Berthold Schenk, Count of Stauffenberg

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Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg on August 10, 1944 at the trial before the People's Court

Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (born March 15, 1905 in Stuttgart , † August 10, 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German lawyer and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime .

Life

Berthold von Stauffenberg was born as the son of the Württemberg court marshal Alfred Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and his wife Caroline, née. Countess Üxküll-Gyllenband , born. His twin brother was Alexander , his younger brother Claus , who carried out the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944 . He also had Prussian ancestors through his mother, such as the Prussian army reformer August Graf Neidhardt von Gneisenau .

Stauffenberg studied law in Heidelberg , Jena , Tübingen , Berlin and Munich . After completing his doctorate at the University of Tübingen , he broke off his legal clerkship because he was aiming for a career in the foreign service . In March 1929 he became a consultant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Berlin. From July 1931 on, he worked as an editing secretary in the registry of the Permanent International Court of Justice in The Hague. It was here that he wrote his most extensive work, a commentary in French on the statute and regulations of the Permanent International Court of Justice. Due to Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations , he ended this activity on December 31, 1933 and then worked again as deputy head of the international law department at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.

The Stauffenberg brothers were fundamentally shaped by their encounter with Stefan George . As a student at the humanistic Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium in Stuttgart, they joined the New Pathfinders. Literarily educated and poetically gifted, they were enthusiastic about the poetry of Stefan Georges, the leading figure of the neo-romantic youth movement. In the spring of 1923 the Stauffenberg brothers were introduced to the “master” and from then on belonged to the closest circle of friends in George's elitist platonic “state”. Two poems in the last volume of poetry, Das Neue Reich , published in 1928, with the poem “Secret Germany” written as early as 1922, are dedicated to Berthold von Stauffenberg (“BvST.”) (“In the summer glory of the city of gods” and “In the indestructible beautiful on-and-off” from"). A little later, the poet appointed Berthold to be the heir and trustee of his inheritance in Germany. Not only did George prefer him over his brothers, but his twin brother Alexander considered him the greatest of the three.

In 1935 Stauffenberg became a scientific member of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and co-editor of the journal for foreign public law and international law . As a close associate of Viktor Bruns , von Stauffenberg was involved in all of his work on the “German-Polish Mixed Arbitration Court and the Permanent International Court of Justice”. Also in 1935 he became a member of the newly established Committee for Martial Law in the War Ministry , and from 1938 in the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW). Here he took over the management of the department of naval warfare law . Stauffenberg therefore had a significant influence on the resulting prize regulations and the prize court order . Here Stauffenberg also came into contact with Helmuth James Graf von Moltke , who was a member of the committee for the Foreign Office / Defense of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. Through this he got to know other later members of the resistance.

In 1936 Stauffenberg married Maria (Mika) Classen from Russia, to whom he had been engaged for a long time. George and Stauffenberg's father had been against the connection, so that Stauffenberg could only bring himself to marry after the death of his father. The marriage resulted in two children, Alfred and Elisabeth.

At the beginning of the Second World War , Stauffenberg was drafted and used as an international law advisor in the Naval Warfare Department in the High Command of the Navy , initially as a military officer with the rank of naval directorate, later as naval chief magistrate ( corvette captain ). Here he came into contact with Corvette Captain Alfred Kranzfelder and privately collected material for use in possible later German court proceedings against war criminals . At this time he also took part in meetings of the Kreisau Circle , which, however, remained too theoretical for him.

In 1943 Admiral Wilhelm Canaris , the head of the military defense in the High Command of the Wehrmacht, proposed Stauffenberg as the successor to the deceased head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law; however, the post was eventually filled with a National Socialist.

Very early on, around 1935, he came into contact with resistance circles out of inner conviction, for which he was able to win his brother Claus and his cousin Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg even after some hesitation . His apartment at Tristanstrasse 8-10 in Berlin-Nikolassee , in which his brother Claus also lived from September 1, 1943, was a frequent meeting point for the people involved in the failed assassination attempt and attempted coup of July 20, 1944 .

Stauffenberg grave in Lautlingen with memorial inscriptions for Claus and Berthold von Stauffenberg

On the day of the attack, Berthold von Stauffenberg was in the Bendlerblock in Berlin and organized the connection to the naval command . He was arrested there on the night of July 21, 1944. On August 10, 1944, a show trial before the People's Court chaired by Roland Freisler was followed by a hearing and sentencing to death together with Erich Fellgiebel , Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg , Alfred Kranzfelder and Georg Alexander Hansen .

Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was hanged in Plötzensee on the day of the judgment .

Works

literature

Web links

Commons : Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Karl Christ : The other Stauffenberg. The historian and poet Alexander von Stauffenberg . Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56960-9 , pp. 29, 161 f.
  2. ^ Max Planck Institute for Foreign Law and International Law , In memoriam , p. 14
  3. ↑ July 20, 1944 on Gedenkstätte-Sudzensee.de
personal data
SURNAME Stauffenberg, Berthold Schenk Graf von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1944
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee