Reverse Movie Tourism: Munich, The White Rose and Sophie Scholl

  I’ve taken a long time to get to this post, but for a very good reason as the following pertains to both history and “reverse movie tourism.” Read on. 

We drove to Munich on Friday morning, knowing we’d spend Shabbat in town near a famous Glockenspiel and that Sunday we would go to Dachau. However, we weren’t sure much else about Saturday itself. During the drive I googled for significant history about Munich and found the name Sophie Scholl.

I certainly knew that name. When I was in my high school German class decades ago, Herr Curtis had told us about Die Weisse Rose, – The White Rose – a resistance group in Germany, and how inspired he had been to take classes in the University of Munich in the very building where its members had been enrolled. He showed us a film about them which I only vaguely remembered.

Die Weisse Rose was a relatively small group. They printed and distributed fliers that spoke out against the Nazis and accused Hitler of sending German youth to their deaths to fight a failing war. They printed their leaflets in a basement in Munich and distributed to a network of other sympathizers around the country. (I’m still about fuzzy on how they got these contacts, but these leaflets were distributed by the thousand.) Sophie Scholl was the most famous of the members. She was the younger sister of Hans Scholl and got involved in the group some time after they were in action. She was bright, determined and incredibly brave.

Hans and Sophie were the first to be arrested, soon to be followed by their friend Christoph Probst. Sophie’s interrogator, Robert Mohr, originally thought Sophie was innocent. Once she confessed he still tried to give her a way out by saying she was just influenced by her brother. She refused this option, saying she was proud of what she’d done and asserting that she had done the duty of every good German citizen. Within days, Sophie and Hans Scholl, along with Christoph Probst, were convicted of high treason and sentenced to death. Rather than hanging them and risking their being seen as political martyrs, the court had them quickly and quietly executed by guillotine. 

The reason I describe this post as one of reverse tourism, is that instead of seeing a movie and then seeking a location, I was reminded of the movie after seeing the location and then went back to research more. Die Weisse Rose is the film I saw in high school. It’s hard to locate and is honestly a bit tedious. It tells the story of The White Rose starting from around the time Sophie realizes what her brother has been doing, and joins them. The last 10 minutes or so cover their arrest and execution. The more recent, excellent, and very well-researched film Sophie Scholl takes place starting the day before their arrest and goes into great detail through the process of interrogation and trial. Both movies depict the arrest as it took place in Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. This building has a large and open atrium. On February 18, 1943, the Scholls ran through this atrium placing piles of leaflets while classes were in session. As they were about to leave they took the final pile up to the top floor and there, spontaneously, Sophie took the last pile and flung it over the wall to the floor below. It was at this moment they were spotted by a custodian and arrested. This image of the fliers raining down has been with me since my first viewing of Die Weisse Rose years ago. 

This atrium was the site we visited. Being a university, it contains the energies of possibility and idealism, the feeling that the young people at this stage in their lives really can have an impact on the world. The atrium itself is large and open with a tendency to echo small sounds. These qualities combined with the history to carry a quiet awe.

There is a small memorial and downstairs m a museum that displays some of the leaflets, their typewriter and other artifacts. Outside the building is a fountain and another memorial, here depicted artistically as images of the leaflets seem to be glued to the ground at our feet.

I’ve been raised on plenty of Holocaust stories, stories of survival against all odds, of victims of the Nazis. This story is different. It’s the story of patriotic citizens who could have kept their heads down but who instead followed their faith and convictions. They never lost track of what was right, despite how the judge shouted at them and despite what it cost them. It’s a story that makes me see the Nazi regime more clearly – less as an army of strength and more as a dangerous but also desperate brainwash machine that couldn’t handle being challenged by basic reason from a handful of students.

It’s one thing for me to write now about the feelings I have about this history. It’s another entirely to hear it from a youtube video I found of Hitler’s personal secretary. “...it never crossed my mind that I should come to terms with my past….but one day… I went past the memorial plaque they have put up to Sophie Scholl on the Franz-Joseph Strasse and I saw that she was born in the same year as me, and that the same year I went to work for Hitler she was executed and at that moment I actually felt that being young is no excuse.”