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| Sophie Scholl's Fight with Nazi Germany |
| Alexander Krabbe was forever changed after watching a new German film about 'The White Rose Society' |
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Alexander Krabbe (internews)  |
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Published 2005-03-23 15:10 (KST) |
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[This article contains some movie spoilers. -- Ed.]
Exhausted by my never-ending studies in medical school, I decided to take some time off at the cinema with my fellow students, who felt the same need for something different than medical books. Our choice was the German movie "Sophie Scholl -- The Last Days." We thought this would be like a history lesson spent with good friends around.
That was last Tuesday, a day that burned my soul with everlasting marks. Director Marc Rothemund and screenplay-writer Fred Breinersdorfer, who have both received the prestigious German "Adolf Grimme" prize in 2003, have created a movie which dramatically outlines the abyss of inhumanity.
 | |  Julia Jensch and Fabian Hinrichs as the Scholl siblings | | | ©2005 Goldkind | | Background
Born in 1921, Sophie Scholl actively resisted the Nazi dictatorship using the power of the written word. A philosophy and biology student at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, she joined the students' resistance group called "Die Weiße Rose" (White Rose Society) against the will of her brother Hans Scholl, born in 1918, who was a key member of the organization.
The group wrote, printed and distributed leaflets criticizing the Nazi regime's policy, and demanded a rise against tyranny. While distributing the sixth and last leaflet in the warrens of the university on February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl were captured by the janitor and member of Adolf Hitler's Sturm Abteilung, an infamous Nazi paramilitary force.
Four days later, on February 22, the brother and sister and Christoph Probst, another member of the resistance group and father of three children, were sent to the guillotine.
 | | | Julia Jentsch as Sophie Scholl during the interrogation | | | ©2005 GoldKind | | The accusations of the so-called "Volksgerichtshof" (People's Court) for political crimes based on the alleged disintegration of military fighting forces and for alleged political crimes and other baseless pretexts. During his tenure from 1942 to 1945, judge Roland Freisler, head chief of the court's first senate, alone sentenced 2,600 people to death. When issuing sentences, he made comments such as "the head has to go," or "the nob has to be cut off." He also judged the planners of the unsuccessful coup of July 20, 1944.
The execution of the students was indicative of the fear of the Nazi regime after the surrender of the German forces in the Russian city of Stalingrad -- a major turning point in World War II -- on February 2, 1943. From that point on, a growing number of people doubted Hitler, the self-named "Führer", and the Nazi elite as the military masterminds they claimed to be.
Today, the members of the White Rose Society, especially Hans and Sophie Scholl, are honored as national heroes. Many schools and streets, and the institute for political science at the University of Munich, are named after the siblings.
The Movie
 |  | | | | | | ©2005 GoldKind | "Sophie Scholl" stands among a separate line of films, focusing on the darkest years in German history as their central theme. The last days of Adolf Hitler in the controversial movie "Der Untergang" (The Downfall), the cruel fate of concientious religious men, detained and murdered in concentration camps in "Neun Tage" (Nine Days), and the seduction of the minds of young men in so-called "national political education schools" during the Nazi dictatorship ("Napola") had already gripped German cinema audiences in late 2004 and early 2005.
"Sophie Scholl," currently No. 6 in German cinema rankings, traces the last six days in the heroine's life, and has gained the attention of the entire country. It seems that as time passes since the end of World War II, and with the inevitable dying out of witnesses, the younger generations are focusing more on the theme than the one that experienced the war firsthand. Tragically, many of them preferred to push aside the memories.
| | | Sophie's Honor | | | |
 | | | Hans Scholl (left), Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst | |
Sophie Scholl, her eternal heritage and her earnest resistance were honored on February 22, 2003, by Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber at the famed Walhalla hall where since that day a bust of the heroine can be viewed. Before Scholl, only four women were honored this way: Maria Theresia (1717-1780), Katharina the Great (1729-1796), Countess Amalie Elisabeth of Hessen-Kassel (1717-1780) and Maria Theresia Gerhardinger (1797-1879).
And at their alma mater, the Scholls are far from forgotten. The student government of the University of Munich has for decades demanded the school be named "Geschwister Scholl Universitat" (Scholl Silbings University).
"The name of Germany will be disgraced for all times, if not the German youth rises up at last, takes revenge and simultaneously atones, smashes its tantalizers and erects a new spiritual Europe." (Quotation from the sixth and last leaflet of the White Rose Society) | | | | |
Julia Jentsch as Sophie Scholl succeeds in filling out the personality of one of the most courageous women in world history. Jentsch's performance is arresting, enabling the viewer to feel with her, anticipate her motivation, share her idealism. The movie can be regarded as a continuation of the work of Michael Verhoeven, who directed "The White Rose" in 1982, which focuses more on Scholl's path to becoming a brave woman who is finally murdered for her resistance to tyranny. Unlike Verhoeven's film, "Sophie Scholl" concentrates on the conflict of two completely different ideologies by reviving the transcripts of Scholl's interrogation by the Gestapo, which were hidden for decades in the former East Germany.
The power and persuasiveness of Scholl's arguments, which tended to convince even the Gestapo interrogator, retain all of their moral superiority when spoken by Jentsch. Alexander Held, as the interrogator Robert Mohr, on the one hand, credibly embodies those who abided by the system without posing any critical questions. On the other, his performance makes clear that there was room to undermine the system by some more "careless investigation." However, Mohr decided differently in the decisive days of February 1943.
Another highlight of the movie is the true-to-scale representation of the show trial against the courageous youths. Andre Hennicke, who plays the so-called "judge," Freisler, was said to have failed in his portrayal. Some movie-goers I spoke to accused him of playing a caricature of a Nazi, rather than a figure who actually existed. I understand them, but they are wrong.
 | | | During the trial | | | ©2005 GoldKind | |  | | | Sophie prays in her prison cell. | | | ©2005 GoldKind | | Long before "Sophie Scholl," I've seen newsreels of Freisler's propaganda trial against one of the planners of the July 20, 1944 coup, Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld. It was simply unbelievable how unscrupulously Freisler berated von Schwanenfeld whenever he could. When his shouting was interrupted by the man's answers, Freisler didn't give the accused a chance to speak out. Any statement that didn't fit Nazi ideology was choked off with shouts.
|  | | | Alexander Held as Gestapo investigator Robert Mohr | | | ©2005 GoldKind | Both Hans and Sophie succeeded in resisting Freisler. Fabian Hinrichs and Julia Jensch succeed in acting out this major ideological confrontation, making it a spiritual triumph of humanity. The Scholl siblings countered the judge's venomnous words with sharp arguments, triggering sarcastic laughter in the cinema audience.
Other key scenes of the movie brought many viewers to tears. When Sophie says goodbye to her parents on the day of her execution and when the three sentenced to death meet for the last time, the cinema fell into stifling silence. Here, the massive horror, the open barbarity of the Nazi dictatorship brutally flashes into the mind of the viewer. When Sophie, showing no emotion, lays her head under the guillotine, the screen turns black. In that moment I was frozen, and was forced to think of this last moment in Sophie Scholl's life long after the movie.
If the movie succeeds in having the same effect on many others, then it is one of the most important and most felicitous German movies ever.
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©2005 OhmyNews
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