Hans Scholl

Hans Fritz Scholl (1918 – 1943) was a German medical student and the intellectual driver behind the White Rose resistance movement. A member of the German youth movement who was briefly imprisoned in 1937, Scholl was drafted as a medic into the German army, witnessing firsthand the atrocities perpetrated by the Wehrmacht and SS against civilians and Jews in the Soviet Union.

Deeply influenced by Christian humanist thought and the sermons of Bishop von Galen, Hans and his friend Alexander Schmorell formed the White Rose in Munich, authoring impassioned philosophical treatises summoning the German public to overthrow the criminal Hitler regime. Following his arrest with his sister Sophie at Munich University, he took full responsibility to shield his comrades. On the guillotine, his final recorded words rang across the execution room: 'Es lebe die Freiheit!' (Long live freedom!).