Helmuth James Graf von Moltke

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Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, January 1945

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (born March 11, 1907 in Kreisau ; † January 23, 1945 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German lawyer , resistance fighter against National Socialism and founder of the Kreisau Circle resistance group .

Life

Origin and family

Great-great-uncle: Helmuth von Moltke the elder

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke came from the old Mecklenburg noble family Moltke . Moltke was the great-great-nephew of Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke . His father was the landowner and hereditary member of the Prussian manor, Helmuth (Adolf) von Moltke (1876–1939); his grandfather was Wilhelm von Moltke (1845–1905), from 1891 Count von Moltke and heir of Gut Kreisau ; Great-grandfather was Adolf von Moltke . His mother, Dorothy Rose-Innes, was a South African of British descent and the daughter of a Chief Justice of the Union of South Africa , James Rose Innes. Moltke's parents were among the co-founders of Christian Science in Germany. Moltke spent his childhood with five siblings on the Kreisau family estate in Silesia and Berlin.

In October 1931 Helmuth married James Graf von Moltke Freya Deichmann , the daughter of a banker from Cologne whom he had met in Austria. The two sons Caspar and Konrad emerged from the marriage. His grandson James von Moltke is a member of the Board of Management and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Deutsche Bank .

Study and job

Memorial stone for the brothers Helmuth James and Carl Bernhard von Moltke on Kapellenberg in Kreisau (today Krzyżowa ), 2005

From 1927 to 1929 Moltke studied law and political science in Breslau , Vienna and Berlin . In 1927, together with university teachers and leaders of the youth movement, he took part in the Löwenberger Arbeitsgemeinschaft , in whose labor camps unemployed young workers and young farmers were brought together with students in order to learn from one another and to practice civic knowledge, duties and rights in cross-professional training. In Kreisau, Moltke unselfishly made parts of his property available for farming business start-ups, which earned him sharp criticism from neighboring landowners.

In 1934 Moltke passed his assessor exam . In 1935 he decided not to become a judge because he would then have had to join the NSDAP . Instead he became a lawyer in Berlin, first in Karl von Lewinski's office , then worked with Paul Leverkuehn in 1938/1939 . From the beginning of 1940 until his arrest in 1944 he worked in the office of Friedrich-Carl Sarre and Eduard Wätjen at Viktoriastraße 33 .

As an attorney for international law and private international law , he was able to help Jews who were forced to emigrate and other victims of the Nazi regime and to travel abroad to maintain contacts. Among other things, Moltke represented the Jewish owners of the Berlin company M. Kempinski & Co. in the "Aryanization" negotiations.

Between 1935 and 1938 Moltke stayed regularly in Great Britain and completed his training as a lawyer in London and Oxford in order to have good professional opportunities in the event of an emigration to England.

Moltke received from his former Breslauer criminal law professor Arthur Wegner in 1937 together with other Counsel to defend him in a political criminal proceedings before a special court and the mandate in a disciplinary proceedings in Halle an der Saale as an individual defense for him as a legal researcher at the Martin Luther University in Halle -Wittenberg to take action.

After the outbreak of the Second World War , Moltke became an employee of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign Public Law and International Law in the Berlin Palace and, from September 6, 1939, worked in the international law department (advisory center for international law) of the Foreign / Defense Office, the German intelligence service Wehrmacht under Admiral Canaris .

His tasks consisted of gathering information from abroad, for example from military attachés and from foreign newspapers, and forwarding messages of military-political importance to the responsible Wehrmacht departments. Furthermore, he was supposed to maintain the connection between the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) and the Foreign Office , but above all to prepare expert reports on questions of international martial law. With the reports, Moltke hoped to have a humanitarian impact on military events. He was supported by opponents of Hitler such as Admiral Canaris and Major General Hans Oster , the head of the Central Department . Moltke's attitude and his objections to orders that were contrary to international law were not without danger.

Resistance in the Kreisau Circle

Kreisau Castle

Hans Mommsen points out that Moltke and the members of the Kreisau Circle expected the Nazi Empire to collapse from within without an assassination attempt. They had a universal historical view: the world would be reshaped, as it was after the collapse of the church at the end of the Middle Ages. That is why Moltke rejected national thinking, which Goerdeler and von Hassell adhered to, who were striving for a European confederation under German leadership . According to them, “foreign powers” ​​should be kept out of Europe, a demand that was directed primarily against the USA. Alfred Delp , for example, wanted a "third way" by the church's ecumenical movement was directed against the Anglo-Saxons and out of Nazi-looted economy will a future composite economy emerge.

As a deeply religious person, Moltke was on the one hand decidedly against the Nazi regime of injustice, but also against an assassination attempt on Hitler. He therefore did not seek to work with resistance groups that were aiming for a violent overthrow. However, Moltke helped the last, sixth White Rose leaflet to have a great impact by taking it to Scandinavia in March 1943. The text was translated in Oslo and distributed in the Norwegian and Swedish media. A translation into English by Moltke and Bishop Eivind Berggrav made the leaflet known in England. In July 1943, the British Royal Air Force had photocopies of the leaflet dropped over Germany during its bombing raids. As documents released in 2007 from the “Moltke Dossier” in the British National Archives show, the Foreign Office was informed in detail about Moltke's convictions, knowledge and intentions.

Arrest and conviction

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke before the People's Court, January 1945
Commemorative plaque for Helmuth James von Moltke on the grave of his ancestor Friedrich Philipp Victor von Moltke (1768–1845) in Hamburg-Wandsbek

The resistance in the Kreisau Circle could initially be kept secret. In January 1944, however, Moltke was arrested by the Gestapo after he had warned his friend Otto Kiep of his imminent arrest.

In January 1945 Moltke and other members of the Kreisau Circle stood before the President of the People's Court , Roland Freisler . Since Moltke could not prove participation in preparations for a coup d'état, Freisler based his judgment on another charge of guilt: Moltke and his colleagues had thought about how a Germany based on moral and democratic principles could come into being in a time after Hitler , which Freisler did considered a death-worthy crime.

Hanns Lilje writes in his biography that before the People's Court, Moltke “had the moral courage to attack Freisler and the entire institution, clearly recognizing the death sentence that had already been passed”. Even Inge Scholl quoted Moltke accordance with its equally provocative as ultimately historical farsighted invitation, given the corrupt Nazi justice, "Make a legend from us!"

Moltke had u. a. declares that he is on trial "... not as a Protestant, not as a large landowner, not as a nobleman, not as a Prussian, not as a German ... but as a Christian and as nothing else".

Moltke was sentenced to death on January 11, 1945 and hanged twelve days later in Plötzensee prison . The ashes of his body were scattered.

Quotes

“... all my life, already in school, I fought against a spirit of narrowness and violence, arrogance and a lack of respect for others, intolerance and the absolute, mercilessly consistent that is in the Germans and his Found expression in the National Socialist state. "

- Helmuth James Graf von Moltke : Farewell letter to the sons Caspar and Konrad, October 11, 1944

“Since National Socialism came to power, I have endeavored to mitigate its consequences for its victims and to pave the way for change. My conscience drove me to do this, and after all, it's a man's job. "

- Helmuth James Graf von Moltke : Farewell letter to the sons Caspar and Konrad, October 17, 1944

Honors

German postage stamp (2007) for the 100th birthday, from the series Upright Democrats

In 1964 the Deutsche Bundespost dedicated a stamp from a block designed by E. and Gerd Aretz to him for the 20th anniversary of July 20, 1944 . A stamp from the series Upright Democrats for the 100th birthday of Moltke and Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg from 2007 was designed by Irmgard Hesse.

In the post-war period, the city of Stuttgart named Moltkeplatz after him, where the - demolished - Moltke barracks and a street of the same name had previously been located, although it was named after his great-great-uncle, Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke.

The book publication Briefe an Freya 1939–1945 was awarded the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in 1989.

In 2001, the German Society for Defense Law and Humanitarian Law e. V. the Helmuth-James-von-Moltke-Preis for outstanding legal contributions in the field of security policy.

Fonts

posthumously

  • Report from Germany in 1943.
  • Last letters from Tegel prison. Letters to his wife Freya and his two sons from the time of the trial against him, first published in 1951, later published in many editions together with the report from Germany in 1943 (most recently in Diogenes, Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-257-22975-5 . ) ** English: Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1948.
  • Letters to Freya. 1939-1945. Edited by Beate Ruhm von Oppen, 2nd edition Beck, Munich 1991, 3rd edition ibid. 2005, ISBN 3-406-35279-0 .
  • In the land of the wicked. Diary and letters from prison in 1944/45. Edited by Günter Brakelmann . CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-58235-6 .
  • International law in the service of the people. Documents. Editor and introduction: Ger van Roon . Siedler, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-88680-154-3 . (Series: German Resistance 1933–1945. )
  • Helmuth James and Freya von Moltke: Farewell letters in Tegel prison. September 1944 - January 1945. CH Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-61375-3 .

literature

Fiction

Stage plays

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gothaisches Genealogical Handbook of Graef Lichen houses. 1879. [1]
  2. ↑ Georg Meck: James von Moltke: The banker with the hero gene . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed May 1, 2020]).
  3. ^ Günter Brakelmann: Christianity in the Resistance. Helmuth James von Moltke. Insights into the life of a young German. Lit, Berlin / Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-8258-1567-7 , p. 251 books.google .
  4. ↑ Steveling, Lieselotte: Juristen in Münster , Münster 1999, p. 615 u. 622; ISBN 3-8258-4084-0 .
  5. ^ Steveling, Lieselotte: Juristen in Münster , Münster 1999, p. 624; ISBN 3-8258-4084-0 .
  6. ↑ Helga Pfoertner: Living with history. ( Memento of June 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF), p. 140.
  7. ↑ Ulrich Schlie: The British and the Moltke dossier. In: Tagesspiegel , January 4, 2009.
  8. ↑ Inge Scholl: The White Rose. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 1993, ISBN 978-3-10-000415-4 , pp. 70, 206.
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Knauft: The “20. July “with and without Christians. (No longer available online.) 2006, archived from the original on January 3, 2018 ; accessed on January 2, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.20-juli-44.de
  10. ↑ The Kapellenberg on Krzyzowa.org.pl (website of the Kreisau municipality); accessed on August 26, 2020.
  11. ^ Farewell letters from Tegel prison. September 1944 - January 1945. CH Beck 2011, p. 64 (Google Books)
  12. ^ Farewell letters from Tegel prison. September 1944 - January 1945. CH Beck 2011, p. 78 (Google Books)

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Moltke, Helmuth James Graf von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Moltke, Helmuth James von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and resistance fighter; Founder of the Kreisau Circle resistance group
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Kreisau near Gräditz , Lower Silesia
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1945
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee