Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld

Ulrich-Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld (21 December 1902 – 8 September 1944) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

landowner, officer, and resistance fighter against the Nazi

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

régime.

Biography

Count Schwerin von Schwanenfeld was born in the Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

capital, Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, the son of a diplomat. He finished school at the convent of Roßleben

Roßleben

Roßleben is a town in the Kyffhäuserkreis district, in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated on the river Unstrut, 22 km southeast of Sangerhausen....

in 1921 and went to study agronomy

Agronomy

Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, feed, fiber, and reclamation. Agronomy encompasses work in the areas of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and soil science. Agronomy is the application of a combination of sciences like biology,...

at the Technical University

Technical University of Munich

The Technische Universität München is a research university with campuses in Munich, Garching, and Weihenstephan...

of Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

. As a witness of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch

Beer Hall Putsch

The Beer Hall Putsch was a failed attempt at revolution that occurred between the evening of 8 November and the early afternoon of 9 November 1923, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff, and other heads of the Kampfbund unsuccessfully tried to seize power...

, he found Nazism

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

loathsome to his Christian

Christian Democracy

Christian democracy is a political ideology that seeks to apply Christian principles to public policy. It emerged in nineteenth-century Europe under the influence of conservatism and Catholic social teaching...

and social

Social conservatism

Social Conservatism is primarily a political, and usually morally influenced, ideology that focuses on the preservation of what are seen as traditional values. Social conservatism is a form of authoritarianism often associated with the position that the federal government should have a greater role...

convictions (he was a Knight of Justice in the Protestant Order of Saint John, to which he had been admitted in 1933). Schwerin was graduated at Breslau in 1926 and administered his family's manors in Göhren (today part of Woldegk

Woldegk

Woldegk is a town in the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte district, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany. It is situated 24 km southeast of Neubrandenburg...

, Mecklenburg) and Sartowice

Sartowice

Sartowice is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Świecie, within Świecie County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-central Poland. It lies approximately east of Świecie, north of Toruń, and north-east of Bydgoszcz....

near Świecie

Swiecie

Świecie is a town in northern Poland with 25,968 inhabitants , situated in Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship ; it was previously in Bydgoszcz Voivodeship . It is the capital of Świecie County.-History:...

, Pomerelia

Pomerelia

Pomerelia is a historical region in northern Poland. Pomerelia lay in eastern Pomerania: on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea and west of the Vistula and its delta. The area centered on the city of Gdańsk at the mouth of the Vistula...

in Poland. In 1928, he was married to Marianne Sahm, a daughter of Heinrich Sahm

Heinrich Sahm

Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Martin Sahm , no party affiliation, was a German lawyer, mayor and statesman from the Free City of Danzig....

, then president of the Free City of Danzig

Free City of Danzig

The Free City of Danzig was a semi-autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig and surrounding areas....

senate.

Already by 1935, he held the view that Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

must be killed to be brought down. Beginning in 1938 ahead of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia

German occupation of Czechoslovakia

German occupation of Czechoslovakia began with the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's northern and western border regions, known collectively as the Sudetenland, under terms outlined by the Munich Agreement. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's pretext for this effort was the alleged privations suffered by...

, Schwerin belonged to the tightest circle of the resistance along with his personal friends Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg

Peter Yorck von Wartenburg

Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg was a German jurist and a member of the German Resistance against Nazism.-Biography:...

and Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg

Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg

Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg-Tressow was a German government official and a member of the German Resistance in the July 20 Plot against Adolf Hitler.-Personal development:...

, and later also to the Kreisau Circle

Kreisau Circle

The Kreisau Circle was the name the Nazi Gestapo gave to a group of German dissidents centered on the Kreisau estate of Helmuth James Graf von Moltke. The Kreisauer Kreis is celebrated as one of the instances of German opposition to the Nazi regime...

. With the beginning of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he was called up to the Wehrmacht

Wehrmacht

The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...

as an officer in the staff of Generaloberst Erwin von Witzleben

Erwin von Witzleben

Job-Wilhelm Georg Erdmann Erwin von Witzleben was a German army officer and in the Second World War an Army commander and a conspirator in the July 20 Plot.-Early years:...

. After Witzleben's dimissal in 1942, Schwerin was transferred to Utrecht

Utrecht (city)

Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands with a population of 312,634 on 1 Jan 2011.Utrecht's ancient city centre features...

until in March 1943, Major General Hans Oster

Hans Oster

Hans Oster was a German Army general, deputy head of the Abwehr under Wilhelm Canaris, and an opponent of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He was a leading figure of the German resistance from 1938 to 1943.-Early career:...

appointed him to the Abwehr

Abwehr

The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...

office at the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht

Oberkommando der Wehrmacht

The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was part of the command structure of the armed forces of Nazi Germany during World War II.- Genesis :...

in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

.

Schwerin participated in the failed attempt on Hitler's life and coup d'état

July 20 Plot

On 20 July 1944, an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Third Reich, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. The plot was the culmination of the efforts of several groups in the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi-led German government...

on 20 July 1944 from his position at the Bendlerblock

Bendlerblock

The Bendlerblock is a building in Berlin, located on the Stauffenbergstraße , south of the Tiergarten. The building was erected between 1911 and 1914 for the Imperial German Navy Offices. During the Weimar Republic it served as the seat of the Reichswehr command and the Ministry of Defence...

, where the plotters' headquarters were, although he had been saying for weeks that the chances for a successful coup were very slight. There, on the night of 21 July 1944, he was arrested, and on 21 August was sentenced to death by the Volksgerichtshof, with Roland Freisler

Roland Freisler

Roland Freisler was a prominent and notorious Nazi lawyer and judge. He was State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice and President of the People's Court , which was set up outside constitutional authority...

presiding. The recordings of the show trial

Show trial

The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...

attest how Schwerin, brought to court without tie and belt, tried to preserve his dignity. He stated that his opposition to Hitler was due to "the many murders (...) in Germany and abroad" constantly interrupted by furious Freisler who finally shouted him down in rage.

On 8 September, Schwerin was hanged

Hanging

Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...

at Plötzensee Prison

Plötzensee Prison

Plötzensee Prison was a Prussian institution built in Berlin between 1869 and 1879 near the lake Plötzensee, but in the neighbouring borough of Charlottenburg, on Hüttigpfad off Saatwinkler Damm. During Adolf Hitler's time in power from 1933 to 1945, more than 2,500 people were executed at...

in Berlin. He is buried at the Waldfriedhof Dahlem

Waldfriedhof Dahlem

The Waldfriedhof Dahlem is a cemetery in Berlin, in the district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf on the edge of the Grunewald forest at Hüttenweg 47. Densely planted with conifers and designed between 1931 and 1933 after the plans of Albert Brodersen, it is one of Berlin's more recent cemeteries...

Literature

Detlef Graf von Schwerin, Die Jungen des 20. Juli 1944. Brücklmeier, Kessel, Schulenburg, Schwerin, Wussow, Yorck; Berlin 1991
Hans-Joachim Ramm: ... stets einem Höheren verantwortlich. Christliche Grundüberzeugungen im innermilitärischen Widerstand gegen Hitler; Neuhausen u, Stuttgart (Hänssler) 1996 (ISBN 3-7751-2635-X)

Biography

Literature

See also