History
Presenter(s): Tori Menninger
Advisor(s): Dr. Marilyn Harran
While most Germans remained silent and acquiescent to Nazi authority during the Third Reich, resistance was never absent. Both men and women participated in various forms of resistance, although women often conducted their resistance behind the scenes. The Rosenstrasse Protest was an exception in that it was a public, non-violent protest initiated by non-Jewish German women married to Jewish men. This non-violent protest occurred in Berlin in the spring of 1943 in opposition to the planned deportation of the women’s husbands. It was a highly unusual public display of civil disobedience. To quell the possibility of more unrest, Nazi authorities released all but 25 of the 2,000 arrested Jews. While these women were public in their opposition, other women worked behind the scenes in secret resistance activities. The Kreisau Circle was one such secret resistance group. The members of the Kreisau Circle were men, but several of their wives were partners in their husbands’ efforts. This was the case for the wives of the two co-leaders of the Kreisau Circle, Marion Grӓfin Yorck von Wartenburg, married to Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, and Freya von Moltke, married to Helmuth James von Moltke. Grӓfin Wartenburg, whose husband was executed along with von Moltke, was herself imprisoned by the Nazis. Freya von Moltke endangered herself by hiding her husband’s letters to her in a beehive to keep them out of the hands of the Gestapo. The women of the Rosenstrasse Protest and the Kreisau Circle represent the public and private faces of German women’s resistance to the Nazis.
Art(ifacts): The Rights of the Artist vs Historical Preservation
Presenter(s): Amanda Mulqueen
Advisor(s): Dr. Marilyn Harran
Restitution of art stolen by the Nazis remains a complex and contested issue. Dina Babbitt’s claim for the return of art is an unusual one in that it involves art she created under duress while a prisoner of the Nazis in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The case involves personal vs. institutional property rights, as well as memory and ethics. While imprisoned at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Babbitt, a Czech Jew, was ordered by Josef Mengele to create a series of watercolor portraits of Romani prisoners for his so-called genetic research. Days after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau Babbitt’s watercolor portraits were given to Stanislaw Krcz by an unnamed prisoner as a gift when he adopted Ewa, one of the very few toddlers allowed to live as a prisoner in the women’s barracks. Seven of Babbitt’s watercolors resurfaced in the 1960s and ‘70s and were returned to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum in the form of donations by the adopted Ewa Krcz. Museum officials recognized Babbitt’s signature and informed her that the portraits were now within their possession. When Babbitt sought to reclaim them as her creative work, the Museum refused arguing that as work created at the camp the portraits are artifacts of Auschwitz-Birkenau and must remain in situ. This project examines the circumstances under which Babbitt created the portraits and the arguments and legal precedents in support of Babbitt’s and the Museum’s positions, concluding that the Museum’s refusal to return the portraits to Babbitt and now to her heirs privileges artifact over art and the creative rights of the artist.