Freya von Moltke

Early life

Von Moltke was born Freya Deichmann in Cologne, Germany, the daughter of banker Carl Theodor Deichmann and his wife, Ada (née Ada von Schnitzler). In 1930, she began studying law at the University of Bonn and attended seminars at the University of Breslau, where she worked as a researcher for her future husband. On 18 October 1931, she married Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, in Cologne, Germany. The couple resided initially in a modest house at the von Moltke Kreisau estate, in Silesia (German: Schlesien), then in Germany but now part of Poland. They moved to Berlin so that he could complete his legal training. She studied law in Berlin and received a Juris Doctor degree from Humboldt University of Berlin in 1935.

Pre-war Kreisau

Following her law studies, she visited summers at the von Moltke estate at Kreisau where her husband, a Graf (count), had actively managed the farming activities—a pursuit atypical of a German nobleman—before retaining an overseer. There von Moltke actively worked on the farm, while her husband started an international law practice in Berlin and studied to become an English barrister.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party, obtained the chancellorship of Germany, an event that von Moltke’s husband foresaw would be a disaster for Germany, not the transitory figure that others expected. The Nazis immediately revoked the rights of individuals by the emergency Reichstag Fire Decree and abolished the constitution with the Enabling Act of 1933, by manipulating the Reichstag. The von Moltkes encouraged their overseer to join the Nazi Party to shield the community of Kreisau from government interference.

In 1937 she gave birth to their first son, Helmuth Caspar. Thereafter, she lived at Kreisau year-round. Her husband inherited the Kreisau estate in 1939.

Wartime Kreisau

In 1939, World War II began with the German invasion of Poland. Von Moltke’s husband was immediately “drafted at the beginning of the Polish campaign by the High Command of the Armed Forces, Counter-Intelligence Service, Foreign Division, as an expert in martial law and international public law.”

In his travels through German-occupied countries, her husband observed many human rights abuses, which he attempted to thwart by insisting that Germany observe the Geneva Convention (it continued not to) and through local actions in creating more benign outcomes for local inhabitants, citing legal principles.

In October 1941, her husband wrote, "Certainly more than a thousand people are murdered in this way every day, and another thousand German men are habituated to murder... What shall I say when I am asked: And what did you do during that time?" In the same letter he said, "Since Saturday the Berlin Jews are being rounded up. Then they are sent off with what they can carry.... How can anyone know these things and walk around free?" In 1941 von Moltke gave birth to their second son, Konrad, at Kreisau.

In Berlin von Moltke’s husband had a circle of acquaintances who opposed Nazism and who met frequently there, but on three occasions met at Kreisau. These three incidental gatherings were the basis for the term “Kreisau Circle.” The meetings at Kreisau had an agenda of well-organized discussion topics, starting with relatively innocuous ones as cover. The topics of the first meeting of May, 1942 included the failure of German educational and religious institutions to fend off the rise of Nazism. The theme of the second meeting in the Fall of 1942 was on post-war reconstruction, assuming the likely defeat of Germany. This included both economic planning and self-government, developing a pan-European concept that pre-dated the European Union. The third meeting in June, 1943 addressed how to handle the legacy of Nazi war crimes after the fall of the dictatorship. These and other meetings resulted in “Principles for the New [Post-Nazi] Order” and “Directions to Regional Commissioners” that her husband asked von Moltke to hide in a place that not even he knew.

On 19 January 1944, the Gestapo arrested von Moltke’s husband for warning an acquaintance of that person’s impending arrest. She was allowed to visit him under benign conditions and found that he could continue to work and receive papers. On 20 July 1944 there was an attempt on Hitler's life, which the Gestapo used as a pretext to eliminate perceived opponents to the Nazi regime. In January 1945, Helmuth von Moltke was tried, convicted, and executed by a Gestapo “People's Court” for treason, having discussed with the Kreisau Circle group the prospects for a Germany based on moral and democratic principles that could develop after Hitler.

Leaving Kreisau

In the spring of 1945 von Moltke and another Kreisau widow had evacuated their families to Czechoslovakia to avoid the Russian offensive, which ultimately bypassed Kreisau. After the fall of Berlin on 2 May 1945, the Russians sent a small detachment to occupy Kreisau. Using improvised notes in Russian and Czech, she obtained safe passage for both families to return to Kreisau from hiding. A Russian company was billeted at the von Moltke estate to “supervise the harvest" during the summer of 1945. When the Poles began to occupy the small farms, vacated by Germans, the Russians became protectors of the occupants of the von Moltke estate.

After a trip to Berlin, where she met Allen Dulles and received American rations for a difficult return trip to Silesia to retrieve her children, von Moltke followed the advice of Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz to leave Kreisau. Gaevernitz was an American officer, who came to inspect conditions in Silesia. Von Moltke gave him for safekeeping the letters that her husband had written to her, which she had hidden from the Nazis in her beehives. Thanks to British friends of her husband, emissaries from the British Embassy in Poland arranged for her evacuation from Poland.

Transitions

After her escape from Silesia, von Moltke moved to South Africa, where she settled with the couple's two young sons, Caspar and Konrad. There she worked as a social worker and a therapist for disabilities. In 1956, unable to further tolerate Apartheid, she returned to Berlin where she commenced her work in publicizing the Kreisau Circle. There she received support in this effort from Eugen Gerstenmeier, then president of the Bundestag, among others.

In 1960 she moved to Norwich, Vermont, to join the social philosopher, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, who died in 1973. At the age of 75, von Moltke became a United States citizen to pursue her interest in participating in the U.S. political system.

Death

Freya von Moltke died in Norwich, Vermont on 1 January 2010 at the age of 98.

Legacy

After World War II, she was active in publicizing her husband's ideas and actions during the war, to serve as an example of principled resistance. As early as 1949 she traveled to the United States to lecture on "Germany: Past and present", "Germany: Totalitarianism versus democracy,""German youth and the new education", and "Women’s position in the new Germany".

Von Moltke has been a subject of many interviews and articles. She told interviewer, Owings: "People who lived through the Nazi time, and who still live, who did not lose their lives because they were opposed, all had to make compromises."

With the reunification of Germany, von Moltke was supportive of transforming the former von Moltke estate in Kreisau into a meeting place to promote German-Polish and European mutual understanding. Poland and Germany invested 30 million DM in renovating the venue. It opened in 1998 as the Internationale Jugendbegegnungsstätte Kreisau (Kreisau International Youth Center). In 2004, a fund was established, the Freya von Moltke Stiftung für das Neue Kreisau (Freya von Moltke Foundation for the New Kreisau), to promote the long-term support of the meeting place and further the work done there. As of 2007, von Moltke actively supported this initiative as the honorary chair of the board of trustees of the Kreisau Foundation for European Understanding (the supporting entity for the Kreisau meeting site) and the Institute for Cultural Infrastructure, Sachsen in Görlitz. Her life served as the basis of a play by Marc Smith, A Journey to Kreisau.

Director Rachel Freudenburg's documentary film on the life of Freya von Moltke, including her last interview in English, premiered at Goethe-Institut, Boston, on 23 January 2011.

Recognition

In 1999, Dartmouth College awarded von Moltke an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for her writings on the German resistance during World War II. In same year, she accepted the Bruecke Prize from the city of Görlitz, Germany, in recognition of her life's work.

Von Moltke met with three German Chancellors in connection with her life's work, Helmut Kohl in 1998 to introduce him to the Kreisau International Youth Center built in Krzyżowa, Gerhard Schroeder in 2004 at a wreath-laying ceremony to honor Nazi resisters, and Angela Merkel in 2007 at a commemoration of the birth centenary of her husband, Helmuth von Moltke.

At the 11 March 2007 commemoration in Berlin, Merkel described Helmuth von Moltke as a symbol of "European courage".