Lieselotte Fürst-Ramdohr (born October 11, 1913) was a member of the Munich branch of the student resistance group White Rose

White Rose

The White Rose was a non-violent/intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor...

 in Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

. She was born in Aschersleben

Aschersleben

Aschersleben is a town in the Salzlandkreis district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated approx. 22 km east of Quedlinburg, and 45 km northwest of Halle .-Pre-20th century:...

.

Early life

Ramdohr is a descendant of a merchant family from Aschersleben

Aschersleben

Aschersleben is a town in the Salzlandkreis district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated approx. 22 km east of Quedlinburg, and 45 km northwest of Halle .-Pre-20th century:...

. After half a year in England and one year at the boarding school of Dr. Fritz Weiß in Weimar

Weimar

Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...

, she moved to Munich in 1934 to become a stage designer. From March 1935 to February 1936, she learned book illustration at the Wuerttembergische Kunstgewerbeschule in Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

. In 1936, she moved to Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 to attend dance school until the Nazis closed it down. Ramdohr switched to a state-run school in Stuttgart, and later ran a private school in Heilbronn

Heilbronn

Heilbronn is a city in northern Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is completely surrounded by Heilbronn County and with approximately 123.000 residents, it is the sixth-largest city in the state....

. She eventually married Otto Berndl, son of a Bavarian architect.

The White Rose

In the fall of 1941, she befriended Alexander Schmorell

Alexander Schmorell

Alexander Schmorell was one of five Munich University students who formed a resistance group known as White Rose which was active against Germany's Nazi regime from June 1942 to February 1943.-Early life:Schmorell's father, a medical doctor, was a German born and raised in Russia...

, Christoph Probst

Christoph Probst

Christoph Hermann Probst was a German student of medicine and a member of the White Rose resistance group.-White Rose:...

 and Hans Scholl

Hans Scholl

Hans Fritz Scholl was a founding member of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany.-Biography:...

, and later Traute Lafrenz

Traute Lafrenz

Traute Lafrenz is a German-American physician and anthroposophist, who was a member of the White Rose anti-Nazi group during World War II....

, Sophie Scholl

Sophie Scholl

Sophia Magdalena Scholl was a German student, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans...

 and Willi Graf

Willi Graf

Willi Graf was a member of the White Rose resistance group in Nazi Germany....

. After her husband was killed in Russia in May 1942, she began storing documents and a duplication apparatus in her flat in Neuhausen-Nymphenburg

Boroughs of Munich

Since the administrative reform in 1992, Munich is divided into 25 boroughs or Stadtbezirke:-References:Source:...

. In November 1942, she expanded the group's underground activities by joining forces with more powerful groups in Berlin such as the Kreisauer Kreis and the Christian resistance leader Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and martyr. He was a participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and a founding member of the Confessing Church. He was involved in plans by members of the Abwehr to assassinate Adolf Hitler...

.

Escape from Munich

On March 2, 1943, Ramdohr was arrested, but was released for lack of evidence.
Later that month, Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...

ordered her arrested again and sentenced to death, but she managed to escape. Ramdohr married German-born, Brazilian-raised medical student Carl Gebhard Fürst (1920–2010) in February 1944 in Munich, and escaped to her hometown of Aschersleben, using the name Lieselotte Fürst.

Post-war era

Ramdohr survived the war and in 1948 fled with her four-year-old daughter, Doma-Ulrike, out of the Soviet occupation zone back to Bavaria, where she became a sports instructor in boarding schools in upper Bavaria. In 1995, she published her memoirs "Friendships in the White Rose".

Documentaries

• In 1996, Bavarian Broadcasting, BR, televised a biography of Ramdohr as a part of its series Lebenslinien. The director was Hans-Sirks Lampe.
• In 1995, Geschichtswerkstatt Neuhausen televised interviews with Ramdohr in the documentary Davon haben wir nichts gewusst...Neuhausen unter der Nazi-Zeit.
• In 2008, interviews with Ramdohr were featured in the documentary Die Widerständigen - Zeugen der Weißen Rose.

Works by Lilo Fürst-Ramdohr

• Freundschaften in der Weißen Rose. Verlag Geschichtswerkstatt Neuhausen, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-931231-00-3
• Die Weiße Rose (by Inge Scholl); p. 139. Frankfurt/M. 1994, ISBN 3-596-11802-6
• Seiltanz (Lyrics of the Munich Catacombe); Ed. Nanette Bald, Roman Kovar, Munich 1991. ISBN 3-925845-20-8

Further reading

• Bassler, Sibylle: Die Weiße Rose, Zeitzeugen erinnern sich. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2006. ISBN 3-498006-48-7.
• Dumbach, Annette & Newborn, Jud. "Sophie Scholl & The White Rose". Oneworld Publications, 2007. ISBN 978-1851685363. Page 95, 149.
• Ruth H. Sachs: White Rose History, Volume I [Academic Version]: Coming Together (January 31, 1933 - April 30, 1942). Exclamation! Publishers, Lehi (Utah, USA) 2003. ISBN 0-9710541-9-3 (Regular Edition: ISBN 0-9710541-4-2).
• Die Weiße Rose - Gesichter einer Freundschaft (Brochure by Kulturinitiative e.V. Freiburg; S. 12)
• Shareen Blair Brysac: Resisting Hitler. Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra. Oxford University Press 2000. ISBN 0-19-515240-9
• Barry Pree: White Rose. Trinity Press International 1999. ISBN 0-34-039436-6
• Corina L. Petrescu: Allen Gewalten zum Trutz sich erhalten": models of subversive spaces in National Socialist Germany University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006, p. 149 et seq.

External links

• Lilo Ramdohr's biography
• White Rose History, Vol.I. (Academic Version) by Ruth H. Sachs, Utah
• English version of Friendships in the White Rose by Lilo Ramdohr, unpublished
• Discussion of Lilo Ramdohr's historical role by Katrin Seybold
• On-line version of 'Die Weiße Rose' by Inge Scholl
• Abstract of 'Die Widerständigen', cf. p. 14: Essay on Lilo Ramdohr (PDF-file in German; 3,93 MB)
• Article about Lilo Ramdohr being the fiancée of Falk Harnack
• The Way of the Sixth White Rose leaflet, cf. p.166 in W. Breyvogel et al., Bonn 1991