Hans Scholl (22.9.1918 Ingersheim/Jagst – 22.2.1943 Munich-Stadelheim)

As the second of six children, Hans Scholl was born into a liberal Protestant Swabian family. His father was mayor in Ingersheim and later on in Forchtenberg. Hans Scholl spent his childhood and youth in Ludwigsburg and Ulm. He joined the Hitler Youth against his parents' wishes in October 1933. In 1936, he established a group in Ulm that was based on the objectives and rituals of the banned German Young Comrades. These activities brought Scholl into trouble with the Gestapo and led to his imprisonment for several weeks at the end of 1937. A district court case showed him leniency, with him benefiting from an amnesty granted on the occasion of the annexation of Austria. He increasingly eschewed Nazi ideology after that.

Following his labor and military service, he decided to study medical science in Munich in April 1939, but had to interrupt his studies due to being drafted into the military. He lived in the immediate vicinity of the university at Amalienstraße 95. From the spring of 1940 onward, Hans Scholl served as a medic, including on the French front. He was able to continue his studies with the 2nd Student Company of the Army Medical Squadron in Munich in April 1941. There, he met Alexander Schmorell, with whom he developed a close friendship. Influenced by personal interaction with the Catholic intellectuals Carl Muth and Theodor Haecker, Scholl and Schmorell decided to engage in active resistance in the summer of 1942.

The first four flyers of the group called the ‘White Rose‘ were produced and distributed in June/July 1942. A key experience for Scholl and Schmorell, who by now had been joined by Willi Graf, was their transfer to a field traineeship on the Eastern Front from the end of July to the beginning of November 1942. Upon their return from this formative deployment, the White Rose circle resumed its resistance activities. The fifth flyer was created and distributed. In addition to this, Scholl, Schmorell, and Graf engaged in nighttime activities that entailed them painting slogans such as ‘Freedom‘ and ‘Down with Hitler‘ on house facades in Munich. Copies of the sixth ‘White Rose’ flyer, penned by philosophy professor Kurt Huber, were deposited in the University of Munich on February 18, 1943, and thrown into the atrium by Hans Scholl and his younger sister Sophie, who had begun studying in Munich in May 1942. The two of them were caught in the act and handed over to the Gestapo. Just four days later, Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie, and Christoph Probst were sentenced to death by the People's Court in the Munich Palace of Justice and executed in Munich-Stadelheim Prison that same day.