Erika von Brockdorff

Erika von Brockdorff (née Schönfeldt) (29 April 1911 – 13 May 1943) was a German resistance fighter against the Nazi régime during the Second World War. Brockdorff was a member of what the Nazi authorities termed the Red Orchestra resistance movement.[1]

Erika von Brockdorff

Brockdorff was born in Kolberg (Kołobrzeg), Province of Pomerania, on Pomerania's Baltic Sea coast. Her father worked for the post office.[2] From 1929, after finishing middle school and housekeeping school in Magdeburg, she worked in Berlin as a housekeeper and a model, and also, after additional training in shorthand typing, as an office specialist.[3] In 1937, she married the sculptor Graf Cay–Hugo von Brockdorff, and shortly thereafter, their daughter Saskia was born.

From 1941, Brockdorff put her flat at Hans Coppi's resistance movement's disposal as their radio headquarters (she was having an affair with Cappi at the time). She was soon arrested along with the other Red Orchestra members and sent to Charlottenburg Women's Prison. She was sentenced at the Reichskriegsgericht to ten years in labour prison (Zuchthaus) in January 1943. Adolf Hitler was not satisfied with this, however, and on the very same day as the judgment, on his orders, the sentence was changed to death. Together with Mildred Harnack, she waited another four months for the sentence to be carried out; her colleague Elfriede Paul was one of the few who escaped the death sentence. On the evening of 13 May 1943, she was put to death, by guillotine, along with thirteen other persons at Plötzensee Prison[4] in Berlin.

Quote

"Lachend will ich mein Leben beschließen, so wie ich das Leben lachend am meisten liebte und noch liebe." ("I want to end my life laughing, laughing the way I loved and still love life.")

Sources
  1. "Erika Gräfin von Brockdorff". Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand. German Resistance Memorial Center. Retrieved 13 April 2019.
  2. Shareen Blair Brysac (23 May 2002). Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra. Oxford University Press. pp. 317–318. ISBN 978-0-19-992388-5.
  3. "The Resistance Networks". German Resistance Memorial Center. Retrieved 2008-07-24.
  4. "Plötzensee Prison". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 2008-07-24.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.