Andy Bielenberg, a professor at University College Cork (UCC), has spent years studying and chronicling the history of Cork throughout significant events such as the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War. Just last Friday, alongside his UCC colleagues John Dorney and Helene O’Keefe, he delivered a presentation at the West Cork History Festival near Baltimore. The talk focused on their research, detailing every fatality that occurred during the Civil War from 28th June 1922 to 24th May 1923.
The following day, Bielenberg reflected upon his own family’s historical significance, honouring the memory of his grandfather Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, who was among the individuals involved in an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20th, 1944.
After a sham trial in Berlin, Schulenburg along with seven others were brutally executed in the Plotsenzee jail, situated on the perimeter of Berlin. Stripped and horrifically strangled with piano wire hung from meat hooks, their deaths served as the first of roughly 5,000 similar executions. Hitler ordered the filming of these killings for his private viewing, until finally, the camera crew could no longer stomach the sight and ceased filming.
Bielenberg recounted his grandfather’s last words to the family: “We have undertaken this act to protect Germany from nameless misery. I know I will be hanged for this, but I don’t regret my deed”. Bielenberg expressed his family’s pride in Schulenburg’s brave act, whose wife, Christabel Bielenberg, the English-born writer of ‘The Past is Myself’, resided in County Carlow for many years.
The parallels to the 1930s are glaringly clear in the present day, he reckons: “Currently, xenophobic individuals are breaking into immigrant-owned stores, a scenario that eerily mirrors the 1930s. The lack of awareness, the intolerance, and the spread of misinformation about minority groups is too familiar.
“There’s a disturbing trend developing. It makes me anxious considering how things escalated back then,” shares the academic from UCC, bringing attention to the commemoration of the assassination attempt which was observed lately by German chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Schulenburg, a descendant of a wealthy Prussian lineage “that amassed wealth by fighting as mercenaries for Venice in past centuries,” was certain by 1938 that Hitler had to be assassinated.
The heritage preserved by his grandfather still holds relevance, according to Bielenberg. Relatives of those embroiled in the plot journey to Berlin annually to participate in the memorial organised by the German government, but the surviving children of those involved are now advancing in age.
“Many have already passed away, or they are too elderly to attend the memorial,” Bielenberg observes, citing Scholz’s assertion that the July 20th plot serves as “a wake-up call to never surrender to history.”