{"id":2797,"date":"2022-02-04T09:24:41","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T09:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/?page_id=2797"},"modified":"2022-02-04T09:24:41","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T09:24:41","slug":"the-leaflets-of-the-white-rose","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/the-leaflets-of-the-white-rose\/","title":{"rendered":"The Leaflets of the White Rose"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some Key Words used in the Leaflets<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Freiheit<\/strong>‘: The German word for freedom, which features especially heavily in the sixth leaflet, in the phrase \u2018Freiheit und Ehre\u2019 (\u2018freedom and honour\u2019). The repetition makes this something of a rallying call, as the White Rose call for the freedom of the individual. They imply that the love of freedom is intrinsically German, evoking a German literary and philosophical tradition which includes Goethe and Kant. Goethe\u2019s famous knight-hero in his play\u00a0G\u00f6tz von Berlichingen<\/em>\u00a0(1773) embodies these values, refusing to bow to an unjust authority and fighting to protect German independence. G\u00f6tz dies in prison with the last word \u2018Freiheit\u2019. Hans Scholl\u2019s last words were \u2018Es lebe die Freiheit!\u2019 (\u2018Long live freedom!\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Untermensch\u2019<\/strong>: \u2018subhuman\u2019. This word was commonly used in Nazi propaganda to describe non-Aryans deemed \u2018inferior’, including Jewish people, Roma, and Slavs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Mitl\u00e4ufer’:<\/strong>\u00a0A \u2018fellow-traveller\u2019, one who follows a group without particularly supporting or even liking it, instead becoming a hanger-on through opportunism or lack of courage. The term was widely used in the Nuremberg Trials and throughout the post-war period to denote \u2018followers\u2019: those who were considered lesser offenders in the Nazi hierarchy, but were still not wholly exonerated. Hannah Arendt provides a good summary of the sense of being a \u2018Mitl\u00e4ufer\u2019 in\u00a0Eichmann in Jerusalem\u00a0<\/em>(1963), where she describes how the Nazi regime made it easier to do wrong than right: \u2018Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it \u2014 the quality of temptation. Many Germans and many Nazis, probably an overwhelming majority of them, must have been tempted not to murder, not to rob, not to let their neighbours go off to their doom [\u2026], and not to become accomplices in all these crimes by benefiting from them. But, God knows, they had learned to resist temptation.\u2019(Hannah Arendt,\u00a0Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil<\/em>, ed. by Amos Elon (London: Penguin, 2005), p. 150.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Mitschuld’:<\/strong>\u00a0The term \u2018Mitschuld\u2019 is a compound of the words \u2018Schuld\u2019, meaning \u2018guilt\u2019 or \u2018fault\u2019, and the prefix \u2018Mit-\u2019 (\u2018with\u2019). Thus, it expresses an individual\u2019s share in someone else\u2019s guilt. The notion of \u2018Mitschuld\u2019 had great importance in the post-war discussion of Germans\u2019 responsibility, as it is used to express the idea that the individuals within a society, which allows deeds like the Nazi atrocities to happen, share the blame for these actions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Staat’:<\/strong>\u00a0Broadly corresponds to the English \u2018state\u2019 with more emphasis on the mechanism of government (as in the adjectival sense of \u2018state\u2019 in \u2018state pension\u2019, for example). It can also refer to the nation as a whole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Volk’:<\/strong>\u00a0A\u00a0term meaning \u2018nation\u2019 or \u2018people\u2019 originally used by the nationalist\u00a0v\u00f6lkisch<\/em>\u00a0movement, which had its roots in the late nineteenth century and resurfaced after the First World War in opposition to liberal democracy under the Weimar Republic. The National Socialists used \u2018Das deutsche Volk\u2019 [the German people] as an umbrella term for everybody whom they considered to be \u2018ethnically German\u2019, including those who lived outside of Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

(Definitions adapted from those published in The White Rose: Reading, Writing, Resistance<\/em>, ed. by Alexandra Lloyd (Oxford: Taylor Institution Library, 2019).)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some Key Words used in the Leaflets ‘Freiheit‘: The German word for freedom, which features especially heavily in the sixth leaflet, in the phrase \u2018Freiheit und Ehre\u2019 (\u2018freedom and honour\u2019). The repetition makes this something of a rallying call, as the White Rose call for the freedom of the individual. They imply that the love … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2797","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2797"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2800,"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2797\/revisions\/2800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whiteroseproject.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}