Professor Kurt Huber (24 October 1893 - 1943) was a member of the White Rose group which formed resistance to Nazi Germany.
He was born in Chur, Switzerland.
Kurt Huber was born on October 24, 1893, in Chur, Switzerland, of German parents. When he was four years old, the family moved to Stuttgart. His musical talents were furthered by his parents. In 1903, Huber was admitted to the Eberhard-Ludwig-Gymnasium, a secondary school. After his father's death, the widow and her children moved to Munich. Kurt Huber studied musicology psychology and philosophy. Having obtained his doctorate in 1917, he was installed as a lecturer in 1920 and became an Associate Professor that same year.
In 1929, he married Clara Schlickenrieder.
On assignment from the german Academy, in 1925 he started to collect folk songs of Old Bavaria. Trips to the Balkan, to Southern France and to Spain yielded important musical material.
Kurt Huber was deeply shocked when the first news of the rampant state-sanctioned and state-organized mass atrocities in German-occupied Poland and the Soviet Union leaked out. These reports were confirmed by a student. For the national liberal oriented Huber it was difficult to accept the fact that not the Bolsheviks, but his very own compatriots, his own government, murdered systematically.
In the fall of 1942, Kurt Huber was contacted by members of the White Rose circle. The students of that group attended his lectures. He was approached by Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell for advice. In the Schmorell home and in the studio of the architect Eickemeyer, he met these students and other Nazi opponents. He heard about the leaflets.
Stalingrad, with some 230,000 dead on the German side, provoked the following remark in a lecture: "The time of phrases is over." Huber, too, now made demands which the students had already expressed in their third leaflet: "Not the military victory over Bolshevism must be the first concern of every German, but the defeat of National Socialism." He then himself wrote the sixth and last leaflet: 'Kommilitoninnen! Kommilitonen!' (Fellow students!)
On February 27, 1943, Kurt Huber was arrested. On April 19, 1943, he was one of the major defendants at the second trial of the People's Court against the White Rose. Roland Freisler, presiding, launched the most vicious attack against Huber during the show-trial. He denied that Huber had had any honorable motivation and repeatedly humiliated him. Survivors of this travesty of justice remember Huber's last moving words, an affirmation of right, decency and humaneness. This statement gave the young defendants pride and strength. After his arrest, the University stripped him of his doctorate and his professorship.
Until his execution, Huber continued to work on his book on the philosopher and mathematician, Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716).
On July 13, 1943, Kurt Huber and Alexander Schmorell were executed by guillotine at the prison in Munich Stadelheim. Clara Huber and her two children were left destitute. Collections for the tormented family led to additional interrogations and to the trial of Hans Leipelt and his friends.
