New Book now available!

On Friday 14 June 2019, over fifty people gathered at St Edmund Hall to celebrate the launch of The White Rose: Reading, Writing, Resistance (Oxford: Taylor Institution Library, 2019).

This volume includes facsimiles of the original White Rose pamphlets, transcriptions of the German texts, and new English translations by undergraduate students at the University of Oxford. In addition to the pamphlets, this volume presents five essays about the White Rose which explore various influences on the group, and the influence they in turn had on post-war German politics and culture. These new essays offer short introductions to those for whom the White Rose is a new subject, and provide fresh perspectives for anyone already familiar with the history.

Questions are often asked about the extent to which the White Rose had an ‘impact’. There has been criticism of their youthful impetuosity; some have questioned how much concrete change they really achieved. Hildegard Kronawitter, of the White Rose Foundation in Munich, addresses these points in her foreword to this book. As Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn write, ‘The impact of the White Rose cannot be measured in tyrants destroyed, regimes overthrown, justice restored. A scale with another dimension is needed, and then their significance is deeper; it goes even beyond the Third Reich, beyond Germany’.[1] Their story gives us hope, and especially for those of us who work closely with young people, it provides a moving and inspiring example of how conscience and moral courage can challenge injustice.

The White Rose: Reading, Writing, Resistance is the first book in the new series ‘Cultural Memory’ from the Taylor Institution Library’s series Treasures of the Taylorian. It can be purchased at the Taylor Institution Library, University of Oxford, or from www.amazon.co.uk. It will shortly be available to download as an eBook:  www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/taylor/about/exhibitions-and-publications.

Contents

Foreword | Hildegard Kronawitter

Introduction | Alexandra Lloyd

At the Heart of the White Rose — Cultural and Religious Influences on the Munich Students | Paul Shrimpton

Die Weiße Rose: Freedom of Conscience over Totalitarian Conformity | Jakob Knab     

‘Deutsche Hörer!’: News of the White Rose on the BBC German Service | Emily Oliver    

‘We are your bad conscience’: The White Rose Movement and Resistance to Unjust Law |  Paul Yowell

Marc Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl — Die letzten Tage (2005) | Elizabeth M. Ward

Translators’ Introduction | Student Translators

The White Rose Pamphlets

Exhibition Catalogue | Alexandra Lloyd

[1] Annette Dumnbach and Jud Newborn, Sophie Scholl and the White Rose (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007), p. 185.