Libertas Viktoria "Libs" Schulze-Boysen ( Haas-Heye; 20 November 1913 – 22 December 1942) was a German noblewoman and resistance fighter against the Nazis. From the early 1930s to 1940, she attempted to build a literary career, first as a press officer and later as a writer and journalist. Initially sympathetic to the Nazis, she changed her mind after meeting and marrying Luftwaffe officer Harro Schulze-Boysen. As an aristocrat, Schulze-Boysen had contact with many different people in different strata of German society. Starting in 1935, she utilized her position to recruit left-leaning Germans into discussion groups which she hosted at her and Harro's apartment, where they sought to influence their guests. Through these discussions, resistance to the Nazi regime grew, and by 1936, she and Harro began to actively resist the Nazis. During the early 1940s, whilst working as a censor for the German Documentary Film Institute, Schulze-Boysen began to document atrocities committed by the Nazis from photographs of war crimes forwarded by soldiers of the Sonderbehandlungen task force to the Film Institute.

By 1940, the couple came into contact with other Berlin-based anti-fascist resistance groups and collaborated with them. The most important of these was run by Arvid Harnack. From April 1941, their underground resistance group became an espionage network that supplied military and economic intelligence to the Soviet Union. That organisation became known as the Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle") by the Abwehr. Schulze-Boysen was fully aware of her husband's espionage activities and became one of his most active agents, working as a courier, a writer of seditious pamphlets and a recruiter for the group. When Harro was not present she deputised as the leader of the group. When her husband was arrested in August 1942 by the Gestapo, she made a valiant attempt to destroy evidence of their work and warn other members of the group, but it was to no avail. Schulze-Boysen was arrested in September 1942, a month after her husband Harro, and both were executed on the same day in Plötzensee Prison.

Life

Schulze-Boysen was born in Paris, the youngest of three children. Her father was the Heidelberg-born Otto Ludwig Haas-Heye (1879–1959), couturier to the aristocracy, and her mother was a noted pianist, Countess Viktoria Ada Astrid Agnes zu Eulenburg (1886–1967). Libertas's parents married in on 13 May 1909 and lived for a time in London and Paris. They were Protestants who believed in providing a religious foundation for their children. Despite her upbringing, Libertas never became overtly religious, although many of her early poems and later letters show Christian roots. Her sister was Countess Ottora Maria Douglas-Reimer (1910–2001), who married Count Carl Douglas (1908–1961), a Swedish diplomat. The couple had four children: Count Gustav Archibald Sigvart Douglas (1938–2023), a stockbroker, Princess Elisabeth Christina Douglas (b. 1940), Rosita Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (b. 1943), an artist, and their youngest son, Carl Philipp Morton, (1945- ) a civil engineer. Libertas's older brother, (1912 - 2008), was a journalist and diplomat.

Her mother was known as "Thora"—spelled "Tora"—and came from an old Prussian noble family. She was the youngest of the eight children of the Prussian diplomat and composer Prince Philipp zu Eulenburg and his Swedish wife, Countess Augusta Constantia Ulrike Charlotte Sandels. Philipp zu Eulenburg was a close friend of Kaiser William II, German Emperor. Eulenburg and William II were allegedly lovers. This allegation was published as a series of articles by influential journalist Maximilian Harden in the Berlin newspapers between 1907 and 1909. It ran so long that it became known as the Eulenburg affair.

In 1921, when Libertas was eight years old, her parents divorced (unusual at the time) and her grandfather died. Libertas spent part of her childhood at Eulenburg's country estate, Liebenberg Castle (near Berlin). She was taught initially by a governess.

In 1922, she began attending a school in Berlin while living with her father, who headed the fashion department of the Kunstgewerbemuseum. Later, a co-worker of her father (artist Valerie Wolffenstein) supervised her during a summer in Switzerland in 1924, where Libertas learned to draw. Between 1926 and 1932, Schulze-Boysen was sent to be educated at boarding schools in Paris, London and Switzerland.

Education In 1932, Schulze-Boysen completed her Abitur at a girls' finishing school in Zurich, followed by a 9-month stay in Ireland and the United Kingdom. After returning in January 1933, Schulze-Boysen attended a Nazi torchlight procession that marched past the Reich Chancellery. Though not totally understanding the new and powerful German Youth Movement, she was impressed enough with them to join the Nazi Party with member number 1 551 344, in March 1933, and at the same time the League of German Girls (German: Bund Deutscher Mädel).

Career As a press officer In May of the same year, Schulze-Boysen moved to Berlin after being hired by the motion picture company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) as a press officer. The position consisted of writing reviews to inform the media and public about new cinematic releases. During the spring of 1933, the film studio had sacked all its Jewish employees, leaving it short-staffed and making openings for non-Jewish workers. Initially, Libertas worked on press copy for the American films Sons of the Desert and Dancing Lady, both of which were immediate successes. In May 1933, when the studio started to feel the effects of Nazi censorship, it was forced to drop Herman Mankiewicz's screenplay The Mad Dog of Europe, a film meant to illuminate the worsening treatment of Jews in Germany at that time. Mankiewicz would later go on to write the screenplay for Citizen Kane.

In April 1934, Libertas met Harro Schulze-Boysen while they were both sailing on the Wannsee. Harro Schulze-Boysen had been the publisher of the left-liberal magazine Der Gegner (English: "The Opponent") between 1932 and 1933. It was closed down when he was arrested by the Sturmabteilung in April 1933. He was badly beaten and lost half his ear, and was only released due to the influence of his mother. Besides the mutilation of his ear, the attack left Harro with damaged kidneys. His Jewish friend Henry Erlanger, who was arrested at the same time, did not survive the beating.

Harro was in the habit of bringing his work friends from Der Gegner together with his other friends and colleagues for social evenings in his apartment, during which they discussed philosophical and political questions of the day. To protect themselves from persecution, the couple surrounded themselves with a group of politically incorruptible friends who were left-leaning anti-fascists, among them artists, pacifists and communists.

In October 1934, the couple moved in together to an apartment in Hohenzollerndamm, in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. On 15 January 1935, Schulze-Boysen left to join the Reich Labour Service for female youth (Freiwilligen Arbeitsdienst für die weibliche Jugend) for six months' voluntary work near Glindow, close to Potsdam. On 18 July 1935, she completed her six months of voluntary service, she returned to work at MGM. Her lack of enthusiasm for her voluntary service was such that she decided to write a book that was brutally honest, that described the daily fight for assertion, the status of women in the community and the fight for ideals. She submitted the manuscript to the writer Ernst von Salomon, a family friend who worked at the Rowohlt publishing house for review. Salomon believed it was good enough to publish, but had doubts as to whether the Reich Labour Service would allow it. Rowohlt wanted to publish it for precisely for that reason. Libertas intended to submit the manuscript for review to the Reich Labour Service, but whether that actually happened, is unknown. Salomon heard nothing further on that point. The nature of her work at MGM—the tedious cycle of film promotion and censor work—made Libertas restless.

Starting in July 1935, Schulze-Boysen began working on Harro's magazine Wille zum Reich ("Will to Empire") as an editor and translator. The magazine dealt with cultural and political issues, but with the goal of undermining the Nazi movement with the magazine's own themes. In August 1935, Harro was given permission by the Ministry of Aviation (Luftfahrtministerium) to attend a series of lectures on the League of Nations in Geneva, and Libertas accompanied him. On the way home, the couple stopped at the Château de Muzot to visit the last home of the Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke as well as visit his tomb.

In the spring of 1936, Schulze-Boysen applied to leave the Nazi party by submitting a resignation request to the Reichsleitung der NSDAP in Munich.

Marriage During Easter in 1936, the couple were engaged and lived together for a year before getting married on 26 July 1936. The wedding took place in the chapel of Liebenberg Castle under a painting of Guido Reni, with Hermann Göring giving away the bride. For their honeymoon, the couple visited Stockholm in Sweden, where Harro was introduced to Libertas's Swedish relatives, her sister Ottora and her sister's husband Count Douglas. Harro was on duty during the short honeymoon that the couple took between 27 July and 9 August 1936. He had arranged a language study trip from his employer and he had submitted a confidential report upon his return, that detailed the description and the constitution of the crafts in the bays. At the time, Libertas was unprepared for the fact that Harro spent more time looking at the military installations and the ships in the harbour than at her. Schulze-Boysen considered herself a libertine and the couple had an open marriage.

First mission In August 1936, the journalist Evan James, an English friend of Libertas's from her 1933 stay in England, lodged with the couple to report on the 1936 Summer Olympics. At the time, Harro wanted to give James the details on prisoner numbers from the Spanish Civil War, compiled from situation reports his office received, so he could get them published by the BBC. However James refused, stating the source would be too easy to identify. Instead, Libertas translated the bombastic words from the first page of Mein Kampf, to warn him, to show him, that there would be war. However, James did not want to hear. Instead the couple showed James the anti-Jewish notices in the shops but what is so obvious to them, that the Nazi consolidation of power will lead to war, was not so obvious to James. At the time Harro was dumbfounded at James' attitude but gradually realised that his position in the Air Ministry could give him access to valuable information but to access the most valuable and sensitive information, he would need to rise in the ranks. They decided to invite Göring to the Liebenberg estate, to hunt deer, on 6 September 1936. Göring's country estate of Carinhall was next to Liebenberg Castle. In essence it was a charm offensive, led by Libertas, to get Harro noticed. Libertas was successful as Göring made an enquiry to Hans-Jürgen Stumpff, who reported the Harro Schulze-Boysen was considered unreliable due to his political involvements before 1933. Göring replied that the "...old things should be left alone" and that Harro should be sent on a pilots course, enabling his career advancement.

On 1 October 1936, the couple moved into an apartment at 2 Waitzstraße in Charlottenburg. At the same time, their marriage ran into trouble. Due to pain in Harro's kidneys and the Swastika carved into his leg when he was arrested, he found lovemaking difficult. After sex, his urine would turn red. Libertas realised the marriage was in trouble and influenced by the views of her husband, returned her Nazi membership booklet.

Picnic meetings