Geschwister Scholl

Hans and Sophie Scholl, often referred to in German as die Geschwister Scholl (literally: the Scholl siblings), were a brother and sister who were members of the White Rose, a student group in Munich that was active in the non-violent resistance movement in Nazi Germany, especially in distributing flyers against the war and the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. In post-war Germany, Hans and Sophie Scholl are recognized as symbols of the Christian German resistance movement against the totalitarian Nazi regime.

In a broader, genealogical sense, there were actually six Scholl siblings: Inge (1917–1998), Hans (1918–1943), Elisabeth (born 1920), Sophie (1921–1943), Werner Scholl (1922–1944) and Thilde Scholl (1925–1926), whose family lived in Württemberg, in the towns of Forchtenberg (until 1930), Ludwigsburg (1930–1932) and Ulm (1932–).

On February 18, 1943, two of the siblings, Hans and Sophie Scholl, were distributing flyers at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich when they were caught by the custodian, Jakob Schmid, who informed the Gestapo. By February 22, 1943, they had been sentenced to death by the People's Court, led by Judge-President Roland Freisler and were executed by Guillotine on the same day in the Stadelheim Prison. Their grave is in the adjacent Perlacher Forst cemetery (Grave number 73-1-18/19).

The Geschwister-Scholl-Preis is a literary prize initiated by the State Association of Bavaria (Landesverband Bayern e. V.) in the Stock Market Society of the German Book Trade (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels) and the city of Munich. Since 1980, they have annually awarded this prize to the book which "shows intellectual independence and supports civil freedom, moral, intellectual and aesthetic courage and that gives an important impulse to the present awareness of responsibility" ("...das von geistiger Unabhängigkeit zeugt und geeignet ist, bürgerliche Freiheit, moralischen, intellektuellen und ästhetischen Mut zu fördern und dem gegenwärtigen Verantwortungsbewusstsein wichtige Impulse zu geben").

...
Wikipedia