1. Libertas "Libs" Schulze-Boysen, born Libertas Viktoria Haas-Heye was a German Prussian noblewoman, who became a resistance fighter against the Nazis.
59 Facts About Libertas Schulze-Boysen
1. 2.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen was fully aware of her husband's espionage activities and became one of his most active agents, working as a courier, a writer of seditious pamphlets and a recruiter for the group.
3.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen was arrested in September 1942, a month after her husband Harro, and both were executed on the same day in Plotzensee Prison.
4.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen's father was the Heidelberg-born Otto Ludwig Haas-Heye, couturier to the aristocracy, and her mother was noted pianist, Countess Viktoria Ada Astrid Agnes zu Eulenburg.
5.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen's parents married in Liebenberg Castle on 13 May 1909 and lived for a time in London and Paris.
6.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen's sister was Countess Ottora Maria Douglas-Reimer, who married Count Carl Douglas, a Swedish diplomat.
7.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen's older brother, Johannes Haas-Heye, was a journalist and diplomat.
8.
In 1921, when Libertas Schulze-Boysen was eight years old, her parents divorced and her grandfather died.
9.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen spent part of her childhood at Eulenburg's country estate, Liebenberg Castle.
10.
Later, a co-worker of her father supervised her during a summer in Switzerland in 1924, where Libertas Schulze-Boysen learned to draw.
11.
Between 1926 and 1932, Libertas Schulze-Boysen was sent to be educated at boarding schools in Paris, London and Switzerland.
12.
In 1932, Libertas Schulze-Boysen completed her Abitur at a girls' finishing school in Zurich, followed by a 9-month stay in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
13.
Harro Libertas Schulze-Boysen had been the publisher of the left-liberal magazine Der Gegner between 1932 and 1933.
14.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen was badly beaten and lost half his ear, and was only released due to the influence of his mother.
15.
On 15 January 1935, Libertas Schulze-Boysen left to join the Reich Labour Service for female youth for six months' voluntary work near Glindow, close to Potsdam.
16.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen submitted the manuscript to the writer Ernst von Salomon, a family friend who worked at the Rowohlt publishing house for review.
17.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen intended to submit the manuscript for review to the Reich Labour Service, but whether that actually happened, is unknown.
18.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen had arranged a language study trip from his employer and he had submitted a confidential report upon his return, that detailed the description and the constitution of the crafts in the bays.
19.
At the time, Libertas Schulze-Boysen was unprepared for the fact that Harro spent more time looking at the military installations and the ships in the harbour than at her.
20.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen considered herself a libertine and the couple had an open marriage.
21.
In essence it was a charm offensive, led by Libertas Schulze-Boysen, to get Harro noticed.
22.
Libertas was successful as Goring made an enquiry to Hans-Jurgen Stumpff, who reported the Harro Schulze-Boysen was considered unreliable due to his political involvements before 1933.
23.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen realised the marriage was in trouble and influenced by the views of her husband, returned her Nazi membership booklet.
24.
The information that Libertas Schulze-Boysen collected included details about German transports, deployment of units and companies involved in the German defence.
25.
The group around Libertas Schulze-Boysen did not know how to deliver the information, but discovered that Libertas Schulze-Boysen's cousin, Gisela von Pollnitz, was planning to visit the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne that was held in Paris from 25 May to 25 November 1937.
26.
On 27 September 1937, Harro left for a treatment for kidney stones at a sanatorium in Bad Wildungen, while Libertas Schulze-Boysen arranged a sea trip via a friend, on the cargo ship SS Ilona Siemers that left from the Hamburg port of St Pauli, transporting coal to the Black Sea.
27.
In late 1937, Libertas Schulze-Boysen met the playwright Gunther Weisenborn who had been friends with Harro since 1932.
28.
The visits along with von Pollnitz's illness led Libertas Schulze-Boysen to suffer from a general malaise that caused her to flee to Zurich, a city she felt safe in.
29.
When Libertas Schulze-Boysen returned in August, she worked with Weisenborn to arrange the premier of the play at a theatre in Bremen in November 1938, that was delated but finally held on 1 March 1939 at the Theater Bremen.
30.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen introduced both Krauss and Graudenz into the resistance group.
31.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen was immediately arrested, but refused to say anything and was permitted to leave.
32.
However, industrialist Hugo Buschmann, who was an informant and couples close friend, stated that the group lived dangerously, but there was no evidence for Perrault's conclusion Certainly Libertas Schulze-Boysen and Mildred were good friends.
33.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen arranged to drive their friends home for her apartment, although it involved a considerable risk to herself of being followed.
34.
From July 1940 to 13 November 1941, Libertas Schulze-Boysen wrote film reviews for the culture section of the National-Zeitung.
35.
In October 1940, Greta and Libertas finanlly managed to convince Harro Schulze-Boysen to meet with Arvid Harnack.
36.
In January 1941, Libertas Schulze-Boysen attended the wedding of Gunther and Joy Weisenborn.
37.
Korotkov asked Libertas Schulze-Boysen to curtail his resistance activities but Shulze-Boysen replied that as a German patriot he wished to create a "counterpublic" to the Nazis and his resistance would work needed to continue.
38.
Karbe was never part of the resistance and he believed that Libertas Schulze-Boysen has little understanding of the danger they were currently in.
39.
In September 1941, Libertas Schulze-Boysen met Cato Bontjes van Beek while on an assignement at the Leipzig Trade Fair and became friends.
40.
Joseph Goebbels had ordered the collection of photographs from the front so they can be used by Libertas Schulze-Boysen to define themes for new cultural films.
41.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen decided to start gathering pictorial evidence of Nazi war crimes, in anticipation of using them after the war to show the extent of the genocide.
42.
The group decide to write a series of reports known as "AGIS", a name chosen by Libertas Schulze-Boysen who named in reference to the Spartan King Agis IV, who was a social reformer who fought against corruption.
43.
The couple spent Christmas holidays 1941 apart with Libertas Schulze-Boysen spending Christmas in Liebenberg Castle with her cousin Ingeborg von Schoenebeck, who had a strong dislike of Harro and tried to convince Libertas Schulze-Boysen that she should divorce.
44.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen yearned simply to live, in love and peace.
45.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen immediately demanded a divorce stating she would seek legal advice from Herbert Engelsing but Harro convinced her to stay, informing her that they knew too much about the resistance effort.
46.
In May 1942, Libertas Schulze-Boysen met Alexander Spoerl who held similar political views.
47.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen decided to answer some of the letters she received, in an effort to collect more details for after the war.
48.
On 31 August 1942, Harro Libertas Schulze-Boysen was arrested in his office in the Ministry of Aviation.
49.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen had received a puzzling phone call from his office several days before.
50.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen was warned by the women who delivered her mail that the Gestapo were monitoring it.
51.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen suspected that Schulze-Boysen was arrested and contacted the Engelsings.
52.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen sent the suitcase to Gunther Weisenborn in the vain hope that it could be hidden, and he tried to contact Harro Schulze-Boysen in vain.
53.
In prison, Libertas Schulze-Boysen met Gertrude Breiter, the secretary for Libertas Schulze-Boysen's interrogator, Kommissar Alfred Gopfert.
54.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen believed that Breiter was hostile to her superiors, seeing her more as a friend than an agent provocateur Breiter told Libertas Schulze-Boysen that Gopfert did not have any serious evidence against her and due to her family connections with Hermann Goring, her life would be safe.
55.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen decided to confide in Breiter and talked with her more than a dozen times.
56.
However, in an unpublished interview with David Dallin after the war, Manfred Roeder, the advocate who prosecuted the Schulze-Boysens in the Reichskriegsgericht, stated that Libertas never betrayed anybody.
57.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen was charged with "preparation" to commit high treason, helping the enemy and espionage.
58.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen's husband was charged with preparation to commit high treason, wartime treason, military sabotage and espionage.
59.
Libertas Schulze-Boysen was executed by guillotine about 90 minutes after her husband on 22 December 1942 at Plotzensee Prison in Berlin.