Running to tears
Hopefuls
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PORTRAIT
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It is always worth doing something that you wouldn’t do for yourself. That can be found almost everywhere on this earth.
If we must already accept an era in which the greater probability of an early death exists, then we should at least ensure that there is a reason to die—to have lived.
Born as the fifth child of the Prussian Minister of Culture August von Trott zu Solz in Potsdam, Adam von Trott grew up in Berlin, Kassel, and on the Hessian family estate of Imshausen in an intellectually open environment. From 1927 onwards, he studied law in Munich, Berlin, and Göttingen. After receiving his doctorate, he accepted a Rhodes scholarship in Oxford and gained a large circle of English friends. He studied „PPE“ (Politics, Philosophy, Economics) and continued his legal apprenticeship in Germany from 1933 onwards. In 1936 he passed the Assessorexamen. He maintains connections with the socialist underground. From 1937/38 he spent a year as a Rhodes scholar in China. His numerous foreign visits deeply influenced him.
Upon returning to Germany, he contacted other opponents of the regime, including Helmuth James Graf von Moltke Hans von Dohnanyi, and in 1939 attempted to win the British government to cooperation. After the war began, he campaigned in the USA for the German resistance and became an employee in the information department of the Foreign Office in 1940, later head of the India desk and in 1943 legation council member. From 1942 to 1944, he frequently traveled to Switzerland and Sweden and made efforts to establish contacts with the Allies in order to secure the planned coup from a political perspective.
As a key member of the Kreisau District, he led the discussion on the foundations of future German foreign policy at the third Kreisau District Congress in Pentecost 1943. From autumn 1943 onwards, he worked closely with Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and Julius Leber. Five days after the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, he was arrested, sentenced to death by the „Volksgerichtshof“ on August 15, 1944, and hanged in the Strafgefängnis Berlin-Plötzensee on August 26, 1944.
© Memorial to the German Resistance
If we must already accept an era in which the greater probability of an early death exists, then we should at least ensure that there is a reason to die—to have lived.
Ardi Goldman Kunst-
und Kulturstiftung gGmbH
Uniongelände
Hanauer Landstraße 188, 60314 Frankfurt am Main