In February 1943, three students at the University of Munich were executed. They were members of a clandestine group called the White Rose: students Hans and Sophie Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, Christoph Probst, and a professor, Kurt Huber. The White Rose had written and distributed leaflets calling on the German people to resist Nazism. The last of these leaflets was smuggled out of Germany and in the autumn of 1943, millions of copies were dropped over Germany by Allied aircraft. That same year, the exiled German novelist Thomas Mann dedicated one of his regular BBC broadcasts to the White Rose, declaring: ‘Good, splendid young people! You shall not have died in vain; you shall not be forgotten.’
2018 marks the 75th anniversary of the White Rose trials. To commemorate this event, there will be an exhibition in the Taylor Institution, entitled The White Rose: Reading, Writing, Resistance. The exhibition will run from October 12th to 31st in the Voltaire Room of the Taylorian. It will present information on the members of the White Rose and their resistance activities, as well as examples of literature which influenced them to oppose Nazism.
The exhibition is free and open to all.
Download the poster for The White Rose: Reading, Writing, Resistance (.pdf).