131-938: The Red Orchestra ( German : Rote Kapelle , pronounced [ˈʁoːtə kaˈpɛlə] ) was the name given by the Abwehr Section III.F to anti-Nazi resistance workers in Germany in August 1941. It primarily referred to a loose network of resistance groups, connected through personal contacts, uniting hundreds of opponents of the Nazi regime . These included groups of friends who held discussions that were centred on Harro Schulze-Boysen , Adam Kuckhoff and Arvid Harnack in Berlin, alongside many others. They printed and distributed prohibited leaflets, posters, and stickers, hoping to incite civil disobedience. They aided Jews and resistance to escape
262-460: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it
393-402: A second language , and 75–100 million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220 million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90 million people, or 16% of
524-587: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become
655-552: A conflict of interest and were intent on defaming the groups attached to Harnack and Schulze-Boysen with accusations of treason. The perpetuation of the defamation from the 1940s through to the 1970s that started with the Gestapo was incorporated by the Lüneburg Public Prosecutor's Office and evaluated as a journalistic process that can be seen by the 1968 trial of Nazi judge turned far-right Holocaust denier Manfred Roeder by
786-782: A critical historical document in the history of the Holocaust. After Nuremberg, Kempner split his time between the United States and Germany where he represented Jewish clients in restitution cases against Germany. He also appeared as an expert witness at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. When Kempner left the Nuremberg trials in the mid-1940s, he took away thousands of trial documents, which he brought back to his home in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania . According to Patricia Cohen, who refers to
917-468: A fellow Jewish inmate. As a trained pilot, he received a position of trust in 1934 in the Reich Ministry of Aviation and had access to war-important information. After his marriage to Libertas Schulze-Boysen in 1936, the couple collected young intellectuals from diverse backgrounds, including the artist couple Kurt and Elisabeth Schumacher , the writers Günther Weisenborn and Walter Küchenmeister ,
1048-502: A field office of Abwehr III.F in August 1941 and conducted against a Soviet intelligence station that had been detected in Brussels in June 1941. Kapelle was an accepted Abwehr term for counter-espionage operations against secret wireless transmitting stations and in the case of the Brussels stations Rote was used to differentiate from other enterprises conducted by Ast Belgium. In July 1942,
1179-629: A free and socially just Germany after the end of the National Socialism ' regime. The dancer Oda Schottmüller and Erika Gräfin von Brockdorff were friends with the Kuckhoffs. In 1937 Adam Kuckhoff introduced Harnack to the journalist and former journalist railway worker John Sieg , a former editor of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) newspaper the Die Rote Fahne . As a railway worker at
1310-556: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from
1441-647: A lawyer in Frankfurt from 1951. He died in Königstein im Taunus . Robert Max Wasilii Kempner was born in Freiburg, Germany , on 17 October 1899. He was the son of Walter Kempner and Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner , who were both microbiologists and regarded as one of the prominent scientist couples of their time. His mother was the second woman to become a professor in Prussia . He studied law, political science and other subjects at
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#17328486353211572-453: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained
1703-473: A plan to use money that had been provided to him, to create a business that would be the export division of The Raincoat King . The new business was given an unidiomatic name of Foreign Excellent Raincoat Company . Trepper's plan was to wait until the company gained market share, and then when it was of sufficient size, infiltrate it with communist personal in positions such as shareholders, business managers and department heads. On 6 March 1939, Trepper, now using
1834-623: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In
1965-569: A positive counter-model to the free-market economy. They wanted to introduce planned economic elements in Germany and work closely with the Soviet Union without breaking German bridges to the rest of Europe. Before 1933, Schulze-Boysen published the non-partisan leftist and later banned magazine German : Gegner , lit. 'opponent'. In April 1933, the Sturmabteilung detained him for some time, severely battered him, and killed
2096-586: A radio operator. In July 1939, Trepper was joined in Brussels by GRU agent Anatoly Gurevich posing as the wealthy Uruguayan Vincente Sierra Gurevich has already completed his first operation by meeting Schulze-Boysen in order to reestablish him as an intelligence source and to arrange courier service. Gurevich's original remit was to learn the operation of the raincoat company and establish a new store in Copenhagen . German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] )
2227-458: A representative of TASS . Von Scheliha's position in the information department exposed him to reports and images of Nazi atrocities, enabling him to verify the veracity of foreign reports of Nazi officials. By 1941, von Scheliha had become increasingly dissatisfied with the Nazi regime and began to resist by collaborating with Henning von Tresckow . Scheliha secretly made a collection of documents on
2358-475: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it
2489-688: Is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and
2620-580: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as
2751-596: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German
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#17328486353212882-546: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic
3013-472: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German
3144-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25 million speak it as
3275-520: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in
3406-595: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as
3537-559: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are
3668-486: Is moving through the people! ). The master copy was arranged by the potter Cato Bontjes van Beek and the pamphlet was written up by Maria Terwiel on her typewriter, five copies at a time. The paper describes how the care of Germany's future is decided by the people... and called for the opposition to the war, the Nazis, all Germans who now threaten the future of all. A copy survives to the present day. The text first analysed
3799-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and
3930-587: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as
4061-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German
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4192-510: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c. 1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period
4323-566: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish
4454-481: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers
4585-673: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to
4716-627: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as
4847-552: The Cold War . For a long time after World War II , only parts of the German resistance to Nazism had been known to the public within Germany and the world at large. This included the groups that took part in the 20 July plot and the White Rose resistance groups. In the 1970s there was a growing interest in the various forms of resistance and opposition. However, no organisations' history
4978-793: The Deutsche Reichsbahn , Sieg was able to make use of work-related travel, enabling him to found a communist resistance group in the Neukölln borough in Berlin. He knew the former Foreign Affairs Minister Wilhelm Guddorf and Martin Weise . In 1934 Guddorf was arrested and sentenced to hard labour. In 1939 after his release from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Guddorf worked as a bookseller, and worked closely with Schulze-Boysen. This network grew up after Adam and Greta Kuckhoff introduced Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen to Arvid and Mildred Harnack, and
5109-522: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share
5240-417: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language
5371-584: The Funkabwehr would eventually lead to the organisations destruction, the sophisticated use of the technology-enabled the organisation to behave as a network. During the 1930s, Trepper had worked to create a large pool of informal intelligence sources, through contacts with the French Communist Party . In 1936, Trepper became the technical director of Soviet Red Army Intelligence in Western Europe. He
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5502-514: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout
5633-724: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in
5764-749: The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg . Kempner studied law at the University of Freiburg and served as a public prosecutor in Berlin during the 1920s. In 1928, he was appointed chief legal adviser in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior . In this role he sought to prosecute Adolf Hitler for high treason and to ban the Nazi Party . After the Nazi Party's rise to power in 1933, Kempner
5895-644: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c. 765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in
6026-640: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung
6157-536: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit. ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this
6288-727: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the prosecutor's office gave Kempner permission to take the documents away, but according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the removal of documents by Kempner was contrary to law and proper procedure. Most significant among this historic cache was the diary of Alfred Rosenberg , one of Hitler's most long-standing leading supporters, who had been convicted and hanged for his war crimes in 1946. The loose-leaf diary pages, dating from 1936 through 1944, passed through various hands after Kempner's death at age 93 in 1993, until they were reported to have been finally recovered by U.S. ICE agents in June 2013. Rosenberg's diary
6419-400: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German
6550-529: The Wilmersdorf waiting room of Dr. Elfriede Paul, they began distributing the first leaflet on the Spanish Civil War. In the same year, Schulze-Boysen had compiled a document about a sabotage enterprise planned in Barcelona by the Wehrmacht "Special Staff W", an organisation established by Helmuth Wilberg to analyse the tactical lessons learned by the Legion Kondor during the war. The information that Schulze-Boysen collected included details about German transports, deployment of units and companies involved in
6681-408: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from
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#17328486353216812-444: The photojournalist John Graudenz (who had been expelled from the USSR for reporting the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 ) and Gisela von Pöllnitz , the actor Marta Husemann and her husband Walter in 1938, the doctors Elfriede Paul in 1937 and John Rittmeister in Christmas 1941, the dancer Oda Schottmüller , and since Schulze-Boysen held twice-monthly meetings at his Charlottenburg atelier for thirty-five to forty people in what
6943-521: The Belgian authorities refused him permission to remain, so he moved to the Netherlands in early 1937, where he made contact with Daniël Goulooze , who was director of the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN) and who acted as the main liaison officer between the CPN and the Communist International in Moscow. Leopold Trepper was an agent of the Red Army Intelligence and had been working with Soviet intelligence since 1930. Trepper along with Soviet military intelligence officer , Richard Sorge were
7074-614: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In
7205-414: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of
7336-423: The German Society of intellectuals . John Rittmeister's wife Eva was a good friend of Liane Berkowitz , Ursula Goetze , Friedrich Rehmer , Maria Terwiel and Fritz Thiel who met in the 1939 abitur class at the secondary private school, Heil'schen Abendschule at Berlin W 50, Augsburger Straße 60 in Schöneberg . The Romanist Werner Krauss joined this group, and through discussions, an active resistance to
7467-444: The German defense. Libertas's cousin, Gisela von Pöllnitz placed the letter in the mailbox of the Soviet Embassy on the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. After the Munich Agreement , Schulze-Boysen created a second leaflet with Walter Küchenmeister, that declared the annexation of the Sudetenland in October 1938 as a further step on the way to a new world war. This leaflet was called Der Stoßtrupp or The Raiding Patrol , and condemned
7598-417: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of
7729-425: The German lawyer Robert Kempner . The Frankfurt public prosecutor's office, which prosecuted the case against Roeder, based its investigation on procedure case number "1 Js 16/49" which was the trial case number defined by the Lüneburg Public Prosecutor's Office. The whole process propagated the Gestapo ideas of the Red Orchestra and this was promulgated in the report of the public prosecutor's office which stated: In
7860-399: The German states; the invention of the printing press c. 1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of
7991-623: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by
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#17328486353218122-547: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are
8253-644: The Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as a recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ), the Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German
8384-408: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c. thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c. 1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy
8515-401: The Nazi government and argued against the government's propaganda. A document that was used at the trial of Schulze-Boysen indicated that only 40 to 50 copies of the leaflet were distributed. From 1942 onwards, the group started to produce leaflets that were signed with AGIS in reference to the Spartan King Agis IV , who fought against corruption for his people. Naming the newspaper Agis ,
8646-509: The Nazi propaganda that the Red Army would murder all German soldiers who surrendered. In order to educate them about propaganda lies and Nazi crimes, the group copied and sent letters to soldiers on the Eastern Front, addressed to a fictitious police officer. In autumn 1941 the eyewitness Erich Mirek reported to Walter Husemann about mass murders of Jews by the SS and SD in Pinsk . The group announced these crimes in their letters. The Berlin group undoubtedly provided valuable intelligence to
8777-503: The Nazi regime grew. Ursula Goetze who was part of the group, provided contacts with the communist groups in Neukölln . From 1932 onwards, the economist Arvid Harnack and his American wife Mildred assembled a group of friends and members of the Berlin Marxist Workers School (MASCH) to form a discussion group that debated the political and economic perspectives at the time. Harnak's group meetings, in contrast to those of Schulze-Boysen's group, were considered rather austere. Members of
8908-437: The Nazi state became all-encompassing. Formats of the meetings usually started with book discussions in the first 90 minutes, were followed by Marxist discussions and resistance activities, and were interspersed with parties, picnics, sailing on the Wannsee and poetry readings until midnight as the mood took. However, as the realisation that the war preparations were becoming unstoppable and the future victors were not going to be
9039-495: The Prussian police in 1928. In 1935, Wilhelm Frick revoked Kempner's German citizenship, forcing him to emigrate to Italy and then later to the United States. He became an opponent of Nazism and left Germany after Hitler came to power, settling in the United States . There, he did research on European dictatorships at the University of Pennsylvania and was a consultant to the Department of Justice and other government agencies. After World War II Kempner returned to Germany,
9170-415: The Schulze-Boysen group. Through Walter Küchenmeister, the Schulze-Boysen group began to discuss more concrete actions, and during these meetings would listen to foreign radio stations from London, Paris and Moscow. A plan was formed to take advantage of Schulze-Boysen's employment, and through this, the group was able to get detailed information on Germany's support of Francisco Franco . Beginning in 1937, in
9301-498: The Soviet Union. However, a Soviet memo dated 25 November 1941 and recently discovered by Shareen Blair Brysac , details the organisational problems in evaluating the intelligence. Reports were forwarded to Lavrentiy Beria , who was unable to act on their contents, which resulted in the Red Army being unable to form a cogent response. Ultimately, the groups' efforts had no effect on Soviet military strategy. The cavalry officer, diplomat and later resistance fighter Rudolf von Scheliha
9432-542: The Soviet invasion including details of Hungarian airfields containing German planes. On 17 June, the People's Commissariat for State Security presented the report to Stalin, who harshly dismissed it as disinformation. In December 1941, John Sieg published The Home Front (German:Die Innere Front) on a regular basis. It contained texts by Walter Husemann, Fritz Lange , Martin Weise and Herbert Grasse , including information about
9563-621: The Sturmabteilung, Schulze-Boysen, whose decisions were in demand, called for the group to cease their discussions and start resisting. Other friends were found by Schulze-Boysen among former students of a reform school on the island of Scharfenberg in Berlin-Tegel . These often came from communist or social – democratic workers' families, e.g. Hans and Hilde Coppi , Heinrich Scheel , Hermann Natterodt and Hans and Ina Lautenschlager. Some of these contacts existed before 1933, for example through
9694-541: The action, Harnack asked the Kuckoffs to revisit the exhibition to determine whether any damage had been done to it, but they found little damage was visible. The Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, was seen as the beginning of the feared world war, but also as an opportunity to eliminate Nazi rule and to invoke a thorough transformation of German society. Hitler's victories in France and Norway in 1940 encouraged them to expect
9825-413: The alias Adam Mikler , a wealthy Canadian businessman, moved, with his wife, to Brussels to make it his new base. In March 1939, Trepper was joined by GRU agent Mikhail Makarov posing as Carlos Alamo , who was to provide expertise in forged documentation e.g. preparation of Kennkartes . However, Grossvogel had recruited Abraham Rajchmann , a criminal forger, to the group and thenceforth Makarov became
9956-752: The atrocities of the Gestapo, and in particular, on murders of Jews in Poland, documents which also contained photographs of newly established extermination camps. He informed his friends first before later attempting to notify the Allies, including a trip to Switzerland with information on Aktion T4 that was shared with Swiss diplomats. His later reports exposed the Final Solution . After Operation Barbarossa severed Soviet lines of communication in Berlin, Soviet intelligence made attempts to reconnect with von Scheliha in May 1942, but
10087-705: The case of the Red Orchestra was taken over from Ast Belgium by section IV. A.2. of the Sicherheitsdienst . When Soviet agent Anatoly Gurevich was arrested in November 1942, a small independent unit made up of Gestapo personnel known as the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle was formed in Paris in the same month and led by SS-Obersturmbannführer (Colonel) Friedrich Panzinger . The Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA),
10218-497: The counter-espionage part of the Schutzstaffel (SS), referred to resistance radio operators as "pianists", their transmitters as "pianos", and their supervisors as "conductors". Only after the funkabwehr had decrypted radio messages in August 1942, in which German names appeared, did the Gestapo start to arrest and imprison them, their friends and relatives. In 2002, the German filmmaker Stefan Roloff , whose father Helmut Roloff
10349-594: The couples began engaging socially. Their hitherto separate groups moved together once the Polish campaign began in September 1939. From 1940 onwards, they regularly exchanged their opinions on the war and other Nazi policies and sought action against it. Through such contacts, a loose network formed in Berlin in the early weeks of 1942, of seven interconnected groups centred on personal friendships as well as groups originally formed for discussion and education. This disparate network
10480-399: The course of time, a group of political supporters of different characters and backgrounds gathered around these two men and their wives. They were united in their active opposition to National Socialism and in their support for communism (emphasis added by the author). Until the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union, the focus of their work was on domestic policy. After that, it shifted more to
10611-588: The current situation: contrary to the Nazi propaganda , most German armies were in retreat, the number of war dead was in the millions. Inflation, scarcity of goods, plant closures, labour agitation and corruption in State authorities were occurring all the time. Then the text examined German war crimes: In May 1942, Joseph Goebbels held a Nazi propaganda exhibition with the ironic name of The Soviet Paradise (German original title "Das Sowjet-Paradies") in Lustgarten , with
10742-581: The defense strategies of the accused and for preparing cross-examinations. Kempner also presented the case against his old nemesis Wilhelm Frick. This irony was not lost on the American press. One headline read, "Man He Exiled Presents Case Against Frick." Kempner also served as counsel at the 1947–1948 trial of the German Foreign Office and is credited with finding the text of the Wannsee Protocol ,
10873-478: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with
11004-452: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in
11135-507: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of
11266-469: The economic situation in Europe, references to Moscow radio frequencies, and calls for resistance. It was produced in several languages for foreign forced labourers in Germany. Only one copy from August 1942 has survived. After the attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Hilde Coppi had secretly listened to Moscow radio in order to receive signs of life from German prisoners of war and to forward them to their relatives via Heinrich Scheel. This news contradicted
11397-535: The effort failed. Other small groups and individuals, who knew little or nothing about each other, each resisted the National Socialists in their own way until the Gestapo arrested them and treated them as a common espionage organisation from 1942 to 1943. Belgium was a favourite place for Soviet espionage to establish operations before World War II as it was geographically close to the centre of Europe, provided good commercial opportunities between Belgium and
11528-487: The exploit, believing it to be reckless and unnecessarily dangerous. On 18 May, Herbert Baum , a Jewish communist who had contact with the Schulze-Boysen group through Walter Husemann , delivered incendiary bombs to the exhibition in the hope of destroying it. Although 11 people were injured, the whole episode was covered up by the government, and the action lead to the arrest of 250 Jews including Baum himself. Following
11659-571: The express purpose of justifying the invasion of the Soviet Union to the German people. Both the Harnacks and Kuckhoffs spent half a day at the exhibition. For Greta Kuckhoff particularly and her friends, the most distressing aspect of the exhibition was the installation about SS measures against Russian "partisans" ( Soviet partisans ). The exhibition contained images of firing squads and bodies of young girls, some still children, who had been hung and were dangling from ropes. The group decided to act. It
11790-462: The field of treason and espionage in favour of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of 1942, the Schulze-Boysen group was finally integrated into the widely ramified network of Soviet intelligence in Western Europe. The value of the intelligence passed on by the Schulze-Boysen group to the Soviet intelligence service cannot be underestimated according to general judgement. All persons who had to deal with this material in their official capacity agree that it
11921-514: The group included the German politician and Minister of Culture Adolf Grimme , the locksmith Karl Behrens , the German journalist Adam Kuckhoff and his wife Greta and the industrialist and entrepreneur Leo Skrzypczynski. From 1935, Harnack tried to camouflage his activities by becoming a member of the Nazi Party working in the Reich Ministry of Economics with the rank of Oberregierungsrat. Through this work, Harnack planned to train them to build
12052-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,
12183-474: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of
12314-521: The land of his birth, to serve as assistant U.S. chief counsel during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg . In a reversal of fortune, Kempner would prosecute two of his former superiors and persecutors — Göring and Frick. More familiar with the German legal system than any other member of the Allied staff, Kempner headed the Defense Rebuttal Section, the team responsible for anticipating
12445-479: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Robert Kempner Robert Max Wasilii Kempner (17 October 1899 – 15 August 1993) was a German lawyer of Jewish descent who played a prominent role during the Weimar Republic and who later served as assistant U.S. chief counsel during
12576-623: The lens of ideology. In the 1980s, the GDR historian Heinrich Scheel , who at the time was vice president of the East German Academy of Sciences and who was part of the anti-Nazi Tegeler group (named after the area they met in, in Berlin) that included Hans Coppi from 1933, conducted research into the Rote Kapelle and produced a paper which took a more nuanced view of the Rote Kapelle and discovered
12707-486: The low countries, that were built up by Leopold Trepper on behalf of the Main Directorate of State Security (GRU) . Trepper ran a series of clandestine cells for organising agents. He used the latest technology, in the form of small wireless radios, to communicate with Soviet intelligence. Although the monitoring of the radios' transmissions by the Funkabwehr would eventually lead to the organisation's destruction,
12838-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted
12969-492: The next within clandestine communist cells and had seen how easily such connections were lost if a meeting did not materialise due to one party being arrested. In a relaxed group of friends and discussion with like-minded people, it was easy to find supporters for an action. From 1933 onwards, the Berlin groups connected to Schulze-Boysen and Harnack resisted the Nazis by: From mid-1936, the Spanish Civil War preoccupied
13100-630: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from
13231-559: The perspective of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) the Red Orchestra were honoured as anti-fascist resistance fighters and indeed received posthumous orders in 1969. Accordingly, the most comprehensive collection of biographies that exist are from the GDR, by Karl Heinz Biernat and Luise Kraushaar Die Schulze- Boysen- Harnack- Organisation im antifaschistischen Kampf (2002) and they represent their point of view, through
13362-413: The phone book. Extensive precautions were taken, including wearing gloves, using many different typewriters and destroying the carbon paper . John Graudenz also produced, running duplicate mimeograph machines in the apartment of Anna Krauss . On 15 February 1942, the group wrote the large 6-page pamphlet called Die Sorge Um Deutschlands Zukunft geht durch das Volk! ( Anxiety about Germany's future
13493-506: The private sector. For instance, Schulze-Boysen and Harnack shared some ideas with the Communist Party of Germany, while others were devout Catholics such as Maria Terwiel and her husband Helmut Himpel . Uniting all of them was the firm rejection of national socialism. The historian Heinrich Scheel, a schoolmate of Hans Coppi, judged these groups by stating: As early as 1934, Scheel had passed written material from one contact person to
13624-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation
13755-594: The regime, documented the atrocities of the Nazis, and transmitted military intelligence to the Allies. Contrary to legend, the Red Orchestra was neither directed by Soviet communists nor under a single leadership. It was a network of groups and individuals, often operating independently. To date, about 400 members are known by name. The term was also used by the German Abwehr to refer to associated Soviet intelligence networks, working in Belgium, France, United Kingdom and
13886-458: The replacement of the Nazi regime, above all from the Soviet Union , not from Western capitalism. They believed that the Soviet Union would keep Germany as a sovereign state after its victory and that they wanted to work towards a corresponding opposition without domination by the Communist Party of Germany. Around 13 June 1941, Harro Schulze-Boysen prepared a report that gave the final details of
14017-585: The resistance groups around the Luftwaffe officer Harro Schulze-Boysen , the writer Adam Kuckhoff and the economist Arvid Harnack , to which historians assign more than 100 people. Harnack and Schulze-Boysen had similar political views, both rejected the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, and sought alternatives to the existing social order. Since the Great Depression of 1929, they saw the Soviet planned economy as
14148-500: The rest of Europe and most important of all, the Belgian government was indifferent to foreign espionage operations that were conducted as long as they were against foreign powers and not Belgium itself. The first Soviet agents to arrive in Belgium were technicians. The Red Army agent, communist agitator and radio specialist Johann Wenzel arrived in January 1936, to establish a base. However,
14279-417: The sophisticated use of the technology enabled the organisation to behave as a network, with the ability to achieve tactical surprise and deliver high-quality intelligence, including the warning of Operation Barbarossa . To this day, the German public perception of the "Red Orchestra" is characterised by the vested interest in historical revisionism of the post-war years and propaganda efforts of both sides of
14410-541: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,
14541-496: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in
14672-409: The two main Soviet agents in Europe and were employed as roving agents setting up espionage networks in Europe and Japan. Whereas Richard Sorge was a penetration agent , Trepper ran a series of clandestine cells for organising agents. Trepper used the latest technology, in the form of small wireless radios to communicate with Soviet intelligence. Although the monitoring of the radios transmissions by
14803-473: The universities of Berlin , Breslau and Freiburg . As a law student Kempner sat as an observer in the trial against Soghomon Tehlirian , who had assassinated Talaat Pasha in 1921, and made his defence an impeachment on the Armenian genocide and Talaat's involvement in it. After finishing his studies Kempner became a successful lawyer in Berlin during the 1920s, and then advanced to chief legal advisor to
14934-519: The work that was done to defame them. Scheel's work led to a re-evaluation of the Rote Kapelle, but it was not until 2009 that the German Bundestag overturned the judgments of the National Socialist judiciary for "treason" and rehabilitated the members of the group. The name Rote Kapelle was a cryptonym that was invented for a secret operation started by Abwehrstelle Belgium (Ast Belgium),
15065-543: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during
15196-579: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching
15327-470: Was Fritz Thiel and his wife Hannelore who printed stickers using a child's toy rubber stamp kit. In a campaign initiated by John Graudenz on 17 May 1942, Schulze-Boysen, Marie Terwiel and nineteen others, mostly people from the group around Rittmeister, travelled across five Berlin neighbourhoods to paste the stickers over the original exhibition posters with the message: The Harnacks were dismayed at Schulze-Boysen's actions and decided not to participate in
15458-583: Was a Der Spiegel journalist. Höhne based his book on the investigation by the Lüneburg Public Prosecutor's Office against the General Judge of the Luftwaffe and Nazi apologist Manfred Roeder who was involved in the Harnack and Schulze-Boysen cases during World War II and who contributed decisively to the formation of the legend that survived for much of the Cold War period. In his book Höhne reports from former Gestapo and Reich war court individuals who had
15589-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of
15720-557: Was a member of one of the Red Orchestra groups, stated of them: In his research, the historian Hans Coppi Jr. , whose father was also a member, Hans Coppi , emphasised that, in view of the Western European groups: The German political scientist Johannes Tuchel summed up in a research article for the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand . The Red Orchestra, as historically viewed in the world today, are mainly
15851-530: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially
15982-468: Was appointed director of an information department in the Foreign Office, that was created to counter foreign press and radio news by creating propaganda about the German occupation policy in Poland. This necessitated a move back to Berlin, and Stöbe followed, attaining a position arranged by von Scheliha in the press section of the Foreign Office, that enabled her to pass documents from von Scheliha to
16113-407: Was composed of over 150 Berlin Nazi opponents, including artists, scientists, citizens, workers, and students from several different backgrounds. There were Communists , political conservatives, Jews , Catholics , and atheists . Their ages ranged from 16 to 86, and about 40% of the group were women. Group members had different political views, but searched for the open exchange of views, at least in
16244-445: Was considered a Bohemian circle of friends. Initially, these meetings followed an informatics program of resistance that was in keeping with its environment and were important places of personal and political understanding but also vanishing points from an often unbearable reality, essentially serving as islands of democracy . As the decade progressed they increasingly served as identity-preserving forms of self-assertion and cohesion as
16375-449: Was dismissed from the ministry and had his citizenship revoked because he was Jewish. He fled Germany in 1935. He settled in Italy, where he taught law, and moved to the United States in 1939. In the United States he became an adviser to the government, and he returned to his native country to take part in the Nuremberg trials in 1945. After the trials he remained in Germany, where he practised as
16506-485: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which
16637-551: Was originally a name chosen by Libertas Schulze-Boysen . The pamphlets had titles like, The becoming of the Nazi movement , Call for opposition , Freedom and violence and Appeal to All Callings and Organisations to resist the government . The writing of the AGIS leaflet series was a mix of Schulze-Boysen and Walter Küchenmeister , a communist political writer, who would often include copy from KPD members and through contacts. They were often left in phone booths or selected addresses from
16768-478: Was recruited by Soviet intelligence while in Warsaw in 1934. Although a member of the Nazi party since 1938, he took an increasingly critical stance against the Nazi regime by 1938 at the latest. He became an informant to journalist Rudolf Herrnstadt . Intelligence from von Scheliha would be sent to Herrnstadt, via the cutout Ilse Stöbe , who would then pass it to the Soviet embassy in Warsaw. In September 1939, Scheliha
16899-568: Was responsible for recruiting agents and creating espionage networks. During early 1938, he was sent to Brussels to establish commercial cover for a spy network in France and the Low Countries . In the autumn of 1938, Trepper approached a Jewish businessman and former Comintern agent Léon Grossvogel , whom he had known in Palestine. Grossvogel ran a small business called Le Roi du Caoutchouc or The Raincoat King on behalf of its owners. Trepper had
17030-427: Was so subject to systematic misinformation, and as little recognised, as those resistance groups centered on Arvid Harnack and Harro Schulze-Boysen . In a number of publications, the groups that these two people represented were seen as traitors and spies. An example of these was Kennwort: Direktor; die Geschichte der Roten Kapelle ( Password: Director; The history of the Red Orchestra ) written by Heinz Höhne who
17161-488: Was the most dangerous treason organisation uncovered during World War II.... In no... case, however, it is certain that those convicted were only sentenced for high treason and favouring the enemy. The Schulze-Boysen group was first and foremost a spy organisation for the Soviet Union. Since the outbreak of war with Russia, internal resistance took a back seat to espionage work, and it can be assumed that all members were used directly or indirectly for intelligence gathering. From
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