Kurt Huber (24.10.1893 Chur/Switzerland – 13.7.1943 Munich-Stadelheim Prison)

Born to German parents in Chur, Switzerland, Kurt Ivo Theodor Huber grew up in Stuttgart from the age of four, where his father was a professor at the business school. His parents nurtured his musical talent as much as they could, with his mother giving him piano lessons and his father teaching him music theory. At only 12 years of age, Kurt Huber composed songs and choruses for a fairy tale written and staged by his mother.

From 1912 onward, after graduating from a humanist secondary school in Stuttgart, he studied at the University of Munich, the city to which the family had moved in the wake of his father passing away the year before. In Munich, he majored in musicology (along with psychology and philosophy), completing his doctorate in 1917. Three years later, he became Erich Becher's assistant at the Psychological Institute, and that same year completed his habilitation (postdoctoral lecturing qualification) with a thesis on music psychology, also earning himself the entitlement to teach philosophy. Since 1926, as a extraordinary professor without civil servant status, he held teaching posts in experimental and applied psychology, music psychology, folk song studies, and later also philosophical methodology. Kurt Huber, who had married doctor's daughter Clara Schlickenrieder in 1929, was reliant for his income on these poorly paid teaching roles as well as helping out at teacher training exams until 1937. Daughter Birgit was born in 1930, with son Wolfgang following in 1939.

In the spring of 1937, Kurt Huber, who had been involved in the academic collection of folk songs for many years, was appointed acting head of the folk music department at the State Institute for German Music Research in Berlin. However, his Catholic ideological loyalties prevented him from cementing his position there, and he was not able to take a teaching post at the University of Berlin either. Consequently, he and his family had to return to Munich in the fall of 1938. In May 1940, one month after joining the Nazi Party for "strategic career reasons" (Zankel, p. 51), Kurt Huber was appointed extraordinary professor at the University of Munich, yet did not manage to secure himself a full professorship over what was left of his life.

Huber met Hans Scholl at a private literary evening at the start of June 1942. Scholl attended Huber's lectures, bringing his sister Sophie and his friends Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf along too. In the early summer of 1942, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell wrote the first of a total of six flyers for the ‘White Rose‘ circle. Three more followed in quick succession. The students grew closer to the university lecturer and they also met with him at his house in Gräfelfing near Munich.

In December 1942, Kurt Huber got involved in the ‘White Rose’ flyer campaign, producing the fifth ‘White Rose‘ flyer with Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell in January 1943. Huber wrote the sixth flyer on his own at the start of February, whereupon Scholl and Schmorell edited it, produced a print run of 3,000 copies, and distributed it in Munich from mid-February 1943 onward. Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie were caught in the act of distributing the flyers in the university's atrium on February 18, 1943, promptly arrested, sentenced to death, and executed on February 22. Just five days later, the Gestapo arrested Kurt Huber. On April 19, the People's Court sentenced him, Willi Graf, and Alexander Schmorell to death and he was executed in Munich-Stadelheim Prison on July 13, 1943.