Ulm, 1939: In the dark of night a young man sneaks around the city's courthouse.
Shortly before, his best friend, Otl Aicher, refused to join the Hitler Youth and he was not admitted to high school.
When the night activist shows his solidarity and also wants to quit, this declaration is ignored.
Now he wants to set an example.
When Ulm wakes up the following morning, the Justitia in front of the courthouse is wearing a swastika band over her eyes.
The perpetrator is never found.
But the image of Justitia, blinded by the swastika, remains.
The boy, who risked his freedom for the action, had the surname Scholl.
But it was not Hans who, together with his sister Sophie Scholl, should go down in the history books for the actions of the White Rose, but her younger brother Werner.
Because the siblings were part of a strong-willed family.
Nowadays, when the "Scholl siblings" are mentioned, one thinks of Hans and Sophie.
In fact, there are six siblings: Inge, Hans, Elisabeth, Sophie, Werner and Thilde.
You grow up in a liberal home.
Father Robert is a pacifist and her mother Magdalena is religious.
You set an example for them to stand up for their convictions.
Robert Scholl, a Württemberg politician, opposed the war as early as 1914 when he refused to serve in the arms.
"I expected to lose my life as a result"
In 1943 it was the 24-year-old Hans and the 21-year-old Sophie Scholl who showed tremendous courage.
After their capture, they made a full confession to the Gestapo.
You admit that as members of the White Rose you wrote, typed, reproduced and mailed leaflets on active resistance against Hitler.
Also for the distribution of hundreds of copies of the leaflet "fellow students! Fellow students!"
On the morning of February 18 at Munich University, shortly before their arrest, the two of them take on responsibility.
Hans also admits that the originator of the calls "Down with Hitler!"
to be on facades near the university.
Regardless of the threat of punishment, the confessors try to take everything on themselves.
The siblings explain that they did and organized all of these things on their own.
Suspicious friends refer to them as "apolitical".
They cannot prevent Christoph Probst, another member of the White Rose, from being arrested one day after them.
In the end, Sophie just asks not to get any less punishment than her brother.
And Hans ends with the words: "I knew what I was doing with that and I expected to lose my life as a result."
On February 22, 1943, that day came for both of them.
The mood was tense on the morning of the day of the trial.
The seats in the hall are occupied by uniforms.
The faces, according to the court trainee at the time, Leo Samberger, were pale "from the fear that spread from the judges' table".
The fear applies to the judge, who came from Berlin especially to make an example that day.
His name: Roland Freisler.
He describes himself as a "political soldier" of Hitler.
The President of the People's Court is known to yell at and humiliate defendants.
The conviction of the members of the White Rose is set to become another show trial aimed at intimidating the masses.
But the irascible bloodhound of the National Socialist judiciary bites his teeth against the Scholl siblings.
"There were people who were obviously full of their ideals," Samberger later recalls, "their answers to the sometimes outrageous questions (...) were calm, composed, clear and brave."
Enthusiastic about the Hitler Youth
The attitude of the siblings to National Socialism was not always so clear.
At first, the Scholl children are enthusiastic about the Hitler Youth (HJ) and the Association of German Girls (BDM).
In the family, therefore, there are always arguments with parents.
But in 1936 the 17-year-old Hans Scholl returned from the NSDAP party congress in Nuremberg sobered.
The flat uniformity celebrated there opened his eyes.
At the HJ and BDM, the Scholl siblings cause problems until they lose their management positions.
Werner and Hans Scholl then join the Bündische Jugend, which was banned by the Nazis.
When they were arrested in 1937 because of this membership, Robert Scholl raged about Hitler: "If they do something to my children, I'll go to Berlin and slam him," Inge Scholl later quoted her father's outburst of anger.
"You never forget a sentence like this," she reports, "because it gives the feeling: You like granite. You have someone behind you. That is important in times like this."
It is probably also this awareness of standing on granite that gives Hans and Sophie Scholl the courage to "intervene themselves, in the wheel of history".
Without letting their parents know, the two students founded the White Rose with like-minded people in June 1942.
"Stay strong - no concessions!"
When they stood in front of Judge Roland Freisler on February 22, 1943, this feeling of having someone behind them did not leave them.
Now it's just a matter of saving her idea: "You all think what we wrote and said, but you don't have the courage to say it," explains Sophie during her testimony in front of an audience that shows no reaction .
The public defender only uses his plea to explain how much he is ashamed of his clients.
There is commotion in the back of the hall.
A middle-aged man struggles forward.
It is Robert Scholl, who now stands behind his children and has already been imprisoned for four months because he called the "Führer" a "scourge of God".
He desperately asks to be heard on behalf of his children.
Freisler does not tolerate this emotionality and expels him from the room.
While Scholl is being led out, he loudly warns Freisler: "There is another kind of justice!"
Unimpressed, the President of the People's Court shortly afterwards announced the death sentence for Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst.
The defendants are no longer surprised.
Hans points to the bench: "Today you hang us, and tomorrow you will be!"
The Scholl family, not Freisler, has the last word in this case.
In the unrest after the verdict was announced, Werner Scholl, who is on vacation from the Eastern Front in Munich, manages to get to his big brother, he has tears in his eyes.
"Stay strong - no concessions", Hans can give him on the way, then the convicts are taken to the penal institution in Stadelheim.
Last message on the cell wall
When Robert and Magdalene Scholl visit their children between 4 and 5 p.m. on the same day in Stadelheim, none of those involved knew that it would be their last meeting, and indeed the last hour of Hans and Sophie's life.
Hans assures that he does not feel any hatred and that he has already left everything behind.
The father takes him in his arms and promises: "You will go down in history."
Sophie, too, meets her parents freely and fearlessly.
One last time the daughter and mother give each other hope: Before she leaves, the mother reminds that Jesus is always by Sophie's side.
"Yes, but you too," replies the daughter and leaves the room.
The prison guards are also impressed by the bravery of the three young people and bring them together for one last cigarette.
Then the time has come.
At 5 p.m. the death sentence is to be carried out with the guillotine.
"In a few minutes we'll see each other again in eternity," says Probst.
Sophie goes first without batting an eyelid.
Then Hans, who said "Long live freedom!" On the execution block.
calls and finally Christoph Probst.
When the war ended, the Scholl parents stayed behind with their daughters Inge and Elisabeth.
Thilde died as a child, Hans and Sophie were executed and Werner has been missing in Russia since 1944.
Only pride in their children's courage can be a consolation.
On the morning of February 22nd, 1943, shortly before the prison guards took him to the courtroom in shackles, Hans left a note on the cell wall with a pencil: "Keep up with all violence".
The quote from Goethe is a final greeting from Hans and goes to his parents.
It is the Scholl family's watchword.
Icon: The mirror