Sophie Scholl — Proto Flower Child?
Flower child imagery in war-torn Germany
Sophie and Hans Scholl were two siblings who wrote for the pacifist White Rose collective in Nazi Germany. They were convicted of high treason by the Nazis after being caught distributing the collective’s anti-war leaflet. After a trial, they were both executed in Munich in 1943. Several months later, millions of copies of their leaflets were dropped over Germany by British airplanes. With the recent publication of their collected letters and diaries in English, non-Germans can now have more insight into their lives…
The first time I saw a photo of Sophie Scholl, she had been edited out of her wartime background. I thought I was looking at a typical early hippie from San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury in 1967. Her gentle stance against Nazism and her dress style makes for an unsettling image. Despite having no connections to psychedelic culture, we could say that she was a proto flower child of her time.
Sophie Scholl grew up in Ulm, Germany. Her father — a pacifist — had served as a medic in the first world war. Her mother was, in her youth, a nurse. Both Sophie and her brother had been in the Hitler Youth movement (along with 4 million other children), but both became quickly disillusioned with the far right. Hans’ views became more entrenched after he joined the army…
