Jürgen Wittenstein

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Oskar Jürgen Hans Gustav Wittenstein (born April 26, 1919 in Tübingen ; † June 14, 2015 ), also George J. Wittenstein , was a German - American doctor and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Jürgen Wittenstein was born as the son of Oscar Wittenstein , who died shortly before the end of the First World War , in early September 1918, as an engineer during a test flight, and Elisabeth, née. Vollmöller.

From 1931 to 1937 Wittenstein attended boarding school in Salem on Lake Constance . The director was initially the German-Jewish pedagogue Kurt Hahn , who was arrested by the National Socialists in 1933 and subsequently emigrated to Scotland . Hahn exerted a strong influence on Wittenstein. Wittenstein graduated from school in 1937 and subsequently completed the six-month Reich Labor Service and two-year military service.

Wittenstein applied for admission to the NSDAP on December 12, 1939 and was admitted to the NSDAP local group Beilstein, Gau Württemberg, on June 1, 1940 with membership number 7,667,868 .

He later became a member of the White Rose resistance group . Wittenstein was a fellow student of Alexander Schmorell . In Berlin he tried to persuade Hellmut Hartert, who was also a friend of Hans Scholl's , to work. His photo of the Scholl and Christoph Probst siblings from July 24, 1942 became world famous.

He survived the Second World War and emigrated to the United States and married Hellmut Hartert's sister, Elisabeth Hartert. He had four children with her. After the death of his wife, he married Christel Bejenke, of German descent.

literature

  • Christian Petry: Students on the scaffold. The white rose and its failure. R. Piper, Munich 1968.
  • Anette Dumbach, Jud Newborn: Sophie Scholl & The White Rose. Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 1986/2006, ISBN 978-1-85168-474-8 .
  • Sibylle Bassler : The White Rose. Contemporary witnesses remember. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-498-00648-7 .
  • Mathilde Purrmann: One year for Jürgen Wittenstein. Ed. By Eduard Hindelang . Catalog for the exhibition in the Langenargen Museum. Gessler, Friedrichshafen 2001, ISBN 3-86136-059-4 .
  • Ruth Hanna Sachs: Two interviews: Hartnagel and Wittenstein. Exclamation, Los Angeles 2005, p. 11 f.
  • Rene Strien: reply to Ruth Sachs.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Harold Marcuse : George Jürgen Wittenstein (1919-2015). A Resistant German's Journey from Beilstein Castle to Santa Barbara. UC Santa Barbara website , June 15, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015.
  2. ^ Journal of History . Volume 51 (2003).
  3. ↑ Christiane Moll: The white rose. In: Peter Steinbach , Johannes Tuchel (Hrsg.): Resistance against the National Socialist dictatorship 1933–1945. Lukas, Bonn 2004, p. 378.
  4. ↑ Images and image data from Lebendiges Museum Online
personal data
SURNAME Wittenstein, Jürgen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wittenstein, Oskar Jürgen Hans Gustav (full name); Wittenstein, George J.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighters against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Tubingen , Germany
DATE OF DEATH June 14, 2015