An excerpt from a piece by Ryan Sayr Patrico in First Things about anti-Nazi heroine Sophie Magdalena Scholl (May 9, 1921–February 22, 1943):

 “New documents unearthed by German academics have revealed that the writings of the 19th-century English theologian were a direct influence on Sophie Scholl, who was beheaded for circulating leaflets urging students at Munich University to rise up against Nazi terror. . . .

But behind her heroism was the “theology of conscience” expounded by Cardinal Newman, according to Professor Günther Biemer, the leading German interpreter of Newman, and Jakob Knab, an expert on the life of Sophie Scholl, who will later this year publish research in Newman Studien on the White Rose resistance movement, to which she belonged. . . .

Newman taught that conscience was an echo of the voice of God enlightening each person to moral truth in concrete situations. Christians, he argued, had a duty to obey a good conscience over and
above all other considerations. . . .

Under questioning from the Gestapo Scholl said she had been compelled by her Christian conscience to peacefully oppose Nazism.

Sophie and Hans both asked to be received into the Catholic Church an hour before they were executed but were dissuaded by their pastor who argued that such a decision would upset their mother, a Lutheran lay preacher.

Fr Dermot Fenlon, a priest of the Birmingham Oratory who was given excerpts of Mr Knab’s findings to include in a speech on Newman in Milan last week, said the originality of the research was that it
showed the clear “centrality” of Newman to Hans and Sophie Scholl.

He said: “Knab has identified the presence of Newman in correspondence, in diaries and in the analysis of correspondence, particularly between Sophie and Hartnagel. He has shown how that
influence became operative at a critical moment.”

He added: “The religious question at the heart of the White Rose has not been adequately acknowledged and it is only through the work of Guenter Biemer and Jakob Knab that Newman’s influence . . . can be identified as highly significant.”

The 2005 German film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Die letzten Tage)  shows Sophie’s adherence to a higher law than the one imposed by the state. The law of her conscience, brought out beautifully in this confrontation with Herr Mohr, the police agent who interrogates her and finds in himself an unwilling connection to her:

“Mohr: You may have used false slogans but you used peaceful means.

Sophie: So why do you want to punish us?

Mohr: Because it is the law. Without the law there is no order.

Sophie: The law you are referring to protected free speech before the Nazis came to power in 1933. Someone who speaks freely now is imprisoned or put to death. Is that order?

Mohr: What can we rely on if not the law? No matter who wrote it.

Sophie: Our conscience.

Mohr: Nonsense! [Grabbing two books, one in each hand, as though weighing them against each other.] Here is the law and here are the people. As a criminologist, it is my duty to find out if they coincide and, if not, to find the rotten spot.

Sophie: The law changes. Conscience doesn’t.”

My Comment:

As Wendy McElroy notes in this review at iFeminists.com, Sophie’s very existence is a reproach to the way of life of those around her because it forces them to confront their own responsibility for the way things have become. Ultimately that is the real reason she must be killed.

“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.” (John 1:5)

In “Transit of Venus” (“Mobs,” Chapter 3), we cite Sophie Scholl as one of the heroes who truly bring change. The messiahs of  the state, on the other hand, don’t change anything, however much they may mean to.

They simply play out their assigned parts, driven by mass emotions and mass slogans.