Schenk von Stauffenberg, Melitta Gräfin von.

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Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg, Melitta, born Melitta Schiller on 09-01-1903 in Krotoschin, Prussia. Her father was Michael Schiller, son of a Jewish fur-trading family, who had become a Protestant while young. Her mother was Margaret Eberstein. She had four siblings: Marie-Luise, Otto, Jutta and Klara. The family moved to Hirschberg in Silesia.

She was the second German woman to be awarded the honorary title of Flugkapitän, flight captain the second was Hanna Reitsch  and Melitta also flew over 2.500 test flights in dive bombers, the second most of any Luftwaffe test pilot. Melitta von Stauffenberg was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class and the Gold Front Flying Clasp for bombers with diamonds,  for performing over 1.500 test flights in dive bomber aircraft. In 1944, she was arrested with other von Stauffenberg family members on suspicion of conspiring with her brothers-in-law to assassinate Adolf Hitler, but she was later released to continue her test flight duties.

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In 1919 she left Kotoschin to study at the Hirschberg Gymnasium. At school she developed a specific interest in Physics and Aerodynamics. In 1922 she was the first woman to be admitted to glider training. She attended the Technical High School in Munich, where she graduated in Mathematics, Physics and Aeronautical Engineering.

Melitta passed the diploma for university entrance in 1922. There she studied math, physcs and engineering, eventually specialising in aeronautical engineering at the Technical University of Munich. In 1927 she graduated cum laude.

Melitta started working for the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt, DVL,  an experimental institute for aviation, in Berlin-Adlershof in 1928. She also took flying lessons. Because of her Jewish ancestry she was released from the German Luftwaffe in 1936. Working for Askania in Berlin, she developed navigation and steering systems for flying boats such as the Blohm and Voss HA 139 300px-BV_Ha_139_Nordwind_c1938 and the Dornier DO 18. She married the historian Alexander Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg in 1937.  article-1114668-02E1DD39000005DC-148_224x316     He was a brother of Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg. From left to right, Father von Stauffenberg, Berthold, Claus and Alexander.

On 28-10-1937, she qualified as a Flugkapitän in, or “aircraft captain”, a rank reserved for test pilots in Germany at the time, and became only the second woman in Germany, after Hanna Reitsch, to achieve this. She eventually gained licences for all classes of powered aircraft, the acrobatic flying licence, and the glider licence.

At the beginning of World War II, Melitta wanted to work for the Red Cross but was ordered to become a test pilot for the Luftwaffe at the central Erprobungsstelle in Rechlin, Mecklenburg. She did test dives in warplanes, up to 15 times a day, from a height of 4.000 metres. Her work was considered highly important for the war effort, and this saved her and the Schiller family from deportation to concentration camps.

From 1942, Melitta Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg continued her test-flights at the Luftwaffe’s technical academy in Berlin-Gatow, where Ritter Robert von Greim started his trip to Berlin with Hanna Reitsch, to take over the command of Hermann Goering She was attacked by Allied aircraft, and was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class on 22-01-1943. She made her dissertation for her Masters qualification in 1944, and received an A grade. She then became technical chief of the Versuchsstelle für Flugsondergeräte, another test institute, in the same year.

When the coup failed, she was arrested with the rest of the Stauffenberg family. Although her two brothers-in-law were executed and the other adult members were held in concentration camps, she was released on 2 September, because of the military importance of her work. As the name von Stauffenberg was anything but popular among the Nazis, she was now officially addressed as “Gräfin Schenk” instead of “Gräfin Schenk von Stauffenberg”. Her husband and her sisters-in-law Nina von Stauffenberg

were confined in concentration camps, and the von Stauffenberg children were taken away from their mothers. Melitta used her prominent position to help as much as she could.

She felt loyal to Germany, but not to the National Socialists. She therefore supported the Luftwaffe, but she confessed in her diaries that this moral conflict tormented her.

Death and burial ground Schenk von Stauffenberg, Melitta Gräfin von.

20031013    On 08-04-1945, while transferring a small Bücker Bü 181 trainer to Southern Germany, Melitta Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg was shot down by an U.S. fighter near Strasskichen, Bavaria. She crashed landed the aircraft, but died from bullet wounds a couple of hours later, in Straubling.and is buried on the cemetery Lautingen, Albstadt, Zollernalkreis, Baden Württenberg, Germany.

In late April 1945, Alexander Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was transferred to Tyrol together with about 140 other prominent inmates of the Dachau concentration camp, where the SS left the prisoners behind. He was liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army under command of Lieutenant General Lucian King Truscott    on 05-05-1945. In 1948, Alexander Graf Stauffenberg became a professor of ancient history at the University of Munich, where he remained until his death. In 1951, he became the founder and first president of the Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik, which became a part of the German Archaeological Institute. His field of research focused on late antiquity, ancient Sicily, and Magna Graecia. He remarried on 23-07-1949 Marlene Hoffmann, born at Gross Roppershausen (now Großropperhausen) on 10-07-1913. He had no issue by either of his marriages. He died age 58 on 27-01-1964, in Munic and Alexander is buried in Upper Bavaria with his second wife Marlene..

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