Lieselotte ″Lilo″ Fürst-Ramdohr (11 October 1913 – 13 May 2013) was a member of the

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

branch of the student resistance group

White Rose The White Rose (german: Weiße Rose, ) was a Nonviolence, non-violent, intellectual German resistance to Nazism, resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students (and one professor) at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, ...

(''Weiße Rose'') in

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. She was born in

Aschersleben Aschersleben () is a town in the Salzlandkreis district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated approximately 22 km east of Quedlinburg, and 45 km northwest of Halle (Saale). Geography Aschersleben lies near the confluence of ...

Early life

Ramdohr was a descendant of a merchant family from Aschersleben. After half a year in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

and one year at the boarding school of Fritz Weiß in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

where her long year friendship with

Falk Harnack Falk Harnack (2 March 1913 – 3 September 1991) was a German director and screenwriter. During Germany's Nazi era, he was also active with the German Resistance and toward the end of World War II, the partisans in Greece. Harnack was from a fam ...

began, she moved to Munich in 1934 to become a stage designer. From March 1935 to February 1936, she learned book illustration at the Württembergische

Kunstgewerbeschule A Kunstgewerbeschule (English: ''School of Arts and Crafts'' or S''chool of Applied Arts'') was a type of vocational arts school that existed in German-speaking countries from the mid-19th century. The term Werkkunstschule was also used for thes ...

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the Sw ...

. In 1936, she moved to

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

to attend dance school until the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

closed it. Ramdohr switched to a state-run school in Stuttgart, and later ran a private school in

Heilbronn Heilbronn () is a city in northern Baden-Württemberg, Germany, surrounded by Heilbronn District. With over 126,000 residents, it is the sixth-largest city in the state. From the late Middle Ages, it developed into an important trading centre. A ...

. She eventually married Otto Berndl, son of a Bavarian architect. Her religious preference was Lutheran.

The White Rose

In the autumn of 1941, she befriended

Alexander Schmorell Alexander Schmorell (; russian: Александр Гугович Шморель, translit=Aleksandr Gugovich Shmorel', ; 16 September 1917 – 13 July 1943) was a Russian- German student at Munich University who, with five others, formed a resis ...

Christoph Probst Christoph Ananda Probst (6 November 1919 – 22 February 1943) was a German student of medicine and member of the White Rose (''Weiße Rose'') resistance group. Early life Probst was born in Murnau am Staffelsee. His father, Hermann Probs ...

and

Hans Scholl Hans Fritz Scholl (; 22 September 1918 – 22 February 1943) was, along with Alexander Schmorell, one of the two founding members of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. The principal author of the resistance movement's ...

, and later Traute Lafrenz,

Sophie Scholl Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943) was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after having bee ...

and Willi Graf. After her husband was killed in Russia in May 1942, she began storing documents and a duplication apparatus in her flat in

Neuhausen-Nymphenburg Neuhausen (Central Bavarian: ''Neihausn'') and Nymphenburg are boroughs of Munich, the capital of the German state of Bavaria. They had been merged into the borough 09 - Neuhausen-Nymphenburg (german: Stadtbezirk 09) in 1992. For further informatio ...

. In November 1942, she expanded the group's underground activities by joining forces with more powerful groups in Berlin such as the

Kreisauer Kreis The Kreisau Circle (German: ''Kreisauer Kreis'', ) (1940–1944) was a group of about twenty-five German dissidents in Nazi Germany led by Helmuth James von Moltke, who met at his estate in the rural town of Kreisau, Silesia. The circle was com ...

and the Christian resistance leader

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Dietrich Bonhoeffer (; 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have ...

through the help of Falk Harnack.

Escape from Munich

On 2 March 1943 Ramdohr was arrested, but was released for lack of evidence. Later that month,

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...

ordered her arrested again and sentenced to death, but she managed to escape. Ramdohr married German-born, Brazilian-raised medical student Carl Gebhard Fürst (1920–2010) in February 1944 in Munich, and escaped to her hometown of

, using the name Lieselotte Fürst.

Post-war era

Ramdohr survived the war and in 1948 fled with her four-year-old daughter, Doma-Ulrike, out of the

Soviet occupation zone The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a ...

back to

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total l ...

, where she became a sports instructor in boarding schools in

Upper Bavaria Upper Bavaria (german: Oberbayern, ; ) is one of the seven administrative districts of Bavaria, Germany. Geography Upper Bavaria is located in the southern portion of Bavaria, and is centered on the city of Munich, both state capital and seat ...

. In 1995, she published her memoirs "Friendships in the White Rose". Up until her death, she lived in a small town outside Munich. The BBC described her as a "spry 99-year-old".

Documentaries

* In 1996, Bavarian Broadcasting, BR, televised a biography of Ramdohr as a part of its series ''Lebenslinien''. The director was Hans-Sirks Lampe. * In 1995, ''Geschichtswerkstatt Neuhausen'' televised interviews with Ramdohr in the documentary ''Davon haben wir nichts gewusst...Neuhausen unter der Nazi-Zeit''. * In 2008, interviews with Ramdohr were featured in the documentary ''Die Widerständigen – Zeugen der Weißen Rose''.

Works by Lilo Fürst-Ramdohr

* ''Freundschaften in der Weißen Rose''. Verlag Geschichtswerkstatt Neuhausen, Munich 1995, * ''Die Weiße Rose'' (by Inge Scholl); p. 139. Frankfurt/M. 1994, * ''Seiltanz (Lyrics of the Munich Catacombe)''; Ed. Nanette Bald, Roman Kovar, Munich 1991.

References

External links

Lilo Ramdohr's biography
*
English version of ''Friendships in the White Rose'' by Lilo Ramdohr, unpublished

* ttps://www.scribd.com/doc/8550237/Inge-Scholl-Die-Weisse-Rose On-line version of 'Die Weiße Rose' by Inge Scholl
Abstract of 'Die Widerständigen', cf. p. 14: Essay on Lilo Ramdohr
(PDF-file in German; 3,93 MB)

* * Sabine Bader
"Die Überlebende der "Weißen Rose"
''

Süddeutsche Zeitung The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (; ), published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of SZ is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and social-democrat. Hist ...

'' (May 9, 2011). Retrieved February 16, 2012 * BBC World Service
episode of Witness broadcast on February 22, 2013.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ramdohr, Lilo 1913 births 2013 deaths German anti-fascists German female dancers German people of World War II History of Munich Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich People condemned by Nazi courts White Rose members Lutheran pacifists Recipients of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 20th-century Lutherans 20th-century German women