Libertas Schulze-Boysen

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Libertas Schulze-Boysen
Libertas Schulze-Boysen low resolution.png
Schulze-Boysen sitting at her desk at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Born
Libertas Viktoria Haas-Heye

(1913-11-20)20 November 1913
Died22 December 1942(1942-12-22) (aged 29)
NationalityFrench
CitizenshipFrench
OccupationPress officer
MovementMember of the Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle")
Spouse(s)Harro Schulze-Boysen

Libertas "Libs" Schulze-Boysen, born Libertas Viktoria Haas-Heye (20 November 1913 in Paris – 22 December 1942 in Berlin-Plötzensee) was a German aristocrat and resistance fighter who was a member of the Berlin-based pro-soviet resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr, during the Third Reich.

Early years[]

Bust of Libertas at Castle Liebenberg

Libertas Schulze-Boysen was the youngest of three children. Her father was Heidelberg born, couturier Otto Ludwig Haas-Heye and her mother was noted pianist Viktoria Ada Astrid Agnes Gräfin zu Eulenburg.[1] Libertas' parents had married in  [de] on 12 May 1909 and had lived for a time in London and Paris. Her siblings were Countess Ottora Maria Douglas-Reimer and older brother Johannes Haas-Heye.[1]

Her mother was known as "Thora" and came from an old Prussian noble family. She was the youngest of eight children of the Prussian diplomat and composer Prince Philipp zu Eulenburg and Swedish former Countess Augusta, Princess of Eulenburg. Philipp zu Eulenburg was a close friend of Kaiser Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig and his Swedish wife, Augusta Gräfin Sandels (1853–1941). Eulenburg and William I were allegedly lovers.[2] The allegation were published as a series of articles by Berlin journalist in the Berlin newspapers between 1907 and 1909, that was known as the Eulenburg affair.[2] In 1921, when Libertas was eight years old, her parents divorced, unusual at the time and her grandfather died.[3] Libertas spent part of her childhood at Eulenburg's country estate, , near Berlin [4] taught initially by a governess.[1] From 1922, she attended a school in Berlin and lived with her father, who headed the fashion department of the Kunstgewerbemuseum. Later a co-worker of her father, the artist supervised her, when she spent a summer in Switzerland in 1924, learning to draw. Between 1926 and 1932 Schulze-Boysen was sent to be educated at boarding schools in Paris, London and Switzerland.[1]

In 1932, Schulze-Boysen completed her Abitur at a girls' finishing school in Zurich,[5] followed by a 9-month stay in Ireland and the United Kingdom.[6] After returning in January 1933, Schulze-Boysen attended a Nazi torchlight procession that marches past the Reich Chancellery.[5] Though not totally understanding of the new and powerful German Youth Movement,[7] she was impressed enough with them to join the Nazi Party with member number 1 551 344, in March 1933, [8] and at the same time the League of German Girls (German:Bund Deutscher Mädel).[9]

As a press officer[]

In the same year, Schulze-Boysen moved to Berlin after being hired in May 1933 by the motion picture company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Berlin branch office as a press officer, informing the media about new cinematic releases.[10][11] Initially Libertas worked on press copy for the American films Sons of the Desert and Dancing Lady, but the film studio, that sacked all its Jewish staff in 1933[10] started to feel the effects of Nazi censorship. A screenplay by Herman Mankiewicz called The Mad Dog of Europe that was meant to illuminate the treatment of Jews in Germany was dropped.[12]

Marriage[]

Liebenberg castle

In April 1934,[13] Libertas met Harro Schulze-Boysen, while they were both sailing on the Wannsee.[14] In October 1934, the couple moved in together, in an apartment in Hohenzollerndamm, in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. Starting in July 1935, Schulze-Boysen worked on Harro's magazine Wille zum Reich (Will to empire) as an editor and providing translations. The magazine dealt with cultural policy issues but also with the goal of undermining the Nazi movement with its own themes.[13] In August 1935, Harro was given permission to attend a series of lectures on the League of Nations in Geneva and Libertas accompanied him.[13] On the way home, the couple stopped at the Château de Muzot to visit the last home of the Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke as well visit his tomb.[13] They lived together for a year, before getting married on 26 July 1936.[15] The wedding took place in the chapel of Liebenberg Castle under a painting of Guido Reni,[14] with Hermann Göring giving away the bride.[16] For their honeymoon, the couple visited Switzerland, where they meet the Swedish relatives of Libertas.[13]

Influenced by the views of her husband, who was hostile to the Nazis, Schulze-Boysen left the Nazi Party within the year.[17] She held evening discussions at her house, where she sought to influence her guests on behalf of Schulze-Boysen. She was fully aware of his activities in the resistance and supported the group by taking part in writing pamphlets, acting as a courier and helping to establish social contacts.[18]

Writer and journalist[]

On the 12 January 1938, Libs met playwright Günther Weisenborn.[19] As their relationship blossomed, Libertas and Weisenborn drew closer together as artists, resulting in a them both collaborating in writing a play Die guten Feinde (The Good Enemies).[19] about the German physician Robert Koch.[20] The plays premiered was to be held at the theatre in Bremen in 1 March 1939.[21] At the same time, Libs had signed a contract with Deutschlandsender for a production of a radio play that was broadcast on 3 March 1939.[21]

In April 1939, the couple moved into their new apartment at Altenburger Allee 19[21] in Charlottenburg, now the Westend.

From July 1940 to 13 November 1941, Libertas wrote film reviews for the culture section of the National-Zeitung.[22] The task was difficult as she could not write freely or criticize, as the paper was under the control of Joseph Goebbels' propaganda ministry and the reviews had to include written text from the Zeitschriften-Dienst, that also described what could and could not be written about.[22] Libs decided to cooperate in order to express herself and maintain influence.[23]

For films she liked, she would often write extravagantly, or in the form of a love letter. In other films that didn't find favour, she would write in a strict and formal manner.[23] Originally a temporary position, it became permanent in the summer of 1941, but became unsettled and decided to leave to try and achieve a film career.[24] Her last article Resurrection the mask in art dance introduced the dancer Oda Schottmüller.[25] and he successor as film critic was Adam Kuckhoff.[25] Both were her and Harro's friends and both resisted the Nazis.[25]

Resistance[]

The Schulze-Boysen group in Germany

At the end of 1936, Libs and Walter Küchenmeister, on the advice of Elisabeth Schumacher, sought out the physician Elfriede Paul.[26]

In April 1939, Soviet intelligence officer of the GRU Anatoly Gurevich was ordered to travel from Brussels to Berlin to contact Harro Schulze-Boysen.[27] He was hoping to revive Schulze-Boysen as an intelligence source and arrange communication with him via a courier service. Gurevich was given the telephone number of Schulze-Boysen and ordered to phone him and arrange a meeting somewhere in the city. He was not to meet him at his home, however.[27] When Gurevich phoned, Libs answered the phone.[27] They met on the platform of an underground station, later moving to a cafe where Harro joined them.[27]

The Kuckhoffs had known the Schulz-Boysens since 1938, having met them at a dinner party hosted by film producer Herbert Engelsing and his wife Ingeborg Engelsing, a close friend of Libertas and started to engage them socially in late 1939 or early 1940 by bringing Mildred and Libertas together while on holiday in Saxony.[28]

In August 1940, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda created the (German Documentary Film Institute)[29] whose purpose was to organise the production of ten to twenty minute long films that were to be shown in German film theatres, before the start of the main film, for the purpose of propaganda[30] Libertas applied for a position in the department of Kunst, deutsches Land und Volk, Völker und Länder (Art, German Land and People, Peoples and Countries) and was appointed on 1 November 1941.[24] In the position she acted as a censor, reviewing films to determine if they adhered to Nazi Party ideology.[30] Those that didn't she would reject; filmakers who she found to be trying to innovative were passed.[30] On her first day at work, she found her desk piled high with envelopes filled with photographs containing images of the work of the Sonderbehandlungen task forces.[31] For a long while Schulze-Boysen didn't know how to react to the material as it was so shocking[32] but in collaboration with her assistant , decided to start gathering pictorial evidence of Nazi war crimes, in anticipation of using them after the war too show the extent of the genocide.[32] However, the number of pictures in envelopes continued to increase as more and more were delivered.[33] Libs decided to answer some of the letters she receives, so she can collect more details for after the war.[33] In one photograph she archives contains an image of a little girl next to her older brother, mother and a baby. All of them are to be shot.[34] In January 1942, she wrote to her mother-in-law Marie Louise, where she described the work, which she completes at home, that makes her deeply unhappy and melancholic.[34]

In the autumn of 1941, Libs met Cato Bontjes van Beek[35] an ardent anti-Nazi,[36] while at a fair in Leipzig.[37] Van Beek begins to collaborate with Libs in their resistance to the Nazi, by helping her write up the Nazi crimes in her archive.[36]

On the 29 October 1941, Libs received a phone call from the Soviet intelligence officer, Anatoly Gurevich and put him in contact with her husband.[38]

By 1942, the unrelenting stress of the resistance work began to tell. In the spring of 1942, Libs confided in Günther Weisenborn that for five years she had worked to resist the Nazis on behalf of Harro, but she found that she could not face the fear any longer.[39] She yearned simply to live, in love and peace.[39]

Discovery[]

The discovery of the illegal radio transmissions by Soviet agent Johann Wenzel by the German radio counterintelligence organization Funkabwehr and his capture by the Gestapo on 29–30 June 1942 eventually revealed the members of the group[40] and led to the arrest of the Harnacks.[41] Wenzel decided to cooperate after he was tortured. His exposure of the radio codes enabled Referat 12, the cipher bureaux of the Funkabwehr, to decipher Red Orchestra message traffic. The unit had been tracking Red Orchestra radio transmissions since June 1941 and found Wenzels house in Brussels was found to contain a large number of coded messages.[42] When Wilhelm Vauck, principal cryptographer of the Funkabwehr, the radio counterintelligence department of the Abwehr[43] received the ciphers from Wenzel, he was able to decipher some of the older messages.[43] On 15 July 1942, Vauck managed to decrypt a message dated 10 October 1941[43] that gave the locations of the Kuckhoff's and the Schulze-Boysen's apartments.[44]

Arrest[]

Libs and Harro. The picture was taken in 1935

On 31 August 1942, Harro Schulze-Boysen was arrested in his office in the Ministry of Aviation. Libertas had received a puzzling phone call from his office several days before.[45] She was also warned by the women who delivered her mail that the Gestapo were monitoring it.[46] Libertas's assistant radio author also noticed that Adam Kuckhoff had gone missing while working in Prague.[45] On the 7 September 1942, the Harnacks were arrested while on holiday.[44]

Libertas suspected that Schulze-Boysen was arrested and contacted the Engelsings. Herbert Engelsing tried to contact Kuckhoff without result.[47] Libertas and Spoerl both started to panic and frantically tried to warn others.[46] They destroyed the darkroom at the Kulurefilm center and Libertas destroyed her meticulously collected archive. At home, she packed a suitcase with all Harro Schulze-Boysens papers and then tried to fabricate evidence of loyalty to the Nazi state by writing fake letters.[47] She sent the suitcase to Günther Weisenborn in the vain hope that it could be hidden, and he tried to contact Harro Schulze-Boysen in vain.[47]

On the 8 September, while on a train to visit friends in the Mosel Valley, Libertas was arrested.[48] She was taken to the basement cells (German:Hausgefängnis) in the most dreaded address in all of German-occupied Europe, Reich Security Main Office headquarters at 8 Prinze-Albert strasse (Prince Albert street) containing department AMT IV, the Gestapo and put into protective custody (Schutzhäftlinge) by them.[49]

In prison, Libertas met Gertrude Breiter,[50] the secretary for Libertas' interrogator, Kommissar Alfred Göpfert. Libertas believed that Breiter was hostile to her superiors, seeing her more as a friend than an agent provocateur[50] Breiter told Libertas that Göpfert didn't have any serious evidence against her and due to her family connections with Hermann Göring, her life would be safe.[51] Libertas decided to confide in Breiter and talked with her more than a dozen times.[51] In the course of their furtive conversations, Libertas told Breiter what she knew of the other prisoners, asked Breiter to deliver letters and asked for additional favour's in the form of a typewriter, to write some poetry.[52] In the three months Libertas was in prison, she wrote a number of remarkable letters and poems to her mother.[53]

When the Gestapo informed her of Breiter betrayal, Libertas was overwhelmed with remorse, stating in a letter to her mother, "I had to drink the bitter cup for now I learn that the person whom I had given my complete trust Gertrude Breiter had betrayed me."[50] Her mother believed that Libertas had betrayed a number of the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group.[50] However, in an unpublished interview with David Dallin after the war, Manfred Roeder, the advocate who prosecuted the Schulze-Boysens in the Reichskriegsgericht, stated that Libertas never betrayed anybody.[54] Roeder credited the Funkspiel operation the Abwehr ran against the Red Orchestra radio operators for providing the necessary clues to identify the resistance members.[54]

On 15 November 1942, Gurevich was brought back to Berlin where he was asked by the Gestapo on 22 November 1942 to identify the name of a woman in a picture. He identified her immediately as Libertas Schulze-Boysen. This provided definitive proof to the investigators that she was actively involved in the work of her husband.[55]

By the end of November 1942, a 90-page report was written by Horst Kopkow known as the Bolshevist Hoch Landesverrats that summarised the activities of the group and it was passed to senior members of the Nazi state for review.[56] With the production of the report, the Gestapo considered the initial phase of the investigation successful.[56]

Trial[]

She and her husband were brought before trial in the Reichskriegsgericht ("Reich Court Martial"). She was charged with "preparation" to commit high treason, helping the enemy and espionage. Her husband was charged with preparation to commit high treason, wartime treason, military sabotage and espionage.[57] The trial ended on 19 December 1942 with death sentences for both her husband and her. Libertas Schulze-Boysen and her husband were executed on 22 December 1942 at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.[4][58][59]

Honours[]

Stolperstein for the Schulze-Boysens in the castle courtyard of
Memorial plaque for Libertas Schulze-Boysen and Harro Schulze-Boysen at Haus Altenburger Allee 19 in Westend Berlin
  • The German writer  [de] dedicated his 1950 novel Memoiren eines mittelmässigen Schülers (Memoirs of a Mediocre Student) to Libertas Schulze-Boysen.[60]
  • In the Berlin borough of Lichtenberg in 1972, a street was named after the Schulze-Boysens.[59]
  • The Libertas Chapel[61] in Liebenberg Castle, where she married her husband Harro, is dedicated to her. Since 2004, a special exhibition by the Memorial to the German Resistance on the life of Libertas and the joint resistance within the Red Orchestra against National Socialism has been on display here – documented with photographs and extensive writings.[62]
  • In 2017, two Stolperstein (stumbling stones) each for Libs and her husband Harro were laid in front of the steps of the entrance to the Liebenberg castle.[63][64]

See also[]

Literature[]

  • Aurich, Rolf (2008). Jacobsen, Wolfgang (ed.). Libertas Schulze-Boysen : Filmpublizistin [Libertas Schulze-Boysen: film publicist]. Film & Schrift, Bd. 7. Munich: Edition text + kritik. ISBN 978-3-88377-925-6. OCLC 237239951.
  • Boysen, Elsa (1992). Harro Schulze-Boysen : das Bild eines Freiheitskämpfers [Harro Schulze-Boysen : the image of a freedom fighter] (in German) (3rd ed.). Koblenz: Fölbach. ISBN 3-923532-17-2. OCLC 75288953.
  • Coppi, Hans (1995). Harro Schulze-Boysen, Wege in den Widerstand : eine biographische Studie [Harro Schulze-Boysen, Paths to Resistance: a biographical study] (in German) (2., durchges. Aufl ed.). Koblenz: D. Fölbach. ISBN 3-923532-28-8. OCLC 243801569.
  • Hürter, Johannes (2007). Schulze-Boysen, Libertas (in German). Neue Deutsche Biographie 23. pp. 730–731.
  • Kettelhake, Silke (2008). 'Erzähl allen, allen von mir!' – Das schöne kurze Leben der Libertas Schulze-Boysen 1913–1942 (Tell everyone, everyone about me!' – The beautiful, short life of Libertas Schulze-Boysen, 1913–1942) Publisher: Droemer Verlag ISBN 978-3-426-27437-8 (in German)
  • Rosiejka, Gert (1986). Die Rote Kapelle : "Landesverrat" als antifaschist. Widerstand. Ergebnisse, 33. (in German) (1st ed.). Hamburg: Ergebnisse-Verl. ISBN 3-925622-16-0. OCLC 74741321.

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  53. ^ Libertas: "Our Death must be a Beacon" Archived 2010-06-12 at the Wayback Machine Notice regarding program about Libertas Schulze-Boysen sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute and Elysium. February 26, 2003. Retrieved April 13, 2010
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  57. ^ Nazi Feldurteil. Nazi "field" verdict sentencing the Schulze-Boysens and other members of the Red Orchestra. Retrieved April 13, 2010 (in German)
  58. ^ Official Nazi document of execution Retrieved April 13, 2010 (in German)
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  61. ^ "Kaiserjagden in Liebenberg". Deutschland Internet. Augusta Presse- und Verlags GmbH. Archived from the original on 24 Oct 2018. Retrieved 4 September 2020.
  62. ^ "Sonderausstellung – Libertas Schulze-Boysen und die Rote Kapelle". Deutsche Kreditbank AG. Archived from the original on 23 Oct 2018. Retrieved 4 September 2020.
  63. ^ Bergt, Heike (8 September 2017). "Pfarrer im Unruhestand" (in German). Märkische Verlags- und Druckgesellschaft mbH Potsdam. Märkische Allgemeine. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
  64. ^ "Stolpersteine in Liebenberg – Unsichtbares sichtbar machen". DKB STIFTUNG (in German). Retrieved 12 August 2021.

Bibliography[]

External links[]

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