After their brief trial on the morning of February 22, 1943, Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst heard their death sentence at 12:45 p.m. The authorities in Berlin were eager for the sentence to be carried out that same day. […]
Sophie was taken to the guillotine first; Christoph was to be last. Two minutes after she had gone, the guards came for Hans. The official record of execution notes that the time elapsed between removal from the cell and death was fifty-two seconds and that “the condemned was tranquil and composed.” It adds: “His last words were, ‘Long live freedom!’”
The previous October, Sophie, in a letter to a friend, sketched out her own sense of what freedom is for. We are, she suggested, to use the freedom the Creator has given us to choose the beauty of his plan for ourselves and for the world. Despite the horrors of human history, she was confident this plan would prevail:
Isn’t it mysterious – and frightening, too, when one doesn’t know the reason – that everything should be so beautiful in spite of the terrible things that are happening? My sheer delight in all things beautiful has been invaded by a great unknown, an inkling of the Creator whom his creatures glorify with their beauty. – That’s why man alone can be ugly, because he has the free will to disassociate himself from this song of praise. Nowadays one is often tempted to believe that he’ll drown the song with gunfire and curses and blasphemy. But it dawned on me last spring that he can’t, and I’ll try to take the winning side.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians it means that we are to take part in Christ’s greatness of heart, in the responsible action that in freedom lays hold of the hour and faces the danger, and in the true sympathy that springs forth not from fear but from Christ’s freeing and redeeming love for all who suffer.