Elisabeth Magdalena (Nina) Schenk Gräfin[1] von Stauffenberg (27 August 1913 – 2 April 2006) was the wife of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the failed plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.
She was born as Freiin[2] von Lerchenfeld in Kowno, Russian Empire (now Kaunas, Lithuania), to General Consul Gustav Freiherr von Lerchenfeld (1871–1944) and the Baltic-German noblewoman Anna Freiin von Stackelberg (1880–1945).
Nina met Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a Roman Catholic, at the age of sixteen while attending a girls' boarding school in Wieblingen, Heidelberg. They were engaged on his twenty-third birthday and married three years later on 26 September 1933, in Bamberg. In accordance with von Stauffenberg tradition, the couple's children were raised Catholic, even though Nina, as well as Stauffenberg's mother, was a Protestant. The marriage produced five children:
After her husband's failed attempt to assassinate Hitler (von Stauffenberg was executed the night of 21 July), Nina was arrested by the Gestapo and taken into custody. (cf. the practice of Sippenhaft). Since the children did not know what their father had done, the government placed them in an orphanage in Bad Sachsa, Lower Saxony, under false names (Meister), since Stauffenberg was no longer acceptable.
Nina von Stauffenberg (who had been pregnant at the time of Stauffenberg's death) gave birth to her fifth child, Konstanze, on 17 January 1945, while imprisoned in a Nazi maternity center in Frankfurt an der Oder. That same year, her mother Anna died in a Russian camp.
By the war's end, she had been moved to the Italian province of Bolzano-Bozen, where she was held as a hostage in return for the redemption of Nazi property. After the war, she was reunited with her family at the Stauffenberg family seat in Lautlingen, Baden-Württemberg.
In the post-war era, she applied herself to the harmonious coexistence of Germans and American soldiers stationed in Germany.
Nina von Stauffenberg died on April 2, 2006, aged 92, at Kirchlauter near Bamberg, Bavaria and was buried there on April 8.
References
For English-language references, see the article on Claus von Stauffenberg.
- (German) Zeller, Eberhard (1994). Oberst Claus Graf Stauffenberg. Ein Lebensbild. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. ISBN 3506797700.
- (German) Steffahn, Harald (2002). Stauffenberg. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag Reinbek. ISBN 3-499-50520-7.
- (German) Ueberschär, Gerd R. (2004). Stauffenberg. Der 20. Juli 1944. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag. ISBN 3100860039.
- (German) Von Hassel, Fey. "Niemals sich beugen". dtv.
- (German) Von Meding, Dorothee (1997). Mit dem Mut des Herzens – Die Frauen des 20. Juli. btb Verlag. ISBN 3-442-72171-7.
Notes
- ^ Regarding personal names: Gräfin is a title, translated as Countess, not a first or middle name. The male form is Graf.
- ^ Regarding personal names: Freiin is a title, translated as Baroness, not a first or middle name. The title is for the unmarried daughters of a Freiherr.
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