The last section of my translation. Towards the end, Greta Kuckhoff is mentioned. She went on to become prominent in East Germany politics, and Anne Nelson (who wrote, "The Boys," about a 9-11 firehouse) wrote a book largely about her called "The Red Orchestra."
While Harnack was therefore the symbolic head of the Red
Orchestra, I liked to feel Harro Schultze-Boysen was the passionate side. A collaborator, Arnold Bauer, characterized
Schulze-Boysen in his record as follows:
“Harro was all good energy and his impressive celebratory talent, but he
shone in his ability to predict the actual development of things. For him, it was gradually that fact began to
be indicated.”
One short
summary biography given by Karl Schirdewan in his beautifully phrased
account: “1933 was the year
Schulze-Boysen (born in Kiel in 1909) was maltreated by the Fascists. The events of 1933, the National Socialists
that took power, had pushed in the year before, before they had a firm
political base. The people wrestled with
Nazi ideology. His own political
experience was so far-reaching he never stopped and bowed to the Hitler regime,
but found his own positive, societal course.
He became a revolutionary Socialist and a convinced friend of the
USSR.
p. 70 The traditions
of the Schulze-Boysen family gave him a good cover for his anti-fascist
activities, and so he became an official in the employ of the Reich Air Force
Ministry. By the time of his arrest, he
had reached the rank of Ober Lieutenant, and had spent all his time as an
official in Air Ministry in the Resistance.
This situation made possible his deep and extensive knowledge of the
important internal relations of the Hitler regime. One such position allowed him to have crucial
knowledge of international relations and
the spirit of foreign German populations-
cultural and societal lives- continued to expand.
Schulze-Boysen
saw himself in a fortunate position, his own position became key in the
development of the Resistance, information that broadened the field of vision
with his conspiratorial anti-fascist friends used this knowledge. Since 1935 they collected 40-50 mostly young
men for a foundation of anti-fascist spirit and a new cadre of the Resistance
was developed.
When the
war broke out, the organization was not only firmly anchored in Berlin, where
its members held important positions in the Air Ministry, Economics Ministry,
Propaganda Ministry, in regional offices, in the radio administration, but a
broad-based group in Hamburg and actively throughout the Army in German-occupied
territories. Besides, he gave many
connections to personalities throughout Germany and its territories.
The friends
and collaborators of Schulze-Boysen shielded him as the one talented man in
their circle who had great open-mindedness and
p. 71 one fascinating
talent, the ability to lead, to argue and discuss evidence. He became the subject of serious
ill-treatment; tortured with thumbscrews and by cramps, his body aged greatly
being exposed to large amounts of ultra violet light. Schultze-Boysen's
final remarks before the Reich Military Court began with a bold protest against
the crimes of the Gestapo, they took him and his friends, depriving him of his
last words. A few seconds before his execution, he spoke these
words: "I die as a Communist!"
According to my impression, we did not, like the others,
discuss the death sentence. It is true
he was outwardly calm, but inwardly became passionately angry about the fate of
him and his. One such position became definitely not rational and
logical, but a thing of passionate temperament. And Schulze-Boysen had a
strong temperament.
Also, his good-bye letter, written before his execution on
22 December 1942, is characteristic of him:
"Beloved Parents!
"It is now so long, In a few hours I get out of this. I am
perfectly peaceful as well as increasingly calm. Such important things
happen in the whole world today, a life that goes out is not very much. What was, is; what I did, I do not want to
write about it anymore. All of what I did, I did with my head, my heart
and out of my conviction, and in this setting I must ask for my parents' best
acceptance. Therefore, please, I beg you!
"This death is fitting for me. Somehow I have always known. It
is my own death, how once he called to me and replied!
The heart only became
heavy when I think of you (Libertas is near me and shares my fate in the same
hour). I not only hope, I believe, the
time you are sorry will give way to relief.
I am only a precursor to that which is still unclear, to strive and to
become. Believe with me that in the time
of justice, all of it will ripen!
I think about
Father’s final look, until the last. I
think about the Christmas tears of my loving mother. It has been so bad these last months, yet you
were so close to me. I have, I am the
lost son, because I walk to my found home to you, after so much struggle, so
much that seems unknown and odd to you.
I think on the good
Hartmut and my look, this gets better!
My remembered walk to Freiburg and back, where also Helga and I, saw for
both the first and last time. Yes, I
think on so many- back to a rich, beautiful life, of so much that I owed
you that was never paid.
When
I wait here, you are invisible: I laugh
to see the face of death, I have long since overcome it. In Europe it is so usual that it is mentally
sown with blood. It may be that we were
just a couple of fools, but just before the final whistle it was probably right
to have person, historical illusions.
Yes,
and I give you all my hand, and sit after a (single) tear here as a seal and
pledge of my love.
Your,
Harro”
p. 73
His wife Libertas, a granddaughter of Prince Philipp Eulenberg, was
executed at the same hour. It is hard to
do justice to her. She was without peer,
strong-willed and of great consistency.
Critical and highly impressionable, she had fallen in with in the prison
yard an alleged spy, Gertrude Breyer.
She had secret messages between Libertas and her mother that she
conveyed. Breyer took the secret
messages and letters to the Gestapo some of which held political information. Libertas
Schulze-Boysen learned of these acts shortly before her death. She said to me, it’s significant, to have
trusted a spy. She could only explain it
as some sort of prison psychosis. Breyer
was the first person in prison who embraced her and had friendly conversation
with her.
This
is not to forget to forget the treatment that her mother, the tender pianist
Thora Eulenberg underwent at the hands of the Gestapo and Hermann Göring. She was broken to pieces. On 23 December 1942, one stormy, cold winter
day, she went with a Christmas package for her daughter through all of the
criminal agencies of Berlin, to Alexanderplatz, to Prince-Albrecht-Strasse
[Gestapo headquarters], to Kaiserdamm to Lehrterstrasse. It was the story of going from one location
to another, although all knew that her daughter was dead. Countess Eulenberg turned finally to Göring,
whom she sometimes played piano for. Göring
also held out on her. Finally, near New
Year’s, after a Christmas spent in dreadful uncertainty, Göring,
through his Adjutant, told Countess Eulenberg that her daughter had been hung
on 22 December.
The
personality of Hans Coppi is no longer clearly remembered. He became overshadowed through
p. 74
the case of his wife Hilde Coppi.
Mrs. Coppi had a baby in November 1942 while she was in prison.
In January 1943, she
was condemned to death. The child was
eight months old when they took her away in July. In August 1943 she was a victim of hanging.
The shorthand typist
in attendance in the office, Ilse Stöbe, is still in good
memory. She was a beautiful. clever
girl, an accomplished political thinker
and worker.
I can give true
testimony about Walter Husemann. He was
for me the prototypical political fighter, committed to the business of the
revolution. He was a tool-maker. With good physical and mental health, he was
not irrepressible, defiant for the long time he was in custody. He was passionate, but at the same time
carefully concealed, always able to take advantage of every connection to the
outside. So he had succeeded, regularly
he saw through the window and was tipped off by his father, over the prison
wall. The father was an old trade
unionist in the neighborhood who lived in northern Berlin. Husemann showed an unusual attitude, even if
death was difficult. I had her man, who
knew so much was suddenly violently arrested.
Similarly, he went with clenched fists to his death. His letter to his father was the document of
a revolutionary.
“My beloved Father!
Stay strong! I die as I have lived, a fighter in class
warfare!
It is easy for
Communists to take as long as they like, so long as they do not bleed. Whether one really was, proof is first when
the hour of proof has come. I am at it,
Father. I begrudge nothing, I see my
weaknesses. To leave life, this is the
last task asked of me. Your son has
become as worthy as a thief! Overcome
your own grief! That has yet to be
fulfilled. You have your twice and three
times to satisfy, and then your hour is come!
Poor Father, but such
good fortune, Father, your idea that the best sacrifice must be given. The war will not go on much longer- and then
our hour is come!
Think of all those
who are still going to great lengths, today I must- and learn from the
Nazis: any weakness will be paid in
acres of blood. Therefore am I not
bitter. Stay hard!
I haven’t any regrets
in my life, at, not having done enough.
My death will probably also reconcile those who did not understand
me. Oh, Father, Father, you love it
well! When I must not fear, you must not
collapse under my death! Hard, stay
hard, hard.”
p. 82
The tragic fate of the family Terweil made a particular impression on
me. The family wanted to rescue the
daughter, who was in danger not only through her connection to the Red
Orchestra but also through the Jewish origin of her companion. They attempted, with all manner of witnesses
and documentation, as it was then customary, to get the child identified as
mixed-race [mischling] to the second
degree. With great effort and great cost, that finally succeeded. The daughter Maria it did not help at all- a
few months after she was executed, her mother and brother were killed by a bomb
blast.
Maria
Terweil died on 5 August 1943. It has
been recognized as a day of
remembrance. On this day were other
women and girls of the Red Orchestra executed:
Hilde Coppi I mentioned, the beautiful young dancer Oda Schottmüller,
the delicate 19 year old student Liane Berkowitz, the ceramicist Catho Bontjes
van Beek and the 22 year old fresh, lively student Eva-Maria Buch.
From this group of women, I had also
spoken at length with Maria Terweil. She
was the friend of the pensive and thoughtful Paul Guddorf, who proceeded her
inclusion. in death. He was executed on 13 May 1943. I could tell her now how much Guddorf had thought
of her in his final days. The little
portrait of him, which he gave me before his death, has been preserved by
me. Only in 1945 could I see his
parents….
One
of the most authoritative men of the Red Orchestra, writer Dr. Adam Kuckhoff,
was born in 1887. In his biography, his
wife Greta wrote: ‘Adam Kuckhoff,
commemorated in a book published by Aufbau Publishers, Berlin, explained his
intellectual development. It was the way
that a man ‘from a middle class background conceived of factory housing of a
new order- the development of the romance of individualism, to the poet
becoming socially conscious and struggling for political inclusion.’
‘He
saw the field of the arts, he wrote:
“Not in the depths of the soul, but in the clarity of the evidence of
all humanity.’ He was so certainly
convinced of the necessity of solving this task, that even in the death cell at
Plötzensee with sure hands he worked out the system of dialectic aesthetics.
I
had often visited Kuckhoff in his Plötzensee cell. His stocky, sturdy shape, with his plain head
full of energy was unforgettable to me.
We spoke and debated over many literary and political problems. He said in his Eulenspiegel, one in each of his set pieces was strongly influenced
by stopping time. Many others spoke of
aspects of his personality, his relations with his wife and his son. Kuckhoff counted on his death and that of
his wife, and thought with much concern about the future of his five year old
son, Ule.
