Schlabrendorff, Fabian Ludwig Georg Adolf Kurt von

Schlabrendorff, Fabian Ludwig Georg Adolf Kurt von, born 01-07-1907 in Halle, Saale, the son of Carl Ludwig Ewald von Schlabrendorff, Berlin, 05-04-1854, died in Detmold, 04-02- 1923 and wife Ida Freiin von Stockmar, born in Buch, 27-09-1874, died 26-03-1944, a great-great-granddaughter of William I, Elector of Hesse by his mistress Rosa Dorothea Ritter. He was trained as a lawyer, later joining the German Army. As a Leutnant in the reserves, he was promoted to Adjutant to Oberstleutnant Henning von Tresckow   a major leader in the resistance against Adolf Hitler. He joined the resistance and acted as a secret liaison between Tresckow in Russia and Ludwig Beck, Carl Goerdeler   , Hans Paul Oster, and Friedrich Olbricht in Berlin, taking part in various coup d’état plans and plots.   On 13-03-1943, during a visit by Adolf Hitler to Army Group Center Headquarters under General Field Marshal, Fedor von Bock in Smolensk, Schlabrendorff smuggled a time bomb, disguised as bottles of cognac, onto the aircraft which carried Hitler back to Germany. The bomb detonator failed to go off, however, most likely because of the cold in the aircraft luggage compartment. Schlabrendorff managed to retrieve the bomb the next day and elude detection. The 20 July threaten for Hitler at the Bendlerblock  in Berlin was saved by Major Otto Ernst Remer

   commander of the Infantry Regiment Grossdeutschland  who refused to arrest Josef Goebbels after talking to an unhurt Hitler in the Wolfschanze by phone . Schlabrendorff was arrested on July 20, 1944, following the failure of the July 20^th plot. He was sent to Gestapo prison where he was tortured, but refused to talk. While imprisoned he met fellow imprisoned co-conspirators Wilhelm Canaris, Hans Oster, Ulrich von Hassell , executed age 62 on 08-09-1944, Johannes Popitz , hanged in the Plötzensee Prison, on 02-02-1945, age 60, Carl Goerdeler , also hanged age 60, on 02-02-1945, Josef Mueller,  who survived the war and died age 80, on 12-12-1979, in Munich and Alexander von Falkenhausen.

  In February 1945, Schlabrendorff was brought before the infamous Nazi People’s Court of jurist Roland Freisler,

Volksgerichthof. But, while awaiting his trial, the courtroom took a direct hit from a bomb during an American air raid led by Lieutenant Colonel, Robert  Rosenthal, “Rosie” Jewish future Nuremberg process prosecutor, who died age 89, in 2007

  . The bomb killed Judge-President Roland Freisler, who was crushed by a beam and killed, still clutching Schlabrendorff’s file. Nevertheless, between February and May 1945, Schlabrendorff was moved from one concentration camp to another: Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, Dachau, Innsbruck. In late April 1945 he was transferred to Tirol 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 ” “Strength of the Nation!”  under General, Mark Wayne “Contraband” Clark  on 05-05-1945. Its role in Italy cost Fifth Army dearly. It suffered 109.642 casualties in 602 days of combat. 19.475 were killed in action.

    After the war, Fabian von Schlabrendorff was admitted to the Protestant Order of Saint John (Bailiwick of Brandenburg, in which he served as Captain of the Order, legal counselor to the Herrenmeister, head of the Order) from 1957 to 1964. From 1967 to 1975, he was a judge of the Constitutional Court of West Germany, the country’s highest tribunal. Von Schlabrendorff died age 73, on 03-09-1980 in Wiesbaden and is buried, with his wife Luitgarde, born von Bismarck, on the cemetery of St. Martinzu Morsum, Island of Sylt.