Freya von Moltke, a founding member of the Nazi-resistance group Kreisau Circle, died on New Year’s Day at the age of 98.
According to her son, von Moltke died because of a viral infection she had last week. She had been living in the United States since 1960 although being German-born.
After WWII von Moltke published numerous writings about her life, her husband’s life, and the resistance movement they led for several years.
Helmuth von Moltke, Freya’s husband, was a prominent lawyer who was drafted into the German army in 1939 as an international and martial law specialist. On his travels around the country he witnessed many horrible human rights abuses which he frequently wrote to his wife about. He also advocated for the humane treatment of prisoners of war and civilians in German-occupied territories under the Geneva Conventions. He was eventually tired, convicted, and executed for his ideas, considered to be a threat to the regime.
Freya von Moltke once told an interviewer, “To object and then to stand for what you believe in is one of the most important human activities to this day.”
The anti-Nazi group, known as Kreisau Circle, was a collection of clergy, economic experts and diplomats. They met several times to discuss such things as a ‘new’ Germany in a post-Hitler era. Their writings, including “Principles for the New [Post-Nazi] Order”, were preserved by the sole efforts of Freya von Moltke who hid them from the Nazis in her beehives.
The group supported but did not participate in the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.
