).12 Germans were considered mainly as perpetrators and as Hitler's discernible
"willing executioners."13 Ruth Wittlinger connects this discourse about German guilt to the way it became politically commemorated beginning in the 1970s when, for example,
Chancellor Brandt fell to his knees before the monument of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
10 Niven. ---. 22. 11 Zentner, Christian. Anmerkungen zu "Holocaust": Die Geschichte der Juden im Dritten Reich. Munich: Delphin, 1979. Print. 12 Mitscherlich, Alexander, and Margarete Mitscherlich. The Inability to Mourn. Ed. Ernestine S. Schlant. Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust. New York: Routledge, 1999. EBRARY. Web. n.d.
in 1970.14 The annual ritual commemoration of the Shoah and the Kristallnacht by the end of the '70s are other examples of institutionalized acknowledgement of collective
German guilt.
With German unification a new discourse of German Vergangenheitsbewältigung emerged. In Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich,
Bill Niven addresses this new memory discourse after unification of East and West
Germany in 1990. Niven argues that with unification the two Germanys ceased blaming each other for crimes committed during the Nazi era while they were increasingly preoccupied with their shared "legacy of the Third Reich." Moeller aptly describes this new discourse as calling for Germans to mourn their dead in ways that "do not involve
'breaking the silence,' but possibly offer new perspectives from which we might begin to write a history of National Socialism in which some Germans were victims, some
Germans were perpetrators, and some Germans were both."15 In the reunited Germany, in other words, the debates about how to assess the German past of the Third Reich and how to remember it took a new turn: The Holocaust and German war crimes continued to be hotly debated; examples are American historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book Hitler's
Willing Executioners16 that argued for a deep-seated Anti-Semitism in a large part of the
German population that made them ready to willingly participate in genocide,17 and the
14 Wittlinger, Ruth. "Taboo or Tradition? The 'Germans as Victims' Theme in the Federal Republic until the mid-1990s". Ed. Bill Niven. Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2006. 67. Print. 15 Moeller. ---. 42 16 Goldhagen. ---. 17 In his latest book Völkermord als Staatsgeheimnis, Alfred de Zayas argues that advocates of this view generally condemn, explain nothing, select their facts, and ignore what does not fit into their concept, such as the Tagebücher (Journals) of Victor Klemperer, son of a Rabbi, professor at the Technische Hochschule 5
Crimes of the Wehrmacht Exhibition (1995-9) that seriously questioned the post-war glorification of the German army as the only "honourable" military force under Hitler’s regime.18 There was, however, also a new acknowledgment that Germans were not just perpetrators who committed or silently tolerated the Holocaust and war crimes, but that they were also victims of expulsion, bombings, rape, and other crimes. The new memory discourse, for the first time since the early post-war years, acknowledged Germans also as victims.19
This change in memory discourse can also be perceived in the shift that historical films about the Nazi period took. While the depiction of Nazi evils and their mostly
Jewish victims dominated movie screens until the 1990s, there has been a new turn in how cinema remembers the National Socialist era. The unification of both Germanys in
1990 brought about a surge in dealing with their respective memories as can be seen in the increased production of autobiographies, novels, and films.20 Anne Fuchs, in her examination of the politics of memory, terms this new memory experience "memory contests" as opposed to Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Memory contests examine the general understanding of the past whereby individuals and groups develop and rework their stories and form their own identity, meaning that memories present constant
in Dresden, who survived the Holocaust hiding in German homes. Klemperer's attitude regarding the non- Jewish German population seems more responsible and differentiated than that of certain Zeitgeist- historians. 18 Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung. "Crimes of the German Wehrmacht: Dimensions of a War of Annihilation, 1941-1944." Wehrmacht Exhibition. Web. 1 Jul. 2012.
revisions of people's narratives and the world they live in.21 In this way, "the idea of memory contests refers to the special features of German memory debates."22 Three main themes underlie these debates: First, the different cultural and social aspects between East and West Germany came under scrutiny. Second, the emergence of archives of private family memories into the public domain contested the limited official dialogue of contrition. Third, the questioning of new generations (children and grandchildren) regarding the involvement of their "forefathers" in the Third Reich resulted in examining the conflict and evaluating the dialogue between generations.23 Within this new discourse that focuses more than ever before on the effects of National Socialism across generations and on Germans also as victims of National Socialism, resistance to the Nazi regime by Germans has received increased attention. Post-war authors, screenwriters, film directors, journalists, and the media have engaged large parts of the population in this new discourse.
Fifteen years after German unification, individual memory is perpetuated in contemporary German memory discourse with family stories, individual accounts, autobiographies, and films "that offer experiential representation of the war experience and its long after-life in post-war memory."24 The debate about memory not only crosses individuals and groups, but also political spectrums, generations, and German pre- and post-unification eras. One example of the generational tensions is the fierce dispute between Nobel Prize laureate and German author, Günter Grass, and the historian
21 Fuchs, Anne. Phantoms of War in Contemporary German Literature, Films and Discourse: The Politics of Memory. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2008. Print. 22 ---. 3. 23 ---. 24 ---. 1. 7
Joachim Fest, who "represented two key positions that, from the late 1960s, have polarized public opinion in West Germany."25 At issue here is "what kind of transgenerational legacy the Third Reich had created", and "who had been the better guardian of German identity since 1945":26 the left-liberal or the centre-right. Grass represents the left-liberal position whereby the Third Reich and the Holocaust should be contemplated and recognized publicly in a dialogue of contrition. Fest emphasizes that
German cultural traditions could be continued after the Holocaust and that a German national identity is feasible. Grass insisted, "I was there, everyone was there." But Fest always claimed exemption from that responsibility. "That is the sensation in Germany."27
Grass and Fest belong to the first generation, representing the Hitler Youth born between
1926 and 1930. The second generation has no personal memories of the Nazi era because these cohorts, for example writers like Uwe Timm and Wibke Bruhns, were born around the early 1940s. Michael Verhoeven, the director of The White Rose, born in 1938, also belongs to this generation. Narratives by third-generation authors, born in the '60s, "draw attention to the transition from a memory culture to a post-memorial culture [...] characterized by processes of mediation and imagination."28 Marc Rothemund, born in
1968, belongs to this third generation that has no first hand knowledge of that period of
German history and can only evaluate and judge the memories of their parents and grandparents. Harald Welzer's empirical study, presented in his book Opa war kein Nazi, suggests that a certain editing of family narratives, called "cumulative heroization," helps
25 Fuchs. ---. 2. 26 ---. 3-4. 27 Matussek, Matthias. "Der Herbst der Flakhelfer". Der Spiegel 34 (2006): Zeitgeschichte, 153. Print. 28 Fuchs. ---. 5. 8
give memory a positive twist.29 This factor plays a role in regarding resisters no longer as part of German perpetrators but as victims of the regime and heroes of the united
Germany. Thus resistance is seen as part of a new focus on German victims.
Forms and Nature of Resistance
Among the German victims, resisters are perhaps the most prominent group. "The road into resistance is an unpaved one; it generally leads through all sorts of stages marked by hope—even hope against hope—and doubt, and by acceptance—indeed the desire to accept—and revulsion, by loyalty, and by treason."30 The historian Klemens von
Klemperer produced a detailed scholarly exploration of diverse German resistance that traversed Germany and beyond. The acts of resistance during the Third Reich were broad and range from discussing alternatives to Nazism and condoning deeds of dissent, such as refusing the "Heil Hitler" salute, to executing plans to assassinate Hitler with the goal to set up a new regime.
Because of the diverse nature of resistance, scholars and researcher have provided models and stages of resistance, each stage with its own definition. Gotthard Jaspers, for example, distinguishes between (1) active forceful Widerstand (Resistance) against terror regimes, (2) the many forms of Resistenz (Dissent) against totalitarian pressure, (3) the legal political Widerspruch (opposition), and (4) the nonviolent civil Ungehorsam
29 Welzer, Harald, et al. Opa war kein Nazi: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis. Frankfurt: Fischer, 2002. 17. Print. 30 Von Klemperer, Klemens. German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938-1945. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992. 122. Print. 9
(disobedience) in democratic systems.31 32 The model of resistance described by Barbara
Schüler in four steps integrates these different levels of resistance against National
Socialism: Step 1: Resistenz (dissent), the term coined by German historian Martin
Broszat,33 is used here significantly weakened to refer to a partial or general immunity toward the totalitarian demands of the NS-Regime, which resulted from upbringing, education, or societal and historical affiliation. Resistenz is the kind of resistance which does not necessarily lead to active involvement. Step 2: Nonkonformität (nonconformity) refers to an approach that presumes wilful intention, expressed with deliberate calculated behaviour against the NS-Regime. Step 3: Protest bzw. angedrohter Protest (protest or, as the case may be, threatened protest) develops from the defensive stance of dissent and nonconformity to offensive behaviour. This involves certain action against specific aspects of the oppressing system. Step 4: Aktiver Widerstand (active resistance) includes all activities, which are directed toward overthrowing the government and generally refuting the regime.34
This model helps categorize the different forms of resistance, they can overlap, and one form can lead to another. In the case of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg,
Germany's most famous resistance fighter who tried to assassinate Hitler and set up a
31 Jaspers, Gotthard. "Schwierigkeiten und Zumutungen des Widerstand in Deutschland." Beck'sche Reihe 497. Die Weiße Rose und das Erbe des deutschen Widerstands. Munich: Beck, 1993.177-180. GOOGLE BOOKS. Web. n.d.
new regime, resistance was extreme and dangerous (Step 4). The White Rose group, on the other hand, only grew into taking action, starting with discussion evenings, literary evenings, and gatherings with writers such as Carl Muth who opposed the Hitler regime.35 The White Rose accelerated very quickly through all phases, and perhaps the swift reaction of the state to increase surveillance, capture, try, and then sentence them to death relates to the quick radicalization of the group through steps 1 to 4 and their spreading of activities. The White Rose and Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, both films that I am going to analyze in this thesis, dramatize through music and quick editing the extreme fast flow of time to visualize the radical move through the steps that Schüler is concerned with and the equally swift backlash by the state.
Resistance during the Third Reich was widespread, not successful, and had consequences. From 1933 to 1945, special courts executed 12,000 Germans, court- martialed 25,000 German soldiers, and ordered 40,000 Germans to be executed for resisting the Nazi regime in varied forms.36 Before 1945, many opponents to the Nazi regime felt that they had no other choice but go into exile to be politically active and alert other European governments, especially in England, France, Sweden, and The
Netherlands, to the tyrannical oppression in Germany. Otto Wels, a former head of the
Social Democratic Party, for example, opted for political exile in Paris with the resolve to keep an eye on Germany. But Wilhelm Leuschner, a Socialist member of the Resistance stated that "the only potentially effective resistance could be resistance from within the
35 Petrescu, Corina L. "Against All Odds: Models of Subversive Spaces in National Socialist Germany". German Life and Civilization 49. Bern: Lang, 2010. Print. 36 Hoffmann, Peter. The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945. 3rd ed. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2001. Print. 11
system"37 through organizations and individuals. Established institutions such as churches, the public service, or the army would be involved and emerge as hubs of opposition. Also, remaining part of the system would serve as a crucial cover-up for resisters against National Socialism without the involvement of the people. A prime example of military resistance are the plotters of the 20th of July assassination attempt on
Hitler, led by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. A cohesive movement, strong enough to establish a new order in Germany, did not materialize, "the burden of resistance fell primarily on individuals relying on their own consciences and on small, informal groups."38 Left-wing splinter groups and loosely organized groups of friends and like- minded individuals had also emerged. The Rote Kapelle, an example of communist groups, was considered somewhat irrelevant until a revaluation of this group took place following the opening of the GDR archives after unification.39 Likewise, the opening of the GDR archives also shed new light on the The White Rose and informed Rothemund’s
2005 film.
Resistance to the Third Reich, however, also occurred from within churches. A group of young pastors led by Martin Niemöller,40 Dietrich Bonhoeffer,41 and Heinrich
Gruber42 opposed Hitler. Karl Barth, a professor of theology at Bonn University supported these rebel pastors as they formed the Confessional Church. Hundreds of its pastors, including the leaders, were sent to concentration camps for their activities against
37 Von Klemperer. ---. 3. 38 ---. 4. 39 Fuchs. ---. 40 Wistrich, Robert S. Who's Who in Nazi Germany. New York: Routledge, 1995. Print. 41 Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life. Munich: Kaiser, 1993. Print. 42 Spartacus Educational. Online Dictionary. Web. 22 June 2012.
the Nazi regime.43 Among the executed was Bonhoeffer who specifically contested the treatment of the Jews and took his message of resistance to England and other European countries.44 45
In all, widespread historical research corroborates many accounts of resistance, too numerous to mention here. There are biographies on Stauffenberg and his co-plotters, for example,46 47 investigations into the history of resistance in Germany,48 and research into gendered division of labour in resistance groups.49 Günter Grass addresses the resistance of the Hübener Group in his book Örtlich betäubt.50 The Hübener Group, consisting of three young men from Hamburg, was the youngest unit of resistance as far as the ages of the members were concerned.51 Helmuth Hübener, the leader of the group, was executed at age 17. Despite the age component, this group has never become as known and acknowledged as The White Rose. The White Rose is considered the most memorialized and historicized resister group in Germany because of the youth of its core
43 Spartacus. ---.
members, their moral commitment and sacrifice, and mainly because of the only female core group member, Sophie Scholl, the heart and the soul of the group. Her memory, more than that of any other German resister, has drawn broad public affection, not the least because of her short life (executed at age 22) and her gender.
Film – History – Resistance – Gender
Narrative cinema is one of the ways to explore the past, history, and memory, yet caution should be taken with representing history on film. History "is a construction, not a reflection" of reality; history is "a series of conventions for thinking about the past."52
Thus film cannot replicate history, but film can point out historical events, sketch historic occurrences with word and deed, and contribute to historical meaning.53 "Film creates a world of history that stands adjacent to written and oral history."54 Just as documents and artefacts inspire interpretations of history, "the appearance of a moving image on a screen can provide us with historical evidence," depending on the "circumstances and characteristics" of the film to give it historical validity.55 Today, documentaries and narrative films should not be overlooked as representations of the past: Film "can be used to explain or understand some aspect of the human experience."56 Thus film can be a tool with which to study history, it can interact with history, help change history, and, as a propaganda tool, even influence individuals and the masses as Leni Riefenstahl's
Triumph of the Will (1935) has demonstrated.
52 Rosenstone. ---. 11. 53 ---. 127. 54 ---. 55 Pereboom, Maarten L. History and Film: Moving Pictures and the Study of the Past. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2011. 4. Print. 56 ---. 10. 14
After the war, films promoting the Third Reich were replaced with the German
Heimatfilm, a genre that romanticised the German "homeland" and portrayed a sentimentalized world, untouched by war and strife. Films like Sissi (Ernst Marischka,
1955) and other similar productions after the fall of the Third Reich did not confront the past for which Germans were responsible. An exception was The Lost Man (Peter Lorre,
1951) in which a doctor tries to come to terms with his guilt feelings resulting from his actions during the Third Reich. The film failed because the German public was not ready to face questions of individual and collective guilt at the time.57 The new German cinema, lasting from the late 1960s into the 1980s, with its new generation of directors, such as
Rainer Fassbinder, produced many films that addressed questions of responsibility for the crimes committed during the Nazi years. Michael Verhoeven's work belongs to the New
German Cinema and its politically and socially committed agenda. The White Rose is widely considered the first film in a trilogy that critically addresses how post-war
Germans came to terms with the Third Reich. The other two films in that series, The
Nasty Girl (Das schreckliche Mädchen, 1990) and My Mother's Courage (Mutters
Courage, 1995), have received much positive critique. Not only has Verhoeven's work frequently addressed the Third Reich in his films, he also has crafted strong women figures—rebels, differentiated from their more conformist male peers.
Since 1945, National Socialism has been the historical era most often depicted in
German film. With German unification, films such as Stalingrad (1993), Der Untergang
(2004) and Der Vorleser (2008) received recognition for their representation of the Nazi
57 Hake, Sabine. German National Cinema. London: Routledge, 2002. Print. 15
past. German resisters, in particular, have inspired films such as Stauffenberg: Der 20.
Juli 1944 (1996) and Rosenstrasse (2003) in Germany but also internationally, such as
Schindler's List (1993) and Valkyrie (2008).58 59 60 Marc Rothemund belongs to a generation of German filmmakers whose work falls into the German post-unification era.
Born in 1968, his first film that explores German history is Sophie Scholl: The Final
Days (2005). Rothemund's earlier films are predominantly comedies and dramas concerned with sexuality, love, and growing up. Neither the topics of the German Nazi past nor issues related to gender have played a prominent role in his films before or after he made Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.
Resistance is a deeply gendered concept. The admiration that Stauffenberg has received in popular accounts versus the public affection with which Sophie Scholl's memory is treated in German culture is a case in point. The film Stauffenberg: Der 20.
Juli 1944, written and directed by Jo Baier, 1996, represents the story of high-ranking officers of the German Wehrmacht who plan to rid Germany of Adolf Hitler and install a new government. The failed assassination attempt is orchestrated by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg who is executed for treason. Here, resistance is seen as a male phenomenon whereby the hero is portrayed as a family man driven into extraordinary circumstances. He is not depicted as an outstanding historical figure who displays extreme heroism. Nonetheless, the protagonist exhibits characteristics and behaviours associated with masculinity: strength, discipline, commitment, courage, and decisive and
58 Paver, Chloe. Refractions of the Third Reich in German and Austrian Fiction and Film. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Print. 59 Hake. ---. 60 Brockmann, Stephen. A Critical History of German Film. Rochester: Camden, 2010. EBRARY. Web. n.d.
violent action. Stauffenberg's wife and children are his only emotional connection, but they cannot be part of his life as a soldier and resister; they need to be moved out of harm's way. The film provoked audiences to think of resistance as a domain of men who, because of their discipline and commitment to their country, sacrifice themselves and their family for a greater good.61
Another film dealing with the events of the 20th of July 1944: Valkyrie, written by Christopher McQuarrie, directed by Bryan Singer, 2008, is a fast-paced thriller that also focuses on Stauffenberg, portrayed here as an action hero.62 Stauffenberg is the hero in a world dominated and dictated by military men and where women are in need of protection. The film provoked a number of controversies surrounding the making of the film. The Stauffenberg family opposed Tom Cruise in the main role because of his involvement with the Church of Scientology.63 German officials and a large part of the
German public also refused permission to shoot the film at the original location where
Stauffenberg was imprisoned and executed, given that this location is an official federal remembrance site and Germans widely felt it to be desecrated by allowing access to
Hollywood movie makers into this special national place.64 Nevertheless, the tarnished
61 Stauffenberg: Der 20. Juli 1944. Dir. Jo Baier. Perf. Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur, and Hardy Krüger. 1996, teamWorkx, 2004. DVD. 62 Valkyrie. Dir. Bryan Singer. Perf. Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, and Bill Nighy. 2008. Fox, 2009. DVD. 63 Roxborough, Scott. "Achtung! 'Valkyrie' Hailed." Hollywood Reporter - International Edition 407.50: 4. 19 Dec. 2008. EBSCO. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.
image of the Wehrmacht65 could be seen to be rehabilitated through film productions about Stauffenberg as both, officer of the Wehrmacht and hero of the resistance. In sum, the two films about Stauffenberg construct resistance as a male realm.
Only recently, German film has begun to look at forms of female resistance during the Third Reich. One example is Margarethe von Trotta's Rosenstrasse (2003) which addresses female resistance through the eyes of a resister's daughter who investigates her mother’s past as a member of a group of "Aryan" women demonstrating against the arrest of their Jewish husbands in Berlin during the Third Reich. The resilience of the intermarriages and the love for their husbands led to the singular mass protest against deporting German Jews, a most dangerous undertaking while directly confronting the Gestapo. Goebbels considered this situation as exceedingly delicate, perhaps because of the gendered component of the protest.66 In Trotta’s film, however, the women of the Rosenstrasse protest are sentimentalized,67 and thus gendered in their emotional appeal.
The two films about The White Rose that I am examining also pay particular attention to the gender of the protagonist Sophie Scholl and her stand against the Nazi state. The White Rose (1982), written and directed by Michael Verhoeven, is a docudrama about five university students distributing anti-Nazi leaflets since 1942. Discovered by the Gestapo, the group leaders, Hans and Sophie Scholl are executed in 1943. Sophie
Scholl: The Final Days (2005), written by Fred Beinersdorfer and directed by Marc
65 Hamburg Institute for Social Research. "Crimes of the German Wehrmacht: Dimensions of a War of Annihilation, 1941-1944." Web. 16 Sep. 2011.
Rothemund, starts with the arrest of Hans and Sophie Scholl and concentrates on the
Gestapo interrogation of Sophie.
One could argue that in terms of historical research, resistance is a well-examined field, but, with the exception of Verhoeven's film, film has only recently begun to examine resistance. Films have contributed extensively to giving these cases of resistance broad public attention. The discourse of memory, in cultural, film, and literary studies, is a very well researched field. Within this field, less attention has been given to resistance and, in particular, constructions of gendered resistance, has not been investigated. While the relationship between film and history is much better understood now than a decade ago, the gender aspect of this resistance in/on film has not been addressed broadly. My thesis will investigate the role of gender in representations and constructions of resistance in film and will therefore be a contribution to filling this gap.
I will analyze gendered constructions of resistance through the two films The
White Rose (1982) and Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005). My thesis will compare how gendered resistance is portrayed by two directors belonging to different post-war generations. Verhoeven's 1982 film, as I will show, focuses on Sophie Scholl's gender in order to show the discrepancy between the Nazi state machinery and The White Rose who were still considered traitors in the 1980s in legal terms, but had already begun to garner public affection. I will argue that gender in Verhoeven's film serves to highlight these contradictions and discrepancies. In the more recent film Sophie Scholl: The Final
Days (2005), gender and resistance converge in the figure of Sophie Scholl, amounting to a powerful statement about the courage of resisters in totalitarian settings. Gender is employed here, similar to Verhoeven's film, to show the power differential between those
19
who dare to resist and the state's means to silence them. In both films Sophie Scholl becomes a new icon for the real and/or imagined German resisters.
While Verhoeven makes a political statement whereby "his" Sophie Scholl should be considered a central part of Germany's troubled past, Rothemund uses representations that de-historicize the plot, making it understandable to an international audience. As
German films by directors such as Verhoeven, Rothemund, or Baier are representative of the shifts of Vergangenheitsbewältigung over time, they also shape this discourse and thereby the ways with which Germans remember their past.
20
THE WHITE ROSE
A Brief Historical Overview
While The White Rose student resistance movement has become an icon in German post- war culture and a signal of the other non-fascist, democratic Germany, the same cannot be assumed for the North American context. The following short historical overview reviews the facts and events connected to The White Rose necessary to understand and appreciate the subsequent discussion of the two films I am investigating. The end of this chapter will return to questions raised in chapter 1, i.e., the question of memory of the
Nazi period. I will connect this larger debate to how the siblings Scholl particularly have been remembered in post-war Germany, both East and West.
Starting in the summer of 1942, until the beginning of 1943, students at the
University of Munich produced and distributed six leaflets urging Germans to resist
Hitler's regime and build a new Europe driven by "intellect and Geist". "The name of
Germany will remain forever stained with shame if German youth do not finally arise, fight back, and atone, smash our tormentors, and set up a new Europe..." states the last leaflet circulated in February 1943.68 Mostly students, some intellectuals, and a few artists, became members of this loosely organized resistance group. Its main players were
Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Christoph Probst, and Willi
Graf, with Professor Kurt Huber as their mentor, already under scrutiny of the National
Socialists prior to the inception of The White Rose.
68 Dumbach, Annette, and Jud Newborn. Sophie Scholl and the White Rose. Oxford: Oneworld, 2010. 202. Print.
21
The five siblings of the Scholl family attended school in the city of Ulm in southern Germany where Hans, fifteen, and Sophie twelve years of age, experienced their first contact with politics. Initially they were drawn to National Socialism and its promises for change in terms of work for everyone and freedom for Germany. The involvement of young people, marching to music, singing, and waving flags appealed to them. Gripped by this enigmatic influence, Hans and Sophie joined the Hitler youth against the wishes of their father, a former mayor who had been critical of the regime.
Successful in his endeavour, Hans became the leader of 150 HJ69 in 1935. But his enthusiasm diminished as favourite folksongs and books (i.e., Stefan Zweig's
Sternstunden der Menschheit) were banned. Rumours circulated that authors, teachers,
Jews, and others were taken to concentration camps. Inge Scholl, the oldest of the five
Scholl siblings, remembers them ask their father what a concentration camp is. He explained the stark realities in Germany according to his knowledge. "This is war. War amid deep peace... War against the defenceless, individual human being, against happiness and freedom... It is a terrible crime" (my translation).70 Fear, doubt, and more questions emerged. Scholl remembers her father saying, "We are human beings with a free will and their own individual faith. A government that does not respect these things, has lost its respect before the people!" (my translation)71
Hans subsequently joined a forbidden youth movement, called dj. 1.11 (Deutsche
Jungenschaft vom 1.11.1929), contradicting the restricted National Socialist youth groups
69 Hitler-Jugend (Hitler Youth). 70 Scholl, Inge. Die Weiße Rose. Hanau: Dausien, 1953. 16. Print. 71 ---. 17. 22
with ideas such as advocating autonomy and self-determination, including travelling to foreign countries and embracing customs of other cultures.72 73 This membership led to his first indictment after high school graduation in 1937, but the proceedings were dismissed later. Hans Scholl began his studies of medicine at the University of Munich in
1939. In 1940, he was deployed as military paramedic to the west front and met
Alexander Schmorell in a student company in Munich in 1941.
Alexander Schmorell, born in Russia in 1917, moved with his German father
(after the death of Alexander's Russian mother) to Munich in 1921. After having lived a few years in Russia, Alexander grew up in Germany bilingual. Although his new homeland had waged war against Russia since June 1941, he still considered his Russian birthplace his spiritual home. Alexander started his medical studies at the University of
Hamburg in 1939, served at the west front a year later, and met Hans in Munich.
Alexander found in Hans a kindred spirit. Both performed their practicum in the same hospital, went on outings together, and decided to become active in the resistance against
Hitler's regime. Alexander managed to get a typewriter and a printing machine, and between June 27 and July 12, 1942, the two friends composed and mailed out the first four leaflets of The White Rose. Alexander introduced his friend, Christoph Probst, and a student from Hamburg, Traute Lafrenz who became Hans' girlfriend, into the circle of friends.
72 Schulz, Kirsten. "Die Weiße Rose." Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb). 136. Web. 10 Feb. 2011.
Christoph Probst was a school friend of Alexander Schmorell since 1936.
Christoph and his sister grew up in a home open to religious and cultural influences. His father researched Sanskrit and Eastern religions. The painters Emil Nolde and Paul Klee, friends of the parents, were defamed by the Nazis for their apparent degenerate art.
Christoph attended schools obliged to humanistic-liberal principles. Because of his
Jewish stepmother, the family experienced immediate threats from the National
Socialists. Although he joined the Hitler Youth in 1934, he never assumed a leading role and canceled his membership after having graduated fro m high school. Christoph started his medical studies in Munich in 1939, the same year as Hans and Alexander. At 21 years of age, he married Herta Dohrn who gave birth to their sons in 1940 and 1941, and their daughter in 1943. After the Germans' defeat in Stalingrad, Christoph drafted a leaflet concerning events in the war and demanded that Hitler and his regime must fall for
Germany to live!74 Perhaps Herta's father, Harald Dohrn, a teacher with a critical attitude toward the regime, shot by the Nazis just before the war ended, influenced Christoph.
During one of their reading and discussion sessions, the friends filled him in about the leaflet actions. Christoph met Willi Graf in the summer of 1942.75
After his return from his medical unit in Russia, Willi Graf, also a medical student, decided in December 1942 to become part of the action of The White Rose. Willi knew about the four leaflets distributed by Hans and Alexander and took this opportunity to join his friends in resisting the regime. The decision was a consequence of witnessing war crimes and a result of his Christian conviction incompatible with Nazi ideology. He
74 Schulz. ---. 14. 75 ---. 14. 24
was a member of the youth groups Neudeutschland76 and Grauer Orden, which conducted outings and camps, including literary and theological discussions. He repudiated the Hitler Youth and, like Hans, was also indicted for belonging to a banned youth group, but the case was dismissed because of a general amnesty following the
Anschluss of Austria. Willi lived with his sister, Anneliese, in Munich but apparently did not disclose to her any involvement with The White Rose. During travels through
Germany, he persuaded four of his youth group comrades to support the resistance, and he obtained money to finance activities such as painting slogans like "Down with Hitler" and "Freedom" on houses in Munich. Early in 1943, as part of connecting with other resisters, Willi and the other members of The White Rose attended a meeting with Falk
Harnack whose brother Arvid Harnack had been executed by the Nazis in 1942 for leading the resistance group Rote Kapelle in Berlin. On February 25, 1943, Falk would be waiting for Hans in Berlin in vain. Falk did not know that Hans, Christoph, and Sophie met the same fate as Arvid three days earlier.
When Sophie Scholl joined Hans at the University to begin her studies in biology and philosophy in May of 1942, she might have been aware of her brother's activities as resister.77 Apparently, the sister of Willi Graf, Anneliese, claimed in an interview late in her life that Sophie had known about The White Rose and Hans' involvement with the group before she left her home in Ulm to join her brother at the university.78 Sophie started one year late because her education as kindergarten teacher did not exempt her
76 A Catholic youth group in the tradition of the Wandervogel movement. 77 The literature is not clear at what time Sophie became aware of Hans Scholl's actions in connection with The White Rose. 78 Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Dir. Marc Rothemund. Perf. Julia Jentsch, Alexander Held, and Fabian Hinrichs. 2005. Goldkind/Broth, 2005. Interview with Writer Fred Breinersdorfer. DVD. Special Features. 25
from serving in Arbeitsdienst and Kriegshilfsdienst.79 On the first evening at the university, everyone met in Hans' room to welcome Sophie and celebrate her birthday.
There was cake, music, wine, poems, discussions. The word resistance was mentioned, and Hans apparently brought up that one should have a printing machine.80 Six weeks later, Sophie saw students passing leaflets to each other, causing a mixture of triumph, excitement, protest, and anger among the students. Sophie felt happy, writes her sister
Inge,81 that finally someone had the courage to speak out, apparently unaware that her brother was the author. Sophie read, "Flugblätter der Weißen Rose... when everyone waits until the other starts ... each one has to fight against it individually as much as one can ... resistance, before it is too late ... the continuation of this war machine must stop before the last cities are destroyed, before the last youth bleeds to death..." (my translation).82 When Sophie found out, as shown in the film The White Rose by Michael
Verhoeven, that Hans was involved with the production of the leaflets, she insisted on joining The White Rose despite opposition from Hans and his friends.83 84 While Sophie's boy friend, Fritz Hartnagel, was fighting in Stalingrad, she helped with the production and distribution of the fifth leaflet in January 1943. All the while, Sophie, other group members, and friends attended lectures by the philosophy professor, Kurt Huber, who
79 Compulsory service in workplaces such as factories to support the state, and compulsory service to support the war effort, respectively. 80 Scholl. ---. 37. 81 Scholl. ---. 39. 82 Scholl. ---. 39-40. 83 The literature is not clear to which extent Sophie Scholl was involved with the production of the leaflets in 1942, but she took part in political discussions starting during the summer of 1942. 84 Dumbach and Newborn. ---. 212. 26
subtly undermined the Nazi regime with quotes and expositions of philosophers such as
Leibniz and Spinoza.
Kurt Huber's lectures were well attended by students from different faculties. It was an open secret at the University of Munich, especially during the war years, that
Huber challenged the status quo. Because of this, the Amt Rosenberg85 denied him a promotion. And since the medical students had reported on the mass murders in Poland and Russia to Huber,86 his reservations against the Hitler regime were strengthened. Hans and Alex found out from Manfred Eickemeyer87 88 about the crimes committed against
Jews and Poles already in the spring of 1942.89 Huber had known the core members of
The White Rose personally since June 1942 and joined the group a few months later. In
January 1943, The White Rose regrouped and asked Huber's input starting with the fifth leaflet, which was now "A Call to All Germans" instead of the prior focus on certain intellectuals. They admonished the people in a fairly brief paragraph to break with the
Nazis, and then the leaflet discussed what kind of world the movement envisaged after the end of the war.90 Prompted by the tragedy of Stalingrad, Huber decided to write the next - and last - leaflet that was printed.
...Three hundred and thirty thousand German men were senselessly and irresponsibly driven to their deaths by the brilliant strategy of that World War I corporal. Führer, we thank you!... We grew up in a state where all free expression of opinion has been suppressed. The Hitler Youth, the SA and the SS have tried to
85 A surveillance office of the Nazi party (NSDAP) in Berlin led by Alfred Rosenberg (see bpb. 20). 86 Willi Graf, for example, witnessed crimes committed in the name of National Socialism, as recorded by Kirsten Schulz in: bpb. 18. See also "Die Ostfront" in: Filmheft. "Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage." 9. 87 Manfred Eickemeyer worked for the German Generalgouvernement in Poland and witnessed mass shootings of Jews by the SS and noticed that the Wehrmacht stood by without interfering. 88 Dumbach and Newborn. ---. 91. 89 ---. 90 ---. 123. 27
drug us, to revolutionize us, to regiment us in the most promising years of our lives.... Gauleiters insult the honor of women students with crude jokes, and the German women-students at the university have given a worthy response to the besmirching of their honor. German students have defended their female comrades and stood by them.... This is the beginning of the struggle for our free self-determination...... Freedom and honor! For ten long years Hitler and his comrades have squeezed, debased and twisted those beautiful German words to the point of nausea... The name of Germany will remain forever stained with shame if German youth do not finally rise up....91
Apart from Huber's lectures, the progressive publications of the journalist Carl Muth,92 along with the works of Theodor Heacker,93 were also discussed in a circle of close friends, including Susanne Hirzel,94 and indirectly contributed to the content and motivated the production of the leaflets.
The distribution of the leaflets ended on February 18, 1943, with the arrest of
Hans and Sophie Scholl for placing bundles of leaflets in the hallways and dropping some leaflets over a balustrade from the third95 floor into the light well of the main hall at the
University of Munich.96 The Gestapo took Christoph Probst into custody two days later for his hand-written draft found on Hans Scholl. After a short trial on February 22, 1943, the Volksgerichtshof convicted the three and sentenced them to death for "Preparing to
Commit Treason."97 Requests for pardon from the parents Scholl were rejected. The executioners carried out the sentence on the same day. Then it took two months of
91 Dumbach and Newborn. ---. 136. 92 Publisher of the prohibited Catholic monthly magazine Hochland. Muth was introduced to Hans by a friend in Ulm. 93 Catholic thinker. 94 A close friend of Sophie Scholl. Source: Deventer, Karsten, and Eva Schmitz. "Frauen gegen Hitler im Widerstand: Zeitzeuginnen berichten." ZDF politik & zeitgeschehen, 2003. Web. 12 Oct. 2006.
interrogations, this time without haste, until the next "show trial" against fourteen additional members of The White Rose commenced on April 19, 1943.98 The accused included four women (Susanne Hirzel, Traute Lafrenz, Gisela Schertling, Katharina
Schüddekopf). The main defendants, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, and Kurt Huber were punished by death. The others received jail sentences ranging from six to eighteen months. Other persons indicted in connection with The White Rose were tried on July 13,
1943 in Munich (four), on April 3, 1944 in Saarbrücken (one), and on October 13, 1944 in Donauwörth (seven). In all, around 150 people were detained, 6 were executed, 12 perished in concentration camps, and 36 were imprisoned until the Allies liberated them in 1945.99 100
Today, The White Rose is extensively memorialized all over Germany. Since
1945 innumerable cities have named streets, plazas, and schools particularly after the
Scholl Geschwister (siblings). One of the most common school names in Germany is
Geschwister-Scholl-Schule. At the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU, also referred to as University of Munich), the Institute for Political Science founded in the post-war era was re-named Geschwister-Scholl-Institut for political science on
January 30, 1968. In front of the main hall, in which the Gestapo arrested Hans and
Sophie, the Geschwister Scholl Platz displays cemented leaflets with the last leaflet set into the ground. Since 1980, The Geschwister-Scholl-Preis is awarded annually in the main hall’s auditorium for a book that demonstrates "evidence of intellectual
98 Dumbach and Newborn. ---. 171. 99 Goldman, Ari L. "Anti-Hitler German Students Lauded." New York Times 30 June 1985: 26. PROQUEST. Web. n.d. 100 bpb. ---. 129. 29
independence and has qualified itself to encourage civil liberties, moral, intellectual and aesthetic courage, as well as responsible present-day thinking" (my translation).101 The atrium in the main building of the LMU houses a permanent exhibit in memory of the
Scholl siblings and other members of The White Rose since 1997. In 2005, the ZDF
Television surveyed an audience of the TV program "Our Best: The greatest Germans," which ranked Hans and Sophie Scholl in fourth place of greatest Germans ever. The younger viewers even considered them in first place.102 103
In 1985, the American Jewish Congress in New York honoured The White Rose members and announced the establishment of educational programs to study the model of resistance offered by The White Rose. Two days prior, the President [Reagan] and the then West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, laid a wreath at Bitburg, and hundreds of
"people placed white roses on the graves of Hans and Sophie Scholl in Munich."104 This visit to Germany was so highly controversial because it combined stops at the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen and the Kolmeshohe Cemetery at Bitburg, whose
2,000 graves of German soldiers also included those of 49 SS men.105 The visit was opposed by both houses of Congress, Elie Wiesel,106 Jewish organizations, and other groups while there was no disagreement or controversy regarding the gestures at the
101 "Sinn und Ziel des Geschwister-Scholl-Preises ist es, jährlich ein Buch jüngeren Datums auszuzeichnen, das von geistiger Unabhängigkeit zeugt und geeignet ist, bürgerliche Freiheit, moralischen, intellektuellen und ästhetischen Mut zu fördern und dem verantwortlichen Gegenwartsbewusstsein wichtige Impulse zu geben. Web. n.d.
graves of Hans and Sophie Scholl who "unmasked the truth behind a group of Nazi resisters who had, by the '70s, become mythic in stature."107
"The apparent spiritual purity of these students, their middle class upbringing and grounding in traditional German Kultur , and their ultimate sacrifice allowed even
German conservatives to embrace the group. [...] They were to be admired but could never be emulated."108 While the courage of The White Rose and in particular the Scholl siblings have been commemorated in both Germanys after 1945, more affectionate and sentimental attachment has been displayed towards Sophie Scholl. The amount of public monuments to her memory (i.e., busts109 and stamps) is one of the indicators of this affection. A bust is on display in her birth house in Forchtenberg; on February 22, 2003, the government of Bavaria placed a bust of Sophie Scholl, along with the most famous
German personalities, in the Walhalla temple situated east of Regensburg; in 2005, a small bronze bust of Sophie Scholl was added to the LMU exhibit. In a poll, the readers of the popular women's Brigitte Magazine, circulation 400,000, voted Sophie Scholl "the most important woman of the twentieth century."110 In 1961, the former German
Democratic Republic issued a commemorative stamp issued of Hans and Sophie Scholl; in 2006 and 2010 the Deutsche Bundespost issued commemorative stamps representing
Sophie Scholl on her own. In 1985, Martin Broszat, head of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich from 1972-1989, argued in his essay Plädoyer für eine Historisierung des
107 Lovell, Glenn. "Director wants Germans to face facts about Hitler." The Toronto Star 2 March 1991: SA2, H2. Web. n.d. 108 Paehler, Katrin. "Breaking the Post-War Goose-Step: Three Films by Michael Verhoeven." Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 28.4 (2010): 41-56. 44. Print. 109 Members of The White Rose, other than Sophie Scholl, are not memorialized with busts. 110 New World Encyclopedia. ---. 31
Nationalsozialismus that historians should study the Nazi era like any other historical periods.111 The groundbreaking film The White Rose underscored this endeavour by paying special attention to the figure of Sophie Scholl, thereby both echoing and advancing the particular affection post-war Germans have felt for Sophie Scholl—the only young woman resister among all those men who openly dared to question Hitler.
A number of important book publications have also helped to proliferate and popularize the memory of The White Rose. Starting with the first publication of the book
Die Weiße Rose (The White Rose) by Inge Scholl in 1952 (now: Inge Aicher-Scholl), this
"slim volume became a classic work of literature about the Third Reich"112 and has been re-published in each decade from the 1950s until the 21st century (2006), over thirty times in all. This small book outlines the history of The White Rose group and was presented to generations of students as an official high school graduation gift.113 Inge
Jens' book Hans Scholl und Sophie Scholl: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen (At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl) has been re-published between two different publishers in 1984, '85, '88, '93, and 1995. A number of other publications about the group and its members exist. However, a large number of books in connection with The White Rose focus on Sophie Scholl, with around 52 books, including re-publications, offered on the current market. While publications generally display an admiration for Hans Scholl, they also generate affection for his sister Sophie.
It seems that public memory of The White Rose preferably attaches itself to the figure of
111 Kershaw, Ian. The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation. London: Arnold, 2000. 221, 225. Print. 112 Andrews, Edmund L. "Inge Aicher-Scholl, 81, a German Whose Writing Inspired Pacifists." New York Times 6 Sep. 1998: 43. Web. n.d. 113 Paehler. ---. 44. 32
Sophie Scholl. That German public memory expresses respect for Hans Scholl, but an almost sentimental affection towards Sophie Scholl, I am arguing, is grounded in Sophie
Scholl's gender. It is this particular public affection that both Verhoeven's The White Rose and Rothemund's Sophie Scholl - The Final Days thrive on.
33
Summary of the Leaflet Action of The White Rose
Leaflet Number of Time of Authors / Audience Basic Message number leaflets distribution Distributors
1-4 100 each 27 June - H. Scholl Authors 1. Call for passive resistance to prevent 12 July 1942 A. Schmorell Professors continuation of the atheistic war Booksellers machinery. / Students 2. Stating the impossibility of dealing with Friends the state on a "geistige" level and therefore H. Scholl must uproot the brown horde with its A. Schmorell crimes organized by the state. 3. Suggestion to oppose the regime with boycotts and sabotage. 4. Statement that the guilt is shared by all. Hitler and Goebbels are portrayed as evil forces.
5 6000-9000 27 Jan. - H. Scholl The masses 5. Hitler cannot win the war, only prolong 29 Jan. 1943 A. Schmorell in six south it. Now is the time for liberation from Kurt Huber German National Socialism, otherwise the / and Germans would suffer the same fate as the H. Scholl Austrian Jews. Stalingrad is the basis for a political S. Scholl cities appeal and stirring up fear in the W. Graf population regarding the effects of A. Schmorell National Socialism.
6 2800-3000 Middle of Kurt Huber Young 6. Calling on the youth to revolt against Feb. 1943 / people the Hitler dictatorship. mailed & H. Scholl 18 Feb. 43 S. Scholl Students distributed at W. Graf university A. Schmorell
7 1 18 Feb. 43 Christoph (not clear) 7. Stating the hopeless situation of hand- taken by Probst Stalingrad. Calling for unconditional written Gestapo surrender and action against Hitler who draft from Hans sacrificed Germany.
(Adapted from Kirsten Schulz, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2005)
Note: Sophie Scholl was instrumental in obtaining substantial amounts of key supplies and in the production and distribution of leaflets number 5 and 6, which were the only leaflets produced in batches of thousands.
34
DIE WEISSE ROSE (THE WHITE ROSE, 1982)
While the public popularity of The White Rose, and in particular of Sophie and Hans
Scholl, was growing throughout the post-war years, paradoxically, The White Rose members were considered traitors from a legal perspective. The Bundesgerichtshof
(Supreme Court of Germany) ruled that the Volksgerichtshof (People's High Court during the Nazi era) was a legitimate court because the judges were subject to their conscience and the law. Thus, the political prisoners, the convicted, the executed by this court were still legally guilty of high treason and other crimes they may have been accused of and convicted for. But in the early 1980s, the political climate began to change and such legalistic reasoning was considered untenable. Especially those born after 1945 began to question the legitimization of the Volksgerichtshof and, by extension, all legal proceedings during the Third Reich. Verhoeven's film Die weiße Rose (from hereon in
The White Rose) contributed to and fuelled the already heated public debate about the status and meaning of the Scholls' resistance and the legal validity of the verdicts of the
Volksgerichtshof.
When Verhoeven was honoured with a Visionary Award at the 20th Washington
Jewish Film Festival in 2009, he was asked about how The White Rose unleashed that debate. Verhoeven explained, "… I attacked the Bundesgerichtshof and said: 'Just think about what you've decided there.' [...] And because my (film) credits attacked a constitutional organ, the film was not allowed to be screened by the Goethe-Institute."114
114 German Missions in the United States. "Michael Verhoeven - Germany's Cinematic Conscience." 7. Web. 20 Oct. 2011.
115 Verhoeven's arguments at that point in time resonated with many Germans who felt that The White Rose and the Scholls were not traitors, but heroes because of their civil courage.116 He points out that the court in the Third Reich was an instrument of terror, so much so that even clemencies were retracted. Initial propositions to annul the judgments of the Volksgerichtshof fell on deaf ears, and that is why the film was at first only screened at the German Gymnasium but was considered too controversial for lower grades.117 When Verhoeven joined members and friends of the Scholl family, who had been pressuring German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to overturn the decision of the
Bundesgerichtshof, the Bundestag (German Parliament) re-opened the debate. "Out of a newly awakened public consciousness of Nazi terror with an institution that no longer resembled the current day institutions based on the principles of law, the family Scholl and friends scored a long coveted victory."118 At the end of a 2003 interview with
Verhoeven, screened as part of the special features of the 2003 DVD release, the following text is displayed:
On the 25th of January 1985, the Parliament issued the following unanimous decision: 'The German Parliament hereby declares that the institution designated as Volksgerichtshof is not a court recognized by any state built upon the rule of law; rather, it was an instrument of terror designed to carry out the arbitrary will of the national socialists.'119
115 Goethe Institutes are Germany’s cultural centres across the globe. 116 Habich, Christiane, ed. "Interview with Michael Verhoeven, Die weiße Rose." Kinowelt, 2003. DVD. Special Features. 117 ---. 118 Rutschmann, Paul. "The White Rose in Film and History." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 27.3 (2007): 371-390. 379. Print. 119 Habich. ---. 36
Verhoeven's The White Rose, as I will show, accelerated the already existing debate and influenced the general change in sentiment of almost all Germans, deepened by the portrayal of the historical figures of Hans and Sophie Scholl. Thus, the film forced a re- examination of the past. "The movie stands not simply adjacent to written history, but engages it and propels forward the debate."120 The legal issues re-considered, the resultant West German dialogue deemed The White Rose members as martyrs. The film commented on a "memory split" meaning historical versus affectionate memory, and contributed to settling official memory and cultivating informal communicative memory.
Aleida Assmann's work on the construction and function of memory is helpful for understanding these different layers of memory in German culture relating to the Third
Reich. Long-term cultural memories are created with monuments and museums contributing to official or national memory, while, from a sociological perspective, media dissemination establishes communicative memory with books and films, which can produce empathy and emotional identification with victims of the Third Reich.121 Jan
Assmann defines "communicative memory" as living memory that is framed by individual and cultural memory, binding together generations, bringing about mutual transfer of narratives that contribute to the post-war discourse, debates, and change in communicative memory of post-war Germans.122 123 The perception that Hans and Sophie
Scholl were heroes, not traitors, eventually overtook and changed the official cultural
120 Paehler. ---. 45. 121 Assmann Aleida. Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories. Ed. Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad. New York: Palgrave, 2010. 97-117. Print. 122 Assmann, Jan. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in den früheren Hochkulturen. Munich: Beck, 2000. 50. Print. 123 ---. "Collective Memory and Cultural Identity." New German Critique 65 (1995): 125-133. 129. Print. 37
memory. Thus Verhoeven's The White Rose strengthened an already existing aspect of communicative memory and contributed to this discourse of change across generations.
Film, Politics, History, Controversy
The White Rose, as well as his other films, "propelled" Verhoeven "into the ranks of today's most prominent political German filmmakers."124 Michael Verhoeven was born on July 13, 1938, in Berlin into a family of actors and filmmakers. Unlike the medical students in The White Rose, Michael Verhoeven was able to complete his medical studies, earned his MD in 1969, and practiced medicine from 1966 to 1973. He worked as an actor to pay for his studies but continued acting until he directed his first feature film
Paarungen in 1967 in his own production company "Sentana Filmproduktion GmbH" founded with actress Senta Berger in 1965.125 "It was my dream to have two professions - medicine and film making. I really wanted to do both, but the film making took over. I'd still like to practice medicine. But perhaps, for now, I take the country's pulse, yes?,"126 said Verhoeven in an interview with Glenn Collins at the New York Film Festival in
1990. Considered by many as "one of the filmmakers who has dealt seriously with
Germany's past,"127 Verhoeven's reputation as a critical and political filmmaker was built on films such as O.K. (1970), The White Rose (1982), The Nasty Girl (1990), My
124 Moeller, Hans-Bernard. "Bridges between New German Cinema and Today`s Generation of Political Filmmakers: An Interview with Michael Verhoeven." Journal of Film and Video 62.1-2 (2010): 3-12. 3. Print. 125 Kino-Zeit. "Michael Verhoeven." Web. n.d.
Mother's Courage (1995), The Unknown Soldier (documentary, 2006), and Human Error
(documentary, 2008).
Verhoeven's films, it seems, were often accompanied by scandal: OK (1970) dealt with a crime committed during the Vietnam War set in Bavaria. The Berlinale's128 international jury pressured the Berliner Filmfestspiele in 1970 to exclude the film because of its anti-American disposition. Accusations of wrong censorship, finger- pointing, and resignations led to the cancellation of the Festival.129 The controversy at the
Berlinale prompted Verhoeven to tackle social and political issues, especially those inspired by the Third Reich, starting with The White Rose (whose selfless attitude impressed him), introducing female resisters, making Sophie Scholl a German icon. His sister Monika commented that Verhoeven in his work "confronts the issues our father failed to face after the war."130 Accordingly, in 1971, Verhoeven received the Filmband in Gold131 for OK. The White Rose obtained two distinguished German Film Awards. The films that followed also won awards: The Silver Bear for Best Director in Berlin in 1990 and the BAFTA Award in 1992 for Best Foreign Language film, and the Bavarian Film
Award132 for Best Picture along with other prizes. Hence, Verhoeven "has devoted his career to setting the record straight, to reminding Germany of its culpability in the rise of
128 Berlinale, also called Berliner Filmfestspiele (film festival). 129 Berlinale. Web. n.d.
Hitler and in all subsequent war crimes."133 "How come we never faced that part of our history?"134 is the central question motivating his work. Verhoeven was, at the time, "the first West German director to raise the issue of German resistance against the Nazis with his film The White Rose."135
The making of The White Rose is based on Verhoeven's research, including letters and diaries from Hans and Sophie Scholl, and interviews with family members and friends of the Scholls. The tone of the letters and entries in his diary suggest that Hans
Scholl was a profound thinker who also fostered a loving and respectful relationship with his parents, siblings, and friends. Because of strict censorship, he could only allude to the terrible circumstances in Germany, which troubled him deeply. Sophie Scholl, through her letters appears unpretentious and eager to communicate with family and friends. As a nature lover, she fittingly describes the beauty of nature with poetic nuances expressing her happiness about being part of creation. For example, in a letter to her sister Elisabeth,
Sophie talks about a trip to the Alps: "Wir bemerkten auch plötzlich, daß alle Bergspitzen rosenrot glühten. Das ist unbeschreiblich schön" ("Suddenly we noticed that the mountain tops glowed pinkish red. That is so beautiful, words cannot express it.").136 Sophie
Scholl's lengthy letters to her boyfriend, Fritz Hartnagel, communicate her feelings,
133 Lovell, Glenn. "'Nasty Girl' director makes setting the German record straight his mission". The Las Vegas Review-Journal 25 January 1992: 5B. Web. n.d. 134 ---. 5B. 135 Jewish Film. "Verhoeven." Web. n.d.
including her opposition to the war. Her diary entries articulate her inner struggles and trust in her faith.137
Verhoeven not just attempted to transpose the characters, intellect and feelings of
Hans and Sophie Scholl, as they emerge from letters and diaries into his film, he also chose authenticity and verisimilitude throughout the whole film sticking closely to a documentary approach. The cinematography effectively uses outside lighting, suggesting that life is normal and appealing. The setting is natural with extras, like a little girl rolling a hoop down the street, for example.138 Verhoeven shot the film in Hungary as some buildings in the streets of Budapest resembled those of Munich before the Allied bombings, and available fitting original military vehicles on site helped authenticate the setting. The cast displays a notable resemblance to the actual persons in looks, acting, and discourse. Lena Stolze, in the role of Sophie Scholl, "replicates the facial traits that vacillate between joy and melancholy of Sophie in the original photos."139 Verhoeven gives a sequential account of the episodes as close as possible to the real events. "The film is directed, with considerable competence and no 'glorification' by Michael
Verhoeven, who wrote the scripts with Michael Krebs," concludes Kauffmann.140 A good example that demonstrates Verhoeven’s conscious attempt to forego aesthetic effects that could contribute to the mythification of The White Rose, is the scene in which the leaflets fly off the atrium’s balustrade into the main hall of the University. Verhoeven was
137 Jens. ---. 138 Maslin, Janet. "'The White Rose,' Students Against Nazis." The New York Times 6 May 1983: C13. Web. n.d. 139 Rutschmann. --- 380. 140 Kauffmann, Stanley. "The White Rose." The New Republic 11 July 1983: 22. Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly.Web. 1 Oct. 2011. 41
tempted to have Lena Stolze (Sophie) push many leaflets off the balustrade and have them fly in slow motion toward the camera mounted below. Instead of such melodramatic stylization, Verhoeven opted for fifty pages, which flew straight down without any special effect, a matter-of-fact re-enactment.141 Verheoven’s unadorned documentary style approach is in contrast to Rothemund’s film, discussed in the next chapter, who fully exploits the famous scene of the leaflets flying from the balcony immediately before the discovery of the Scholls by the caretaker.
Konstantin Wecker, one of Germany’s foremost and best known singer- songwriters contributed much of the musical score for The White Rose. Known for his left-leaning views, Wecker has participated in a number of projects that are critical of
Neo-Nazi right wing extremism (concerts like Nazis raus aus dieser Stadt, causing debates in the Bundestag142) as well of post-war Germans' reluctance to engage self- critically with the Nazi past. Given the seriousness of the plot of The White Rose,
Wecker's music remains relatively soft. In the leaflet distribution scene at the university, the piano melody is in unison, except for some heavy chords inserted later, sounding like warning signs.
The film begins with three black and white photographs captioned with the inscription "Executed on February 22, 1943." On that day, the executioners of the
Volksgerichtshof behead Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans, and their friend Christoph
Probst for committing high treason. Verhoeven's docudrama gives the conclusion away at the outset. Because the story was known to most Germans, viewers would have been
141 Rutschmann. ---. 142 Wecker, Konstantin. "Official Homepage." Web. 6 Dec. 2011.
compelled to learn why and how these students, male and female alike, had to die so young. Verhoeven employs what is known as the "Cassandra metaphor." Psychologist
Melanie Klein states, it incites a "refusal to believe what at the same time they know expresses the universal tendency toward denial."143 The viewer would hope against all hope and reason that somehow The White Rose members will survive. While popular
German memory elevated White Rose members to martyrs, detaching them from reality and regarding them without the possibility of emulation, Verhoeven’s unadorned documentary style account "gave back their humanity to these otherworldly heroes."144
Risky Actions
Verhoeven’s representation of the Sophie Scholl character invites studies on gender related issues. Katrin Paehler argues that "at a time when gender relations had not been introduced as a field of research at German universities, Verhoeven uses Sophie Scholl's character to embody these issues."145 Throughout the film, Verhoeven carefully balances the representation of Sophie Scholl. He shows her to be driven by conscience and conviction, enveloped by an air of youthful female innocence, and committed to risk taking in order to rid Germany of Hitler. In an interview with Hans-Bernhard Moeller,
Verhoeven explains his understanding of The White Rose group dynamics: "Sophie was never at the center of the White Rose—she was, so to say, the soul of the White Rose."146
To be sure, Sophie Scholl was not included in the drafting of the leaflets and decision- making logistics, yet she was instrumental to the success of the group in different ways.
143 Klein, Melanie. Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963. New York: Free Press, 1975. 293. Print. 144 Paehler. ---. 44. 145 ---. 47. 146 Moeller, Hans-Bernard. ---. 5. 43
Verhoeven represents Sophie Scholl neither as intellectual nor as subservient helper.
Verhoeven develops the strength of her character out of the circumstances and opportunities for women at the time. He focuses on showing her as instrumental and inventive in obtaining key supplies, such as high volumes of postage stamps, stacks of paper, replacement cloth for the printing machine, and active participation in the distribution of the leaflets, for example. Sophie Scholl becomes a resister by working successfully within the gender roles assigned to women in the Third Reich, yet she also defies gender norms, as I will show.
Verhoeven in The White Rose, I argue, focuses on the character of Sophie Scholl in order to evoke an emotional response to the German past with a clear goal in mind, namely to effect a change in official memory at the time as the members of this resistance group were legally considered traitors. Although the film is about the The White Rose and its group dynamics, Verhoeven presents it mainly from Sophie Scholl's point of view.
He shapes her character in such a way that she becomes not only the soul of The White
Rose but the emotional center of the film as well, as he differentiates her from and contrasts her against the ferocious cold machinery of the Volksgerichtshof. "The very notion of an emotional center is a gendered concept"147 as I will show in the analysis of selected scenes. My reading of The White Rose, however, will put forward the first gender related analysis of the film in the hope to shed light on the also understudied concept of gendered resistance during the Third Reich and will contribute to
147 Letherby, Gayle, and Gillian Reynolds. Gendered Journeys, Mobile Emotions. Abingdon: Ashgate, 2009. EBRARY. Web. 31 July 2012. 44
understanding the gendered dimension of the film to fill what Katrin Paehler calls a still existing "lacuna" in research.148
At the very beginning of the film, Hans, accompanied by his girlfriend Traute, meets his sister at the train station in Munich, and he literally sweeps her off her feet whirling her around, indicating a loving close relationship between brother and sister.
Disrupted by two secret police checking Sophie's backpack, Hans quickly discards a piece of paper into a waste basket, the first suspicious behaviour followed by more, which he tries to hide from Sophie. But the priority on her first day in Munich is the celebration of Sophie's birthday where she meets the rest of the group: Willi Graf,
Christoph Probst, and Alexander Schmorell. Before Sophie has a chance to unpack her things, Traute pulls her away to a lecture given by Professor Huber who talks about new forms of statehood in connection with references to Spinoza and Leibniz. The camera pans the attending students during the lecture, but zooms in on close-up shots of Sophie to show her surprise and her agreement with what Huber discusses. On another occasion, some students read a leaflet, pass it quickly around under the long lecture hall desks until it reaches Sophie who also gives it a quick read and forwards it to the next student. At home in a new place, an apartment shared with her brother, Sophie recognizes some of the sentences of the leaflet in open papers and books left by Hans on the table. As soon as
Hans arrives, Sophie confronts him, "Ich hab' Angst, mach mir nichts vor" ("I'm afraid, don't play games with me."). She goes downstairs into the cellar and asks, surprised by the presence of her brother's male friends operating a printing machine, "Warum hast du
148 Paehler. ---. 47. 45
mir niemals was gesagt?" ("Why did you never tell me anything?"). Initially Hans attempts to shield his sister from politics: "Das ist meine Sache... kümmer dich nicht um
Sachen, von denen du nichts verstehst" ("That's my problem... don't worry about things which you don't understand."). Yet her usefulness becomes evident quickly. Verhoeven portrays Sophie from a position of strength already in the opening scenes: her arrival and discovery of who is behind the activities of The White Rose. Newer research seems to indicate that Sophie Scholl knew about the group activities much earlier than Verhoeven assumes and shows in his film.149
Soon after Sophie’s acceptance into the group, Alexander suggests that she would be the ideal candidate to help meet the shortage of paper by stealing some from the
Liegenschaftsamt (Land Titles Registry). But Hans is worried, "Bist du verrückt? Das ist zu gefährlich für Sophie!" ("Are you crazy? This is too dangerous for Sophie!").
Verhoeven admits that the cabinet scene is not according to reality, but it presents an opportunity to show how Sophie would act under pressure.150 Despite Hans’ objection,
Sophie and Alexander are deployed to said office. She is dressed as an office clerk and with a stolen key attempts to open the cabinet in the hallway where the stationary is locked. The cabinet is awkward to handle, reason for easy detection. A bomb alarm siren screams suddenly and office staff vacate the building. Undeterred by the imminent danger, Sophie stuffs more paper into the briefcase of Alexander who is waiting in the wings and manages to get 2,000 sheets of paper from the stationery cabinet in the hallway. Verhoeven demonstrates that this kind of mission required nerves of steel and
149 Rutschmann. ---. 374. 150 Habich. ---. 46
that Sophie Scholl possessed those. Sophie Scholl may not have written the leaflets, however, Verhoeven’s film poses that without paper supplies the writing of the leaflets would not have been possible. Later in the film, Sophie Scholl is also seen to go neatly dressed to the post office to get large amounts of stamps, pretending that there was a death in the family and condolence letters had to be sent. Even later in the film, the printing machine’s cloth impression is ripped, halting the leaflet production. Sophie
Scholl creatively appropriates a swastika flag from cloth that ironically serves to print anti-Nazi leaflets. In sum, Verhoeven develops his character’s gender out of the circumstances and gender expectations at the time, which Verhoeven’s Sophie both fulfills and exceeds.
At a meeting at the university, the Gauleiter has been informed about the leaflets.
The group is oblivious to the developing investigation. The investigators conjecture that there must be organized German groups behind the leaflets, which may be influenced by
Catholics because Communists would not write in this way. In fact, the students had drawn from Professor Huber’s lectures. The group extensively uses the language of the classical German Bürgertum (middle class) with quotes by Goethe, Schiller, Laotse,
Novalis, Aristotle, and from the Bible to address the intelligentsia of Germany within their first four leaflets. The Catholic connection, however, also made sense because by this time, Bishop Clemens von Galen had drawn a following in Germany resulting from his sermons against Euthanasia. Von Galen was also instrumental in overturning a decree of removing crucifixes from schools.151 A link between the leaflets and the university is
151 Stoltzfus. ---. 145. 47
being established. A reward of 3,000 Marks is posted. The dragnet of the investigation tightens. Verhoeven sets the stage for the last short scenes, which head for a quick dramatic climax followed by a chilling conclusion. To heighten the dreadful effect of these last scenes, Verhoeven precedes them with a happy occasion. The evening before that fateful day of Hans and Sophie's arrest, the men of the core group (except Professor
Huber) and Sophie are celebrating a milestone in leaflet distribution as well as the birth of Christoph and Herta's third child, a baby girl this time. While Willi Graf pours drinks into the small hand-held glasses of the high-spirited, laughing group standing at the printing machine, Sophie Scholl is the only group member interested in the newborn baby’s name, while her male companion are concerned with their intellectual delivery.
Happy about the new life, she is unaware of her own impending death. By drinking with the "boys" coupled with her display of female identity, Verhoeven places Sophie Scholl at the center of the group whose emotional balance and resourcefulness have become indispensable for the group.
In the morning, Hans indicates that he wants to start with the University to distribute the last printed leaflets. Sophie prefers the Frauenkirche as first target. But
Hans insists, "Uni first." Sophie complies with her brother's preference. Hans carries a small suitcase containing the illicit material. Swiftly they reach the bright atrium bathed in the morning sun. The light marble walls contrast with Sophie's black coat. She and
Hans hastily place leaflets close to doors and walls as their rapid steps resound through the quiet halls. Back at the exit, Hans notes that he would rather leave with an empty suitcase, ignores Sophie's cautionary remark regarding the time constraint of two minutes until lectures end, and runs back. Sophie disagrees, but follows him upstairs where they
48
spread the remaining leaflets on the open banister facing the atrium. Some fumbling and the rushed removal of the suitcase from the top of the banister cause some leaflets to float down. As already addressed earlier in this chapter, when discussing Verhoeven’s rather austere documentary style, he consciously refrained from overdramatizing the flying- paper scene in order to let the actions and characters speak for themselves152 and not to compromise the realistic presentation of the scene through a "Hollywood effect." When
Verhoeven made his film, he was unaware that Sophie Scholl had admitted during her actual interrogation that she had deliberately pushed 80 to 100 leaflets from the second floor into the atrium. In Verhoeven’s film, the scenes are cut between the resisters' actions and the approaching caretaker, heightening the suspense. Although most viewers know that the pair will be arrested, there is an atypical hope for a more favourable outcome. At the point when Hans and Sophie are done, when the leaflets float into the atrium, and the students pour out from the lecture halls, the caretaker reaches the atrium and screams. "Da sind sie... Sie sind verhaftet!" ("There they are... you are under arrest!"). Sophie Scholl hangs onto the arm of her older brother. Verhoeven’s camera again focuses on Sophie Scholl rather than Hans to convey the emotions of impending doom.
Your Heads Will Roll Also
In court, the presiding judge of the Volksgerichtshof is extremely intimidating. Roland
Freisler conducted numerous show trials intended for "Goebbels' propaganda and to
152 Habich. ---. 49
satisfy the Führer's thirst for revenge,"153 for which a concealed film camera documented the proceedings. Freisler permeated fear. He was considered the personification of what the Nazis called "blood justice" with his record of death sentences. Verhoeven replicates
Freisler's language and his persona through visuals such as colour, light, and shadow.
Freisler repeatedly screamed and shouted with the intent to break down the accused psychologically.154 In the film, Hans, Sophie, and Christoph receive the same treatment.
Even the state-appointed defence does not dare address the fierce irritated judge who,
"dressed to kill" in his blood-red robe, shouts at the accused. The absence of music in the courtroom scene adds to both the tension and the authenticity of the film. In contrast to
Sophie Scholl, whose face is seen vulnerable and open, the face of the judge is revealed in stages. Literally covered with a dark shadow, his features remain unrecognizable at first. Then the camera cuts to the judge's insolently moving mouth and digresses next to a side shot of the judge and his helpers on the bench. Eventually, Freisler's face is exposed.
The close-up shots between the accused and the judge alternate, intermittently adding long-shots of a dejected audience into the mix. Sophie Scholl dares speak up three times even after the "highest law" of the land demands silence. She is presented as the most outspoken of the accused. Convinced of her views and values being superior to those of the regime, she even dares to utter a threat, "Eure Köpfe rollen auch noch" ("Your heads will roll also!"). The audience in the courtroom is impotent to express any reaction to this thesis-antithesis scenario, but the viewers are challenged to react emotionally. As Sophie
153 Hoffmann, Peter. The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945. 3rd ed. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2001. 252. Print. 154 ---. 50
Scholl is presented as the centre of the trial, her fervour and emotional responses and counter-accusations present an effective counter-point to the machinery of the state represented by the all male judges.
The scenes leading up to the execution of the three group members, the last moment of their lives is narrated again from Sophie's perspective. Johanna Gastdorf,
Verhoeven's sister, stars as Else Gebel who is Sophie's co-prisoner commanded to watch over Sophie but becomes her confidant. The White Rose members had hoped that they would be freed by the Allied Forces before the execution. Legally there had to be 90 days between a verdict and the execution of a death sentence. However, The White Rose core members were to be executed the same day the verdict was pronounced. The camera is behind Sophie Scholl who is looking up and out the high prison cell window. It is her point of view: Past the thick walls, so thick that someone would have to lie on the windowsill to look down, she sees the bright, blue endless sky. For now, she is confined in the dark, a prefiguration of her death.
Despite strict rules, the guard allows Hans, Sophie and Christoph to meet for the last time and share one cigarette in a small courtyard. They hug, Sophie's delicate figure in the center. A short while later, the guard enters, motioning to Sophie Scholl. Strong men in black lift her effortlessly onto the guillotine. She becomes an object to be disposed of by the state. The last the viewers see of Sophie Scholl is her face in close-up looking straight into the camera. Then the camera cuts to the swiftly falling guillotine, and the screen turns black. Sophie Scholl is the first one to be executed and the only one whose execution is shown in The White Rose. Verhoeven utilizes her gender and the emotional attachment it creates as a powerful tool to mount a critique of the official
51
treatment of the Scholls as traitors. Verhoeven plays out Sophie's gender by emphasizing and focusing on the unflinching resolution in her very young face, her small physical frame in contrast to the bodies of her executioners, and the erasure of her image by cutting to the black screen. The gender focus on Sophie Scholl in the film serves to highlight the extreme disproportion between the actual undertaking of the group and the powers available to the Nazi state.
In conclusion, in his 1982 film, The White Rose, Michael Verhoeven focuses almost exclusively on the youngest and only female member of the core group, Sophie
Scholl. Although Verhoeven is casting men and women into traditional roles, he blurs the lines between those roles in terms of activities against the Nazi regime and representation of his main female character. Verhoeven not only refrains from turning the historical figure of Sophie Scholl into an ahistorical mythical figure, but he also does not represent
Sophie's character in any contemporary feminist way. Instead, he portrays her as a proactive pragmatic practical person who accepts her traditional female role as helper in
White Rose activities which she, however, quickly and creatively begins to expand and exceed. He develops her qualities as a self-assured female resister whose values are based on a middle class and Christian upbringing. At the same time, Verhoeven does not preclude or exclude Sophie Scholl's intellect coupled with her steadfast emotional commitment to the cause of resistance. Sophie's intellect and emotions allow and drive her to take initiative, be inventive, resourceful, and heroic. He gives her space to unfold agency within the reactionary and misogynist context of 1940s Nazi Germany. She does not appear to write leaflets but finds ways to supply the group with necessary materials without which the group would not have been able to advance its work further. In
52
addition, Sophie stands her ground against the judge during the short trial. Despite or because of her small frame and youthful soft voice, she commands the screen as she opposes the intimidating powerful voice of terror that demands respect where no respect is due. Moreover, Verhoeven portrays the executioners as mere puppets in contrast to the heroine's confrontation with death and apparent ultimate victory. Within the confines ascribed to women at the time, Verhoeven cleverly highlights Sophie's attributes to move her to the centre of the group.
For Verhoeven, Sophie Scholl's gender traits become the screen onto which he can mount his critique of the public and legal condemnation of the members of The
White Rose. By playing up the diametric opposition between her youth and gender, and emotionality on the one hand, and the cold machinery of the state on the other, the injustice of the stance of the Federal Republic of Germany at that time becomes clear.
Thus, Verhoeven successfully rallies support against the upholding of the verdicts of the
Volksgerichtshof. Verhoeven’s Sophie Scholl functions as a catalyst for political change in the film.
Verhoeven’s film is characteristic of a style of film-making that film scholar and historian Robert Rosenstone calls "history as homage."155 Referring to a specific mode of history film,
the strength of this sort of work is not analysis or theory, not the combining of detail into a powerful, logical argument, but the evocation of emotion, the etching of individual character, the magic ability of verbal and visual memory to bring an earlier world and earlier selves into the present, where they can be experienced, shared, and even admired.156
155 Rutschmann. ---. 373. 156 Rosenstone. ---. 117. 53
SOPHIE SCHOLL: DIE LETZTEN TAGE (SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE FINAL DAYS,
2005)
Marc Rothemund, the director of the 2005, Sophie Scholl – The Final Days (from hereon
The Final Days), was born in 1968, and thus belongs to what I called "the third generation"157 of Germans who have no direct memories of the Third Reich. Their parents were children during the Nazi era and had grappled for decades with guilt and responsibility, which the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in post-war Germany involved. Rothemund’s generation, however, is far removed from these experiences and the unwavering interest in the Third Reich that his generation displays, nevertheless, takes on a different perspective: "Wir machen keine Aufarbeitungsfilme," says
Rothemund about his generation ("We don’t do coming-to-terms-with–the-past films").158 Instead of coming to terms with guilt and responsibility, I will argue,
Rothemund, and many filmmakers of his generation make films that remember the Third
Reich as German history that involved both, victims and perpetrators.
The Final Days is Rothemund's most accomplished film to date with a nomination for the 78th Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film. At the Berlin International
Film Festival, the film received the Silver Bear for Best Director and also Best Director at the Bavarian Film Awards.159160 In an interview around the release of The Final Days,
Rothemund was asked about his motivation to make another film about Sophie Scholl,
157 See chapter 1. 8. 158 bpb. "Interview with Marc Rothemund." Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
considering there exist already two others. Rothemund admitted: "This is the third film about Sophie Scholl, but it is such a classic German story and one that is thrilling and very emotional that we thought it would be possible to do another version. […] I think the success of the film in Germany and internationally has confirmed that our decision was a good one." In addition to the deliberately planned international appeal of the film,
Rothemund considered his film political in a way that is different from the political intentions in Verhoeven’s film.161 Scriptwriter Breinersdorfer concurs, "I also wanted to show Sophie's determination, and that of the Resistance, and in this way provide an example for others."162 "Suppression and dictatorship" are "timeless topics," Rothemund insists in yet another interview. In their intent to derive internationally applicable insights from the story of Sophie Scholl, Rothemund and Breinersdorfer did not emphasize the historical details of The White Rose group, but concentrated on the dramatic tension between an abusive state and a determined heroine during the dramatic final days of her life. This extreme situation of terrible villainy versus dedicated heroism, exemplified by the regime and Sophie Scholl respectively, was kept general enough in the film to draw parallels to a broad range of present-day terror regimes. Asked why Rothemund did not concentrate on Hans Scholl, but focused on his sister, the director answers that Hans was an intellectual and a fighter from the beginning on, but Sophie Scholl, was not born a heroine, instead she became one under the circumstances.163 To show the "human side of resistance," Rothemund chooses Sophie Scholl, as one of the "small wheels" in the
161 bpb. ---. 162 Phillips, Richard. "Fred Breinersdorfer, writer of Sophie Scholl - The Final Days, speaks with the WSWS." World Socialist Website 2006. Web. 10 Nov. 2011. 163 bpb. ---. 55
"machinery of the Gestapo."164 Rothemund, similar to Verhoeven, then chooses Sophie
Scholl because of her gender, to emphasize the machinery of the Nazis versus the individual. I will show, however, that Rothemund’s emphasis on Sophie Scholl results in a very different film, that it concentrates less on Sophie Scholl as the emotional center of
The White Rose, but results in an emotional-psychological study of a young woman’s heroic resistance against a cruel regime.
When the core members of the The White Rose were arrested on February 18,
1943, the Gestapo interrogated Sophie Scholl and other members of the group for three days. Seasoned Gestapo officer Robert Mohr was assigned to be Sophie Scholl's interrogator. The related police records and subsequent court transcripts were held in
Munich until the end of WWII when occupying Soviet troops took the documents from
Munich to Moscow. After the founding of the GDR state in 1949, Russian officials transferred the documents to East Berlin where they remained until the fall of the Berlin wall. After German reunification in 1990, the Department of State Security and the central archive of the SED (German Socialist Unity Party) of the former GDR opened their archives and granted public access to police and Stasi records as well as transcripts of court proceedings.165 Unlike Verhoeven who tapped into Inge Scholl's personal memories, conducted interviews with those close to The White Rose, and utilized the documentation from group members available, Rothemund relied on the additional information now available in the former GDR’s archives. "But perhaps what sets this film
164 bpb. ---. 165 Kahlenberg, Friedrich P. "Democracy and Federalism: Changes in the National Archival System in a United Germany." The American Archivist 55.1 (1992): 72-85. Web. n.d. 56
[The Final Days] apart the most from the previous films on Sophie Scholl is that we were able to consult documents that were still inaccessible in the 1980s," 166 167 explains
Rothemund who constructed his film around Sophie Scholl’s verbal duel with Robert
Mohr. With the opened archives he had a wealth of new information to create expanded scenes such as the interrogations and the courtroom proceedings. Since the reports were dictated in bureaucratic jargon and meant to incriminate the interrogated and deliver proof for high treason, they have to be read critically.168 Nevertheless, for Rothemund as a filmmaker, these protocols held immediate dramatic potential. While Rothemund constructs a large part of his film around the protocols, he lends the filmic rhetoric further credibility by supplementing and cross-referencing the transcripts with statements from other primary sources such as interviews, letters, and diaries. Despite his historical research, the emotional intensity of Sophie Scholl’s character was more important than historical accuracy, says Rothemund.169 He was, for example, fascinated by the fact that
Sophie was able to preliminarily convince the experienced Gestapo officer Robert Mohr of her innocence after the first five-hour interrogation, then decided to take all the responsibility on to herself to protect the other members and even reject Mohr’s offer to save her life if she just said her brother was responsible and she just a girl who followed
166 Elley. --- 167 Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. ---. DVD Booklet. 3. Print. 168 bpb. Excerpts are available at the Bundeszentrale der politischen Bildung.
him blindly.170 For Rothemund, the protocols reveal intense emotions, high drama, and extreme suspense. Sophie Scholl is pitted against a terror regime represented by the
Blutrichter171 Roland Freisler and his Gestapo prep worker, Robert Mohr, who with a systematic irrationality, based on Hitler's skewed ideology, drew her into their deadly machinery, but not without Sophie Scholl's demonstration of a truth based on the law of conscience, rendering the system she opposes a lie.
In an interview with Margret Köhler in 2005, Marc Rothemund says, "I saw so much 'Stauffenberg' and 'Speer' on television, mostly elite or soldiers. For me, the human side of resistance was not considered enough." "We meet the character of Sophie Scholl in an extreme situation. Yet she is not only a young woman engaged in political resistance, but also quite a normal student."172 For Rothemund and Breinersdorfer this
"human side" seems to reside in the female gender, which made it possible "to trace
Sophie Scholl's feelings and frame of mind."173 While Verhoeven presented Sophie
Scholl as the soul of the group in a political docudrama, Rothemund portrays her in a psychologically thrilling drama to appeal to the emotions of the audience. He focuses on
Sophie instead of Hans because of the gendered concept of emotions being associated with women more than men.
170 Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. Dir. Marc Rothemund. Perf. Julia Jentsch, Alexander Held, and Fabian Hinrichs. 2005. Goldkind/Broth, 2005. DVD. 171 "Blood judge" because during his two and a half years in office, he handed down over 2,000 death penalties. 172 Köhler, Margret. "Interview with Marc Rothemund for kinofenstr.de." a film-website of the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. 2005. Web. n.d. 173 Elley. ---. 58
Gender, Emotions, Drama, Suspense
Rothemund's The Final Days starts with an enactment of youthful exuberance. Laughing and obviously enjoying life, Sophie and her friend Gisela are listening to forbidden swing music and singing along with Billie Holiday on the authentic Volksempfänger radio also called the Goebbelsschnauze.174 Knowing all the words and melody to the American song
"Sugar" indicates that both women are familiar with this kind of forbidden music and that they must have been enjoying outlawed radio broadcasts regularly. This cheerful scene might suggest a tendency to take risks, and a happy atmosphere that will change all too soon. The next morning, when Hans and Sophie are leaving their apartment to target the university with leaflets, "Sugar" is replaced with drums sounding like an irregular heartbeat, quiet and slow at first, and then getting faster and louder as the action progresses. This builds suspense while the percussion matches the footsteps of Hans and
Sophie in the street and the echoing of their hurried steps through the empty atrium of the university. There is a certain anachronism, music out of harmony with the Third Reich, which conveys the dynamics of the situation even to new younger generations and may prompt the audience to connect with and compare to the happenings in the presence with its own terror situations around the world. In comparison, Verhoeven’s The White Rose features Konstantin Wecker's piano accompanying the relatively short leaflet distribution scene. His rendition has a melodic air but with distinct syncopation shifting the accent to a weak 4/4 beat. Instead of adding harmony keys, Wecker intersperses two heavy beats,
174 During the Third Reich, small private radios were called "Goebbel's snout" because Goebbels, the propaganda minister, frequently shouted and barked his message through this medium to propagate Hitler's cause. 59
and increases loudness and speed as the action progresses. Since Wecker writes political protest songs as part of his repertoire, the film music is here also in discord with the system, expresses imminent danger, and serves to build suspense. Music is one of the many features that also structures Rothemund’s film. The emphasis on Billie Holliday, rather than music from the German protest movement such as Wecker’s also marks the international appeal of the film.
While the production of Verhoeven's The White Rose requires sets, scenery, costumes, and styles of the 1940s, including considerable Nazi paraphernalia, Rothemund keeps the surroundings in The Final Days to a minimum. In fact, most of the filming takes place inside buildings and confined rooms—so much so that critics spoke of the chamber film quality of The Final Days.175 The rooms, sets of the Bavaria Film Studios, sparsely furnished and the walls kept bare, generate a deliberate dismal impression, designed not to distract from the main character, Sophie Scholl. In the interrogation scenes, central to the film, cameraman Martin Langer mainly uses the shot-reverse shot technique with which the characters are shown alternately from the same angle of view.
Not so much the movement of the camera, but the performance of the characters invites the audience to compare the arguments in this verbal duel. Based on the transcripts mentioned above, Rothemund generates his sequences structured by music, natural and artificial light, colours, and spatial arrangements that all signify the heroine’s emotional and psychological state of mind.
175 Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. ---. DVD Booklet. 60
In particular, the colours and furniture in the interrogation scenes are somewhat nostalgic and timeless: black, brown, beige room interior and clothing, and heavy wooden furniture. The long curtains are gathered to the side of the window to let in or shut out natural light, and the solid pull-down blinds are dark. Mohr sports a red bow tie dotted with tiny white specks, and Sophie wears a red cardigan over a white blouse. Their attire marks them as opponents. These colours reappear in the court room scene where
Sophie Scholl’s red cardigan forms a visual counterweight to the red robe worn by Judge
Freisler. While Verhoeven utilizes a range of colours typical for the 1940s in The White
Rose, Rothemund's approach is much more stylized. He achieves a rather timeless look by tapping into internationally well-known and well-worn fascist signifiers and symbols and the colours red and brown—all of which have come to stand for extreme oppression and state terror worldwide and therefore hold international appeal.
Rothemund’s film overlaps with Verhoeven's at the point where the last leaflet is being produced and distributed. The White Rose comes to a quick conclusion from this point on while The Final Days picks up the pace right there with the initial "mass distribution" of the leaflets and the hasty decision to distribute the leftover leaflets in the halls of the university. An exception to the generally even filming rhythm can be seen in the suspenseful scene of this last leaflet distribution at the university, which leads to the arrest of Hans and Sophie Scholl. The dynamic camera, matching the music, captures the hasty actions from different perspectives, giving the impression of the perpetrators being followed, increasing the tension and urgency which are expressed on the resisters' faces.
In this scene, the camera focuses especially on Sophie's facial expressions in a way that is
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similar to Verhoeven's approach in The White Rose. It is here where the film shifts almost exclusively to Sophie, and Rothemund tells the story from her point of view.
Rothemund concentrates on Sophie's character throughout the film: at the start, while in prison, during the long interrogations, at the trial, and her execution. He effectively "mines his sources in order to evoke strong feelings," writes Moeller.
Rothemund "admits the spectator in Sophie's most intimate space and being, employing toward this end mise-en-scene, shot selection, lighting and color combination."176 My subsequent reading of film sequences will show how this strategy results in a film in which resistance has a more general, global appeal. In comparison to Rothemund's perspective, Verhoeven focuses more on group dynamics, how Sophie, the youngest and only female member of the group establishes herself as a member of the group, by highlighting her initiative and resourcefulness within the gender roles appropriate for her time. Verhoeven provides a broad historical context, including visual variety, historical backdrop, and action as opposed to mainly dialogue.177 For example, his "film conveys:
1. parallel action, 2. simultaneity, and 3. historical truths augmented by the continuing droning and depressing war news."178 In a sequence that lasts less than two minutes,
Verhoeven "illustrates scope and integration of shots and at least three plot strands."179
These include a conference at Gestapo headquarters in Munich, Professor Huber and his wife in the study, and The White Rose students at the university, with the camera cutting several times between the scenes, from different angles, and everyone's different
176 Moeller, Hans-Bernhard. Colloquia Germanica 40.1 (2007): 19-35. 27. Print. 177 ---. 23. 178 ---. 23. 179 ---. 22. 62
reactions while listening to the news from Stalingrad on the radio.180 In Verhoeven’s film history unfolds as a multi-layered event, while Rothemund's film is almost devoid of context. He strives to create a story of heroism that rests on an individual set of characteristics, values, and morals which he exemplifies through iconic imagery, metaphors, and leitmotifs, all of which are designed to evoke emotions with a wide audience.
Visual-Verbal Duels
Rothemund presents Robert Mohr, Kriminalobersekretär, Gestapo-Leitstelle Munich, as a staunch Nazi supporter: "Nie wieder Besatzung auf deutschem Boden" ("Never again military occupation on German soil."). He refers to the occupation of the Ruhr district by
French troops after World War I when Germany was not able to produce industrial goods in lieu of reparation payments, which were outlined in the Treaty of Versailles.181 182
Within the context of the economic and political chaos in Germany resulting from World
War I, Mohr believes that the present law of the country protects society from that chaos.
Recognizing the arbitrary subjective nature of the judicial system, Sophie claims that the human conscience, which is not subject to any changes, is the basis for her actions; the decision regarding the worth of a human being remains with God, not man. That is why her faith in God, whose law is based on love,183 would not allow the inhumane treatment
180 Moeller, Hans-Bernhard. ---. 22, 23. 181 Freund, Michael. Deutsche Geschichte: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: Goldmann, 1981. 735-739. Print. 182 History Learning Site. "Treaty of Versailles." Web. 24 Jan. 2012.
of the Jews, euthanasia of "worthless" individuals, and tyranny of a nation.184 Rothemund presents Sophie Scholl’s faith and the conscience resulting from it as an emotional issue since her resistance, the film suggests, has its source in emotional compassion more than in intellectual prowess. It is her emotional vulnerability associated with gender stereotypes that Rothemund exploits in his film in order to shape the David-Goliath like relations between Sophie Scholl and Robert Mohr.
In the first interrogation sequence that almost ends with Sophie’s release,
Rothemund creates structure through mis-en-scene, colour, and light that take on symbolic function and create dramatic suspense. Some camera shots of the sitting and standing Robert Mohr are from below making the interrogator appear threatening to
Sophie who is seated in a chair. Mostly, Mohr and Sophie see each other face to face. The interrogation begins with Mohr and Sophie facing each other sitting at the desk.
Alternately their upper bodies are shown, their faces equally lit from an unseen light source. For a few seconds they seize each other up, suggesting that they are almost equal, but only until Mohr stands up, carefully stacking leaflets onto the confiscated suitcase.
The stacks of leaflets have approximately the same dimensions as the case, just a little smaller to make them fit perfectly into the case, indicating that this could link Hans and
Sophie to the crime. The background is dark as Mohr is still in the dark about Sophie's involvement with the leaflet distribution. When Mohr starts talking, the camera switches to a fixed angle and shows both Mohr and Sophie from the side, the large heavy dark desk divides them as if they are worlds apart, which they are as far as their dissimilar
184 Bühler, Philipp. In: bpb "Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage." Filmheft, Bonn (2005) 7. Print. 64
ideologies are concerned. Two large windows shed daylight on the scene for a short time;
Rothemund uses light symbolically as foreboding, indicating that both opponents will before long also shed light on their point of view. But the rest of the room remains dark.
Although they are worlds apart, in this first part of the interrogation Rothemund treats
Mohr and Sophie as equals. Light and shadow are equally distributed in relationship to the characters, and they are captured with similar camera angles. During the verbal battle with Mohr, Rothemund displays Sophie Scholl as superior to Mohr because of her intellectual-strategic agility as well as verbal abilities. In her ability to gain the trust of others and understand her own and others' emotions and motivations, she displays what psychologists call "emotional intelligence." Emotional intelligence is an ability found more often in women than in men.185 186 As "the result of an adaptive interaction between emotion and cognition,"187 188 Sophie Scholl is able to beat Mohr at his game, temporarily convincing him that she is innocent.
Yet Mohr's approach changes as he asks terse questions regarding the leaflet distribution at the university; he is blowing smoke in Sophie's direction, a stark contrast to offering her a cigarette at the outset. Sophie remains steadfast, "Er [Hans] ist so unpolitisch wie ich" ("He is as non-political as I am."). Unlike Verhoeven's detailed scene in which the Gauleiter argues that the women students should remain at home to bare children for the Führer, Rothemund simply alludes to the event when Mohr asks Sophie's
185 Lopez-Zafra, et al. "The Relationship between Tranformational Leadership and Emotional Intelligence from a Gendered Approach." The Psychological Record 62 (2012): 97-114. 97. Print. 186 Warwick, Janette, and Ted Nettelbeck. "Emotional intelligence is...?" Personality and Individual Differences 37 (2003): 1091-1100. Print. 187 Lopez-Zafra. ---. 100. 188 ---. 99. 65
opinion about it. Her reaction demonstrates that she strategically tries to phrase her answers outside the realm of politics: "Geschmacksfrage" ("A matter of taste."). She then claims that boisterous actions such as pushing the leaflets over the balustrade are part of her "nature." "Ich bestreite, auch nur das Geringste mit den Flugblättern zu tun zu haben, außer dem dummen Scherz" ("I dispute to have anything to do with the leaflets, except for the silly prank."). And, "Ich bin doch ganz offen zu Ihnen" ("I am completely open with you."). Sophie Scholl lies, of course, but Rothemund presents these lies as the emotionally intelligent actions of a young woman who faces a deadly regime that sees treason where the contemporary viewer sees innocence.
During one of the interrogation breaks, Sophie looks into the breaking daylight coming through the window as if there is a way out. And there is, temporarily. Mohr comes back with the good news that no traces of the leaflets were found in the suitcase.
He asks, "Erleichtert?" ("Relieved?"). Sophie Scholl answers: "Ich habe mir keine Sorgen gemacht" ("I was not worried."). Mohr dictates the report to the secretary. There is hope that Sophie and Hans Scholl may even go home to Ulm the same evening. Apparently
Rothemund instructed Julia Jentsch in the role of Sophie Scholl not to just play innocent but be innocent.189 190 Her lies to Mohr appear justified because her acts of resistance actually speak the truth.
The historic Mohr too initially believed Sophie Scholl. He writes that
Reichsstudentenführer Scheel, who interrogated Sophie as well, also considered both
189 Parteiakte im ehemaligen Archiv der NSDAP, Bundesarchiv "Berlin Document Center" (BA BDC); Bericht an Robert Scholl (vollständige Version), Institut für Zeitgeschichte in München (lfZ, Fa 215 Bd. 3) 3. Accessible through
Scholls to be innocent, and thus concluded "Macht der deutschen Studentenschaft keine
Unehre"191 ("Don't dishonour the German student body."). The film dramatizes the turn of events: a clerk drags Sophie to the Aufnahme (admitting) office. While the release form is being prepared, Sophie looks toward the office window obstructed by a brick wall, a foreboding suggesting that there is no way out. Just as the administrative clerk is processing the release papers, a shrill phone ring cuts into the scene that announces the dramatic turn of events. Rothemund intensifies the hope for Sophie's freedom against the audience’s better knowledge of her fate.
When the second set of interrogations resumes back in Mohr's office, no natural light comes from any window; Sophie Scholl is sealed into the interrogation room. Mohr switches the dim desk light on high and turns it directly into Sophie's face, subjecting her to his scrutinizing gaze while simultaneously blinding her. With each question about a briefcase, pistol, and stamps found in the room of Hans, Mohr speaks louder. Mohr's volume and tone escalate as Sophie Scholl denies with composure that the printed leaflet originates with Hans; she denies that she neither knows the handwriting of Christoph
Probst nor the draft, and she refuses to believe that Hans confessed. Again she intelligently matches every question with an appropriate answer according to her belief system. Only when she finds out that the fingerprints of Hans were found on the printing machine, her self-assured facial expression exhibits distress. Confronted with Hans’ confession and statement that attempts to exonerate her, she not just admits her involvement, but also emphasizes that she is proud of her actions. During a washroom
191 Parteiakte. ---. 3. 67
break, the audience is privileged to a gaze behind her composure. Through the washroom mirror we see her emotional distress while soft piano music accompanies her suppressed crying. By creating private scenes such as this one, Rothemund "admits the spectator in
Sophie's most intimate space and being."192
Back in Mohr's office, the intense light and camera are again on Sophie's face. As the interrogation draws to a conclusion, Mohr gets up and ostentatiously washes his hands, indicating that he cleanses himself of any guilt regarding this case, just like
Pontius Pilate washed his hands publicly, knowing that Jesus was innocent. Mohr opens the blinds and daylight bathes Sophie's face for one brief moment. Next, the flash lights bounce against bare walls for Sophie's mug shots. Throughout the scenes, Rothemund plays natural and artificial light off against each other. Natural light signifies the life that is being withdrawn from the young woman while artificial light serves to indicate her subjection to the false, artificial, and "unnatural" National Socialist law.
The interrogation scenes concur with the actual archival records. "Nachdem mir eröffnet wurde, dass mein Bruder Hans Scholl sich entschlossen hat, der Wahrheit die
Ehre zu geben [...], will auch ich nicht länger an mich halten, all das, was ich von dieser
Sache weiß, zum Protokoll zu geben"193 ("Once I was informed that my brother Hans
Scholl had decided to speak the truth [...], I too will no longer conceal what I know about this matter and will make a statement.") (my translation). Sophie begins her confession with reasons for her actions: She is convinced that Germany has lost the war, that it is
192 Moeller, Hans-Bernhard. ---. 27. 193 Parteiakte. ---. 19. ZC 13267, Bd. 3. Web. 9 Dec. 2011.
pointless to sacrifice any life for this lost war, and that especially the victims of
Stalingrad motivated them to do something against the senseless shedding of blood.
Because Mohr believes that he does not have the main culprit, he tries to find a way to at least save Sophie's life. The historic Mohr writes in his report:
Ich versuchte mit letzter Beredsamkeit Fräulein Scholl zu einer Erklärung zu veranlassen, die letzten Endes darauf hinaus hätte laufen müssen, daß sie ideologisch mit ihrem Bruder nicht konform war, sich vielmehr auf ihren Bruder verlassen habe, daß das was sie getan habe richtig sei, ohne sich selbst über die Tragweite der Handlungsweise Gedanken zu machen194 (I've tried to convince Miss Scholl to declare that her ideology is incongruent with that of her brother, but that she trusted her brother and thought acting correctly without realizing the extent of the implications of such actions.) (my translation).
In a letter from 1951 to Robert Scholl, the father of the Scholl siblings, the historic Mohr confirms in his report, "Sophie Scholl erkannte sofort, worauf ich hinauswollte, lehnte es jedoch entschieden ab, sich zu einer solchen oder ähnlichen Erklärung bereitzufinden"195
("Sophie Scholl recognized right away what I had in mind, but she refused to accept any such offer."). Rothemund stages this historical encounter using protocols and letters.
Rothemund uses play between light and shadow to draw attention to Sophie
Scholl's emotions and to the struggle between good and evil. In connection with this,
Rothemund also emphasizes windows as a leitmotif throughout the film. In the interrogation scenes, the sunny window symbolizes hope, a gateway to freedom when
Sophie Scholl is considered innocent, for example. The blocked window takes away that hope and foreshadows confinement, and the darkened window is an image of imminent conviction toward the end of this sequence, all related to Sophie Scholl. The next
194 Parteiakte. ---. (lfZ, Fa 215 Bd. 3).
significant window will be that of Sophie's cell. Sophie Scholl’s gender in connection with the psychological-emotional thrust of the film sentimentalizes the female heroine of the film, thereby charging her action and sacrifice with meaning beyond the German political context.
Constricting Spaces
While the first part of the film is built around the interrogation based on the protocols found after 1990, the following part of the film moves through a number of increasingly tightening and constricting spaces. Rothemund features Sophie Scholl in her prison cell, where she befriends the Communist Else Gebel, in front of the People’s court where she confronts the infamous blood judge, Roland Freisler, in the final meeting of the four convicted resisters, and finally the execution chamber.
The historic Else Gebel was assigned to share Sophie's cell to "keep an eye" on her and prevent her from committing suicide. Gebel was a political prisoner responsible to register female prisoners, secure their personal belongings, and perform body searches because the Gestapo does not hire female civil servants for prisons that handle Gestapo cases. For performing messenger services between a Communist organisation in Berlin and Munich, Else Gebel was sentenced to a prison term of over one year. In a letter to the parents of the Scholl siblings in 1945, Gebel recounts the encounter with Sophie Scholl in
February of 1943, which has moved her so deeply that she addresses the letter directly to
Sophie Scholl: "...they are completely mistaken. Such nice girl with her childlike openness would never participate in such dangerous undertaking. [...] All those endless interrogations don't change you; you remain peaceful and relaxed. Your unwavering faith
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gives you strength to sacrifice yourself for others. [...] you are dismayed when I mention
Christl's [Christoph's] name. For the first time, I see you stunned"196 (my translation).
Rothemund crafts a scene based on the letter by Gebel. As both women are reclined on their beds, Sophie gazes out the window of her prison cell at the blue sky while the bars of the window cast symmetrical shadows over the prison cell and its inmates. "Such a beautiful day, and I have to part. But how many have to die on the battlefields. Should my brother be sentenced to death, then I should not receive a milder sentence. I am as guilty as he."197 In this scene as in other ones where we observe Sophie
Scholl praying, Rothemund creates the illusion that we as the audience are privy to
Sophie Scholl’s private thoughts and concerns. The deeper we are allowed to enter into her identity, find out for instance about her affection for Fritz Hartnagel and her love for nature, the more we reject the machinery of the Nazi state. Sophie Scholl’s gender identity plays a major part in marking that injustice.
The People's Court convened in the Palace of Justice in Munich already on
February 22, 1943. Judge Roland Freisler, its president, and his entourage made a special trip from Berlin to attend to crucial business in Munich. In the courtroom, Freisler would not allow any expression of opinion by whom he considered insolent traitors. Goebbels,
Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, used show trials as propaganda tools. Therefore, the atmosphere in the courtroom and Freisler's style and diction were already known to the general public, at least since 1944, from the filming of the trial of the men of the 20th of
196 Gebel, Else. "So ein herrlicher Tag, und ich muss gehen: Else Gebel 1945 in einem Brief an die Eltern der Geschwister Scholl." Web. 9 Dec. 2011.
July uprising. Freisler made no exception for the group members of The White Rose; his harsh treatment of these defendants seemed even intensified since they were young people who utilized peaceful means for resistance. The film footage of this trial was not publicized for fear that the population of Germany might sympathize with the young executed defendants, and maybe this fear was exacerbated because one of the accused was the 22-year old Sophie Scholl.
Rothemund, in his rendering of the historic events, keeps the courtroom in brown and beige with the addition of more symbolic red than in the interrogation scenes. The visual focus on red foreshadows death and the spilling of blood. While the historic
Freisler as the president of the court did wear a red robe, Rothemund plays off the robe of the Blutrichter who sentences thousands to death against the large red swastika flags covering the front and back walls, and Sophie's red cardigan revealing her white blouse underneath suggests that innocent blood will be spilled.198 The imbalance of power, counteracted with the display of courage, is underscored with the camerawork in both films. In The White Rose, the camera frequently shoots Freisler from below, emphasizing his overpowering position. Shadows hide his face as truth does not hide in darkness.
People's eyes in the actual proceedings may have "hung" on Freisler's lips similar to the camera's fixation on his mouth under Verhoeven's direction, emphasizing the lie disguised by powerful words. In The Final Days Rothemund refrains from demonizing him further and instead focuses on Freisler’s face, stature, gestures and voice through
198 In a letter to Hitler, Freisler states, "Der Volksgerichtshof wird sich stets bemühen, so zu urteilen, wie er glaubt, daß Sie, mein Führer, den Fall selbst beurteilen würden. Source: Ostendorf, Heribert. "Roland Freisler - Mörder im Dienste Hitlers." Zeitschrift für Rechtspolitik 5 (1994): 169. In: bpb. 98. 72
which he undermines his own authority. Both films are successful in crafting an atmosphere of suspense in the court room, relying on actual footage to help recreate the appearance and unreasonable, extreme diction of the judge Roland Freisler.199 The court scene is claustrophobic. The room is packed with supporting military personnel, the parents Scholl are prevented from entering, and the accused appear small compared to the overtowering judge. The mis-en-scene renders the accused insignificant. When Hans and
Christoph try to explain their actions, Rothemund shows how the judge cuts them off sharply, rendering the two young men almost verbally impotent. It is Sophie Scholl who succeeds in challenging the judge and delivering her infamous verdict to him: "Bald werden Sie hier stehen, wo wir jetzt stehen" ("Soon you will be standing where we are standing."). The camera captures and exposes her full face with a frontal shot in daylight and once again elates her heroic resistance to her gender identity that is shown throughout the film to be resting in strong emotions.
Prior to the execution, Rothemund has Sophie Scholl looking again out the cell window into the sunny sky, praying. When she asks the visiting minister for a blessing, the scene turns into a still image that has the quality of a religious painting. Into the tiny barren cell, the sun streams through the window from the left of the frame directly onto
Sophie while the prison pastor faces her from the other end of the table, also from the left. It appears as if the pastor mediates the blessing symbolized by the light coming directly from above, illuminating her face, permeating her life, and breaking through the confines of the cell. Just as the pastor is concluding his devotion with "nobody has
199 Bühler. ---. 10, 11. 73
greater love than those who give their lives for their friends," the prison door opens for the execution to begin.
The condemned meet in an even smaller room than their prison cells. Sophie lights one last cigarette, which she received from the female prison guard, and passes it on to Hans Scholl and then Christoph Probst. Rothemund has them smoke in silence.
Sophie Scholl initiates an embrace that includes all three. Initially, she is positioned in the middle of the screen, between the men, with her back to the camera. Then the shot reverses to focus on Sophie's face wedged between the men's chests. Rothemund thus places Sophie in the center of the group a position that makes her both the nurturer and the protected. Her last words are: "The sun is still shining." Verhoeven's version of this scene is shorter and contains less interaction than Rothemund's. The prisoners also smoke in silence. Sophie Scholl, who is shown from the back between the two men, turns her head and her close-up face almost fills the frame. In the last scene before the execution, both filmmakers position Sophie Scholl in the center of the frame. Verhoeven’s scene is silent, but Rothemund adds emotional elements all linked to Sophie Scholl’s initiative.
She also speaks the final sentence said between them. Rothemund’s focus on Sophie
Scholl links gender and emotion and turns them into visual and verbal weapons through which the heroine confronts Nazi tyranny.
Verhoeven brings his film to a quicker conclusion than Rothemund. After the last meeting, the female prison guard folds in the collar of Sophie's navy sweater in preparation for the guillotine. The executioners take Sophie straight away to perform their duty in the shadowy room with the bare walls. After showing in one last shot what
Sophie Scholl sees, already in position on the guillotine, the screen turns black.
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Statements regarding the position of the German Supreme Court follow to indicate that, at the time in 1984, no decision has been made concerning the legitimacy of the
Volksgerichtshof’s verdicts. Throughout his film, Rothemund alternates light and darkness, and in the execution scene this contrast is especially stark. Sophie's face is lit up in a dark room on the way to the execution. The execution chamber is painted white, the executioners are dressed in black suits complete with top hat, but Sophie's face is alight against the black guillotine. We see Sophie's face for a last time; the screen turns black, and we hear the guillotine drop. Both, Verhoeven and Rothemund, show Sophie
Scholl's face as the last frame. Rothemund, however, draws out the execution scene and adds effects to convey the emotional atmosphere instead of documenting history the way that Verhoeven attempts to do. In contrast to Verhoeven's statements about the legal status of The White Rose members, Rothemund concludes with original photos of Sophie
Scholl accompanied by the melancholic song Voiceless.200 The slide show evidences a life barely begun, yet lived to the fullest with friends, family, at outings, or at the seaside, and concludes the sentimentalization of the female heroine against the backdrop of Nazi injustice.
To conclude, Rothemund’s film does not explore the way the German past reverberates in the present. He also does not explore German complicity with Nazi policies and the conclusions present-day German should draw from that history. Against the backdrop of the Third Reich he creates a story of international appeal and applicability as he pits a young woman against a murderous state. The lessons from the
200 Written and performed by Christoph G. Schubert. 75
past for Rothemund consist in the courage to resist and the encouragement that resisters such as Sophie Scholl can transmit to other present-day situations. Gender serves
Rothemund to intensify the emotional appeal as part of his plea for civil courage, and he employs symbolic means such as light and shadow, colours, and music to intensify the emotional appeal of resistance.
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CONCLUSION
The Chinese dissident poet and author, Liao Yiwu, received the 32nd annual Geschwister
Scholl prize at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in November 2011 for his book For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Witness Account from Chinese Prisons. For a
Song and a Hundred Songs captures the four brutal years Liao Yiwu spent in jail for writing the incendiary poem "Massacre." Through the power and beauty of his texts, he reveals the bleak reality of crowded Chinese prisons—the harassment from guards and fellow prisoners, the torture, the conflicts among human beings in close confinement, and the boredom of everyday life. Yet Liao also uncovers the humanity among the condemned; he writes of how the prisoners listen with rapt attention to each other’s stories of criminal endeavors gone wrong and of how one night, ravenous with hunger, they dream up an "imaginary feast," with each inmate trying to one-up the next by describing a more elaborate dish. Yiwu now lives in Germany and his work has been received in the context of the high value that Germans today place on resistance— precisely because their own history of tragically futile resistance against Hitler. The
Geschwister Scholl prize epitomizes contemporary German public memory discourse: it recognizes literary works that stimulate geistige Unabhängigkeit,201 raise responsible consciousness, and promote freedom, and moral, intellectual, and aesthetic courage (my translation).202 Michael Verhoeven and Marc Rothemund, two filmmakers of different generations and with different cultural-political agendas, contributed with their respective
201 Spiritual, moral, and intellectual independence. 202 Geschwister Scholl Preis. Web. 5 July 2012.
films to even further cementing and anchoring the memory of the Scholl siblings in general, and of Sophie Scholl in particular, within contemporary public discourse.
Verhoeven's The White Rose (1982), on the one hand, is a political documentary drama, which focuses on Sophie Scholl, the youngest and only female member of The
White Rose in order to convince the German government of the 1980s to finally declare the Nazi court rulings illegal that had convicted the Scholls as traitors. Verhoeven employs Sophie Scholl’s gender to create an emotional attachment to her character within the audience that contributes an emotional quality to the political arguments he puts forward as part of a heated debate that was central to German society in the 1980s.
Rothemund's feature film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005), on the other hand, has a more timeless appeal and can be appreciated by a wider variety of people outside the
German context. He de-historicizes the plot to relate it more to international audiences who may know little about the The White Rose or German resistance to the Nazi regime.
To accomplish this timelessness and international reception, Rothemund represents
Sophie Scholl as a heroine whose courage can be imagined to challenge a wide range of terror regimes or repression—not just that of the Third Reich.
Both, Verhoeven’s and Rothemund’s films, have been didacticized to be used in
German schools by the "Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung," the Federal Office for
Political Education, whose mandate it is to support the development of a pluralistic democratic German society in light of the FRG’s special responsibility precisely because
78
of Germany’s history of atrocity.203 Some of the educational goals include: 1) Realize that not only personalities in high places could resist. 2) Get acquainted with the reasons for the apparent failure of the resistance group. 3) Reflect and comment on the differences between resistance in a dictatorship and resistance in a democratic society. 4)
Discuss ethical aspects of resistance against an unjust regime. 5) Reflect, based on The
White Rose example, on civil courage in historical context. 6) Realize that civil courage is a necessary element in a democratic society and that failure of personal involvement can threaten freedom and democracy. 7) Learn about the Flugblatt (leaflet) and other information media for the propagation of a given cause. 204 The fact that the German government and its educational organizations consider both films today suitable tools to educate a new generation of German students about the German past, speaks not only to the specific artistic and political views that both filmmakers brought to their topics, but also to the ways in which resistance in general is being discussed today on the world stage.
One could argue that presently there has been given increased attention world- wide to those who dare to resist by putting down their own lives and safety at risk for ideals of morality, truth, integrity, and justice, although they do not always achieve the desired end, and if they do, the costs can be enormous as recent developments especially in the Middle East have shown. Famous German author and journalist Wibke Bruhns
203 Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung. Filmhefte. Web. n.d.
sums up the dilemma of The White Rose resistance in a way that also replies to the human costs of resistance in general:
Warum so spät? Es war nicht spät. Es war erfolglos.205
Why so late? It was not late. It was unsuccessful.
Wibke Bruhns
205 Bruhns, Wibke. Meines Vaters Land: Geschichte einer deutschen Familie. Berlin: Ullstein, 2009. 357. Print. 80
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