The White Rose, or: German Students against Hitler

The Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies cordially invitesyou to the

Tenth George J. Wittenstein Lecture

Christian Petry’s lecture explores the question whether remembering past
acts of resistance against tyranny–such as that of the Munich student group
in 1942-43–can provide inspiration to face today’s political challenges.

The White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a non-violent/intellectual
resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of students from the University
of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an
anonymous leaflet campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943,
that called for active opposition to dictator Adolf Hitler’s regime.

The six core members of the group were arrested by the Gestapo (German
secret police) and they were executed by decapitation in 1943. The text of
their sixth leaflet was smuggled by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke out of
Germany through Scandinavia to the United Kingdom, and in July 1943
copies of it were dropped over Germany by Allied planes, retitled “The
Manifesto of the Students of Munich.”

Christian Petry is the author of Studenten aufs Schafott: Die Weisse Rose
und ihr Scheitern, 1968 (Students under the Guillotine: The Defeat of the
White Rose). He has published books, articles and films on student
resistance in Nazi Germany, on intercultural education and communication,
and on curriculum development and educational reform.

After studying history and sociology at the Free University of Berlin,
Petry first worked as a teacher and sociologist at schools in southern Germany
before starting a project for vocational and social integration of foreign
youth in Weinheim, Germany. He has served as director of a project network
to support ethnic minorities (“Regionale Arbeitsstellen zur Förderung
ausländischer Kinder und Jugendlicher”) in eight cities of the Ruhr area,
as director of a European Community model project to overcome youth
unemployment in the city of Duisburg, and as executive director of the
Freudenberg Foundation whose objectives include the integration of
immigrant children and adolescents in German civil society and the defense
and promotion of democratic culture. Petry has also served as Chair at the
European Foundation Centre, Interest Group Youth and Education. Since 2010,
he has been executive director of the Stiftungs- und Fördergemeinschaft
Modellprojekte GmbH, Weinheim.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

hm 11/30/10, 1/4/11