Harro Schulze-Boysen



Heinz Harro Max Wilhelm Georg Schulze-Boysen (2 September 1909 – 22 December 1942) was a German publicist and Luftwaffe officer who would become a leading German resistance fighter as a member of the anti-fascist resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) by the Gestapo, during World War II. He was arrested and executed in 1942.

Life
Schulze-Boysen was born in Kiel as the son of decorated naval officer Erich Edgar Schulze. His mother was Marie Luise (née Boysen). On his paternal side he was the grandnephew of Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and on the maternal side, the German economist and philosopher, Ferdinand Tönnies. In 1913 the family moved to Berlin when his father received a posting. His sister Helga was born a year older and brother, Hartmut was born in 1922 and died in 2013.

In 1913, Harro attended the primary school and later the Heinrich-von-Kleist-Gymnasium in the district of Schmargendorf in Berlin. From 1920, he regularly spent his summer holidays with the Hasselrot family in Sweden. In 1922 his father was transferred to Duisburg, and Harro succeeded him in the autumn. As a student at the Steinbart Gymnasium in Duisburg, he took part in the underground struggle against the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923 and was temporarily imprisoned by the French and Belgian occupying force. To get him out of this political firing line, his parents organized a slightly longer stay in Sweden. In particular, Harro's trip to England in 1926 had inspired comparison and reflection. He had found that the picture of England drawn in Germany was very little in line with his findings made on the spot.

In 1927 he wrote his first major newspaper report about a scandal in Duisburg to erect a monument to the sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck. On the occasion of the 80th birthday of the Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, he gave a commemorative speech at the school. In general, his political involvement in high school was perceived as unusually intense. He passed the Abitur with the overall rating "good". In particular, his dexterity was emphasized in the written and oral expression. From his spiritual attitude he was at that time in good agreement with the bourgeois values and traditions of the family. From then on, he appeared in public and in written statements, using the mother's birth name, with the double name Schulze-Boysen.

Political awakening
In 1928, he joined the Jungdeutscher Orden, a youth organization in the Weimar Republic and the Studentenverbindung Albingia. In April 1928 he studied law and political science at the University of Freiburg in Freiburg, Baden-Württemberg, and later Berlin, without finishing. In the same period he joined the Young German Order, a para-military organisation, which influenced him ideologically at this time. The aim of this association was to ethically revive the "Comradeship from the trenches of the First World War" as a model for the Volksgemeinschaft to be developed. Any form of dictatorship, whether coming from the left or the right was rejected.

In the summer of 1929 he took part in an academic fencing club at the university and a course of the Hochsee-Wehrsportverein high sea defense sports club in Neustadt. In November he moved to the Humboldt University of Berlin in Berlin to continue his studies in law. Here he joined the International Students' Association. For the first time during this period he dealt intensively with Nazi ideology and searched for the causes of the sudden victory of the Nazis in the Reichstag elections. He studied the program of the Nazis and also read Mein Kampf in search of answers, describing it a jumble of platitudes and commented, There's nothing here but nonsense. It became clear to him that a further gain in votes by the Nazis would lead to a sharp intensification and polarization in society. In 1930, Schulze-Boysen supported the intellectual-nationalistic group called the Volksnationale Reichsvereinigung ("People's National Reich Association"). During this period, Schulze-Boysen was also a member of the National Socialist Black Front.

As a publicist
In July 1931, during a stay in France, Harro Schulze-Boysen met French intellectuals associated with the magazine Plans, which sought the establishment of a Europe-wide collective economic system and whose influence resulted in him being reorientated politically to the left. However he still maintained his contacts with the nationalists. However as time went on, Shulze-Boysen increasingly distanced himself, more and more from the views of the Young German Order. As the realization matured in him that the daily struggle in Germany must primarily be directed against the emerging fascism and all reactionaries.

In 1932/1933, he published the left-liberal magazine Der Gegner or The Opponent, which was founded in 1931 by Franz Jung and modelled on the Plans magazine. The poet Ernst Fuhrmann, the artist Raoul Hausmann, the writer Ernst von Salomon, the writer Adrien Turel and the Marxist theoretician Karl Korsch, among others all collaborated in writing the magazine. The aim was to build a unified front of young people against the "liberal, capitalist and nationalist spirit" in Europe. For the French, Harro Schulze-Boysen was the actor for Germany in this field. He tried to develop an independent German youth movement with the "Gegner-Kreis", which also included Robert Jungk, Erwin Gehrts, Kurt Schumacher and Gisela von Pöllnitz and began to organize Enemy Evenings in Berlin cafés. "There was hardly an opposition youth group with which he did not keep in touch with." At the end of 1931, he took a leave of absence from his studies because he had come to the conclusion that the contents discussed here had nothing to do with the daily political disputes. In February 1932, Schulze-Boysen, in coordination with his French partners of Plans, organized the Treffen der revolutionären Jugend Europas or Meeting of Europe's Revolutionary Youth. A total of about 1,000 young people attended the meeting and he formulated the political goals for the German delegation. In view of the crisis in Germany, these consisted, on the one hand, in the abolition of the capitalist system and on the other, in the assertion of Germany's own role without foreign diktat and interference. In search of alternatives to crisis-ridden Western Europe, he began to become more interested in the Soviet system. This in turn was also influenced by his disappointment with the national and conservative parties in Germany, which in his opinion did not fight the nascent Nazis enough. In March 1932, he wrote his first article, the Der Neue, Gegner, The New, Opponent that defined his concept of publication goals, stating Let us serve the invisible alliance of thousands, who today are still divided... In April 1932, in a letter to his mother, he stated that his goal was the intellectual reconciliation of the young generation...''. Essentially his politics were driven by the idea of a united youth fighting the older generations.

In May 1932, an investigation was opened against Franz Jung and the office premises of the Der Gegner were sealed. Schulze-Boysen took over the business as the new editor and gave the publication a new name, opponent (now small in writing) but with the same network of the most diverse political camps. At the depths of the crisis, he also saw a clear opportunity to implement a new policy approach, "Opponents of today – comrades of tomorrow,". Thus he had become the leading head and the centre of the enemy circle. Schulze-Boysen considered the seizure of power by Hitler to be probable at that time, but believed that he would soon be overthrown by a general strike. After the seizure of power by the Nazi's and the Reichstag fire in Berlin, Schulze-Boysen helped several friends and colleagues who were being threatened to escape abroad. As early as February 1933, the Gestapo had rated the actions of the magazine as "radical" in an official communication. In April 1933, the offices of Der Gegner were destroyed by Sturmabteilung and had detained those present. The editorial staff were deported to a special camp of the 6th SS-Regiment. Schulze-Boysen himself was severely abused and detained for several days. The Sturmabteilung demolished before his eyes his Jewish friend and colleague Henry Erlanger, who died shortly afterwards. It had become clear as a self-confessed anti-Nazi that he had to find new ways to implement his convictions. In May 1933, his father organized a pilot training place for him at the German Aviation School in Warnemünde as a sea observer, in order to get his son out of the political front line in Berlin.

from 1934 he was working in the communications department of the Reich Air Transport Ministry (Reichsluftfahrtministerium) in Berlin.

Resistance activities
Beginning in 1935, he gathered around himself a circle of left-leaning anti-fascists, among them artists, pacifists, and Communists. The circle published anti-fascist writings. In 1935 he contacted the Soviet embassy in Berlin and offered his services as a spy. His offer was accepted and he was given the codename "Corporal" and the NKVD file 34122.

On 16 July 1936 he married Libertas Haas-Heye in Liebenberg with Hermann Göring giving away the bride. At one time a press officer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, his wife joined the resistance group. In 1936, Schulze-Boysen made contact with Arvid Harnack and his circle, and also with the Communists Hilde and Hans Coppi. From these meetings arose what the Gestapo called the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) group.

In 1940-1941, the group was in wireless contact with Soviet agents, and was thereby trying to thwart the forthcoming German aggression upon the Soviet Union. (As a first lieutenant on the Luftwaffe Leadership Staff, Schulze-Boysen had access to secret documents.)

Arrest and death
In July 1942, the Decryption Department of the Oberkommando des Heeres managed to decode the group's radio messages, and the Gestapo pounced. On 31 August, Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen were arrested. They were sentenced to death on 19 December and executed by hanging three days later at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. Their bodies were released to Hermann Stieve, an anatomist at what is now Humboldt University, to be dissected for research. Their final resting place is not known.

Memorials
In the Berlin borough of Lichtenberg in 1972, a street is named after the Schulze-Boysens (see link below). There are stolpersteine for them in the Dellviertel quarter of Duisburg, at Karl-Lehr-Straße 9.

In the picture at right appear the following lines:


 * "Wenn wir auch sterben sollen,
 * So wissen wir: Die Saat
 * Geht auf. Wenn Köpfe rollen, dann
 * Zwingt doch der Geist den Staat."


 * "Glaubt mit mir an die gerechte Zeit, die alles reifen lässt!"


 * "Even if we should die,
 * We know this: The seed
 * Bears fruit. If heads roll, then
 * The spirit nevertheless forces the state."


 * "Believe with me in the just time that lets everything ripen."