Queer Places:
Memorial to the German Resistance
Tiergarten, Mitte, Berlin, Germany
Friedhof Kirchlauter
Kirchlauter, Landkreis Haßberge, Bavaria (Bayern), Germany
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Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944)[1] was a German army officer best known for his failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair and remove the Nazi Party from power. Along with Henning von Tresckow and Hans Oster, he was one of the central figures of the German resistance to Nazism within the Wehrmacht. For his involvement in the movement, he was executed by firing squad shortly after Operation Valkyrie.
He held the hereditary titles of "Graf" (count) and "Schenk" (cupbearer). He took part in the attack on Poland, the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Tunisian Campaign during the Second World War.
In his youth, he and his brothers were members of the Neupfadfinder, a German Scout association and part of the German Youth movement.[7][8][9][10]
Like his brothers, he was carefully educated and inclined toward literature, but eventually took up a military career. In 1926, he joined the family's traditional regiment, the Bamberger Reiter- und Kavallerieregiment 17 (17th Cavalry Regiment) in Bamberg.[11] It was around this time that the three brothers were introduced by Albrecht von Blumenthal to the poet
Stefan George's influential circle, Georgekreis, from which many notable members of the German resistance later emerged. George dedicated Das neue Reich ("the new Empire") in 1928, including the Geheimes Deutschland ("secret Germany") written in 1922, to
Berthold
Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.[12]
After several unsuccessful attempts by Stauffenberg to encounter Hitler, Göring and Himmler at the same time, he went ahead with the attempt at Wolfsschanze on 20 July 1944. Stauffenberg entered the briefing room carrying a briefcase containing two small bombs. The location had unexpectedly been changed from the subterranean Führerbunker to Albert Speer's wooden hut due to the heat on this summer's day. He left the room to arm the first bomb with specially adapted pliers. This was a difficult task for him as he had lost his right hand and had only three fingers on his left hand. A guard knocked and opened the door, urging him to hurry as the meeting was about to begin. As a result, Stauffenberg was able to arm only one of the bombs. He left the second bomb with his aide-de-camp, Werner von Haeften, and returned to the briefing room, where he placed the briefcase under the conference table, as close as he could to Hitler. Some minutes later, he excused himself and left the room. After his exit, the briefcase was moved by Colonel Heinz Brandt.[44]
When the explosion tore through the hut, Stauffenberg was convinced that no one in the room could have survived. Although four people were killed and almost all survivors were injured, Hitler himself was shielded from the blast by the heavy, solid-oak conference table leg, which Colonel Brandt had placed the briefcase bomb behind, and was only slightly wounded.[44]
Stauffenberg and Haeften quickly left and drove to the nearby airfield. After his return to Berlin, Stauffenberg immediately began to motivate his friends to initiate the second phase: the military coup against the Nazi leaders. When Joseph Goebbels announced by radio that Hitler had survived and later, after Hitler spoke on the state radio, the conspirators realised that the coup had failed. They were tracked to their Bendlerstrasse offices and overpowered after a brief shoot-out, during which Stauffenberg was wounded in the shoulder.[45]
In an attempt to save his own life, co-conspirator General Friedrich Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the Replacement Army present in the Bendlerblock (Headquarters of the Army), charged other conspirators in an impromptu court martial and condemned the ringleaders of the conspiracy to death. Stauffenberg, his aide 1st Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, General Friedrich Olbricht, and Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim were executed before 1:00 in the morning (21 July 1944) by a makeshift firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, which was lit by the headlights of a truck.[45]
Stauffenberg was third in line to be executed, with Lieutenant von Haeften after. However, when it was Stauffenberg's turn, Lieutenant von Haeften placed himself between the firing squad and Stauffenberg, and received the bullets meant for Stauffenberg. When his turn came, Stauffenberg spoke his last words, "Es lebe das heilige Deutschland!" ("Long live our sacred Germany!"),[46][47] or, possibly, "Es lebe das geheime Deutschland!" ("Long live the secret Germany!"), in reference to Stefan George and the anti-Nazi circle.[47][48] Fromm ordered that the executed officers (his former co-conspirators) receive an immediate burial with military honours in the Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof in Berlin's Schöneberg district. The next day, however, Stauffenberg's body was exhumed by the SS, stripped of his medals and insignia, and cremated.[49]
Stauffenberg married Nina Freiin von Lerchenfeld on 26 September 1933 in
Bamberg.[62] They had five children: Berthold; Heimeran; Franz-Ludwig;
Valerie; and Konstanze, who was born in Frankfurt on the Oder seven months
after Stauffenberg's execution. Stauffenberg lived with his family in
Berlin-Wannsee. Berthold, Heimeran, Franz-Ludwig and Valerie, who were not
told of their father's deed,[63] were placed in a foster home for the
remainder of the war and were forced to use new surnames, as Stauffenberg
became considered taboo.[64] Nina died at the age of 92 on 2 April 2006 at
Kirchlauter near Bamberg, and was buried there on 8 April. Berthold went on to
become a general in West Germany's post-war Bundeswehr. Franz-Ludwig became a
member of both the German and European parliaments, representing the Christian
Social Union in Bavaria. In 2008, Konstanze von Schulthess-Rechberg wrote a
best-selling book about her mother, Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg.
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