Nina Freiin von Lerchenfeld

Nina Gräfin Schenk von Stauffenberg (n Kaunas. Lithuania , 27 of August of 1913 - f Kirchlauter, Bavaria,. 2 of April of 2006 ) was an baroness belonging to the high German nobility and the only wife of colonel of the Wehrmacht Claus von Stauffenberg , chief author of the failed attack on July 20, 1944 against the leader Nazi , Adolf Hitler .

Biography

Nina Gräfin Schenk von Stauffenberg was born in Kaunas (Kowno), Lithuania in 1913 , with the name of Magdalena Isabel Vera Lydia Herta Freiin von Lerchenfeld, whose diminutive by which she was known in the family was Nina (in Russian-Lithuanian) , her family practiced prostestante faith and his father was a General Consul of Germany in Lithuania , called Gustav Freiherr von Lerchenfeld and his mother, a German of the Baltic region and baroness named Anna von Stackelberg Freiin. ¹

Nina Freiin von Lerchenfeld at age 16 studied high school in a Wieblingen boarding school near Heidelberg when he met the young aristocrat and military Claus von Stauffenberg in 1929, engaged in the day of his birthday in 1930 and after a courtship of almost three Years, they married the 26 of September of 1933 , year of the advent of Nazism, under the catholic faith that practiced the family von Stauffenberg. At the wedding ceremony, Claus von Stauffenberg attended the Reichswerh military uniform.

The marriage had five children: ²

• Berthold Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (born 1934).
• Heimeran Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (born 1936).
• Franz Ludwig Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (born 1938).
• Valerie Ida Huberta Karoline Anna Maria Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg (born in 1940 and died in 1966).
• Konstanze Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg (born in captivity in January 1945).

Resistance

With the advent of Nazism, the Stauffenberg marriage adhered with some expectation, the arrival to the power of Hitler; But later some members of von Stauffenberg’s family such as his uncle Nikolaus Graf von Üxküll-Gyllenband and his brother Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg as a result of anti-Semitic politics joined groups belonging to the high dissident and closed social strata that they sought Hitler’s deposition of power.

At first, Claus von Stauffenberg did not adhere to these movements, but by participating in rows in the 6th Panzer Division, in the operations against Poland and also in the Eastern Front , in the city of Stalingrad , he was able to realize the excesses of The Nazi policy against the Jewish population (See: Einsatzgruppen ) rejecting such crimes. The defeat of the Germans in that city was of such psychological magnitude in the moral of the Wehrmacht that Stauffenberg ended up being disappointed of Nazism.

Stauffenberg was transferred to the African front where he is badly wounded in February of 1943 being sent to Germany. Claus von Stauffenberg after the recovery is attached as liaison officer of the Reserve Army with seat in Bendlerstrasse in Berlin, joins the resistance to Nazism, led by Friedrich Olbricht . The function that exerts it serves to approach Hitler.

Nina von Stauffenberg was not informed in detail or openly involved in the conspiracy, but her husband revealed to her briefly that she was plotting against the regime in the days following the bombing. Nina von Stauffenberg last saw Claus von Stauffenberg alive on the way to the airport.

On July 20, 1944, the Putsch against Hitler failed and Stauffenberg was executed on the night of July 21, 1944. Nina von Stauffenberg learned of the failure of the bombing and the death of her husband by radio. His brother-in-law, Berthold Schenk Graf v. Stauffenberg was executed the 10 of August of 1944.

Prison

The persecution of the conspirators by the Gestapo directed by Himmler reaches to the families of those involved, by order of Hitler the practice of the Sippenhaft is applied and Nina von Stauffenberg is stripped of its four children to whom they change the surname Stauffenberg By Meister , although she was three months pregnant from Konstanze is not executed and is transferred to a prison hospital in Frankfurt oder .

Melitta Gräfin Schenk von Stauffenberg, her co-pilot and Air Force test pilot, was imprisoned with her husband, Wehrmacht officer Alexander Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, and released a few weeks later by order of Hermann Göring because of his services in the Luftwaffe , She tried to make some scoring to help Nina von Stauffenberg; But the aviator in a very delicate situation, her efforts were tenuous.

His four children were taken to an orphanage with the surname Meister in Thuringia , waiting to be ceded to German families loyal to the regime. His mother, Baroness Anna von Freiin Stackelberg is taken to a concentration camp in Ravensbrück , where he was executed in April 1945.

Nina von Stauffenberg gave Konstanze light in Frankfurt of the Óder in January of 1945, was transferred successively to several fields of prisoners. In April of that year, Hitler dictated the fateful order to eliminate all the special prisoners of the regime that remain still in prison, but the SS guards in charge of the baroness fail to execute the order and Nina von Stauffenberg is released by the Americans In Franken , later meeting with all his children in a farm of Lautlingen being hosted in the bosom of the Stauffenberg Family in the castle of Kirchlauter in Lautlingen , Baden-Württemberg.

Postwar

Nina von Stauffenberg after the war testified to her admiration and sacrifice of her husband in his fight against Nazism by helping to cleanse his image as a supposed traitor to the Nazi regime and to improve the relations of the occupying forces with the German survivors. ³ His first-born, Berthold Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg followed the military tradition and became general of the Bundeswehr . Valerie died at age 26 in Munich. Nina von Stauffenberg died in a country manor in Lerch, Bamberg , the 2 of April of 2006 at 92 years, his remaining four children still survived. ⁴

References