Mildred Harnack

Mildred Elizabeth Fish was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of four children born to William C. Fish, a teacher[1] and Georgina Fish née Hesketh.[2] The family was raised on the west side of Milwaukee.[2] Fish learned to speak, write, and read German.[2] She initially attended West Division High School (now Milwaukee High School of the Arts). After her father's death, the family moved to Washington, D.C.[3] and Harnack finished her last year at Western High School.[4] In 1919 Harnack started studying at George Washington University, remaining there for two years[2] before moving to Madison, Wisconsin using family savings.[2]

In 1921, Harnack matriculated at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.[5] During her first year, she worked for the Wisconsin State Journal as she had to pay her way through college.[5] She stayed at a rooming house popular with journalists and writers, but left after facing some mild prejudice, resulting in a change of her major from journalism to humanities and later to English literature.[5] In 1922, she became a writer on the staff of the Wisconsin Literary Magazine.[6]

On June 22, 1925, Harnack was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in English.[7] Her senior thesis was "A Comparison of Chapman's and Pope's Translations of the Iliad with the Original".[8] William Ellery Leonard was her advisor.[1] She stayed on for further study and on August 6, 1925 was awarded a Master of Arts degree in English.[7]

In 1926, she was studying and working as a lecturer on German literature at the Milwaukee State Normal School (now the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee).[9] In the same year, Fish met the jurist Arvid Harnack, a Rockefeller Fellow from Germany.[10] Harnack had recently completed his doctorate in law in 1924[11] and completed postgraduate studies in Hamburg and the London School of Economics before receiving a Rockefeller scholarship to study in America.[10] After a brief love affair, they were engaged on June 6, 1926. They wed on August 7, 1926[12] in a ceremony at her brother's farm near the village of Brooklyn, Wisconsin,[4] after which Mildred used the hyphenated "Fish-Harnack" as her married name.[13] On September 28, 1928, Harnack returned to Germany as his fellowship had ended.[14] From 1928 to 1929, Harnack taught English at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.[15]

A fellow student was the poet Clara Leiser who became a life-long friend and confidante.[16] The professor who exerted the most influence over Harnack at Madison was William Ellery Leonard.[17] Leonard, a non-conformist who believed in the Emersonian principle that nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your own mind, had an abiding love of German culture.[18] He subjected Harnack to a grueling scrutiny that shaped her intellectual outlook.[17] For Harnack, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman were the two greatest advocates of American literature.[19] While still at Madison, the couple met Margaretha "Greta" Lorke, a German student of sociology,[20] who had been invited to study in America.[21] A friendship developed between Mildred and Greta that lasted for many years.[21] Lorke later married Adam Kuckhoff.[20]

On June 2, 1929, Harnack migrated to Jena in Germany where she would spend her first year[22] living with the Harnack family.[23] In the same year, Harnack received a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service[24] that enabled her to start work on her doctorate on American literature at the University of Jena[22] but it was at the University of Giessen where she found the most welcome.[22] Harnack's doctoral supervisor was Walther Fischer, who judged her an excellent lecturer and later described her in a 1936 recommendation as showing great "tact".[25] By that, he meant Harnack's tactful approach to the Nazis increasing incursion of the university in 1831 and 1932. By the time Harnack arrived in Giessen, more than half the student population were vocal in their support of the Nazis[26] and subsequently opponents of several faculty members. Amongst those were professor of philosophy, Ernst von Aster, a Marxist, and the economist Friedrich Lenz were both under suspicion.[26] Aster's wife, the Swedish novelist Hildur Dixelius became a good friend of Harnack and would eventually become a house guest at Harnack's Berlin house.[26]

In June 1930, upon completion of her doctorate, Harnack moved from Giessen to Berlin to be with her husband. Harnack was admitted to study at the University of Berlin on a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.[24] She worked as an assistant lecturer (English and American literature and language) and a translator. She was also involved with the American Student Association, the American Women's Club, where she served as president,[27] the Berlin chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution—where she served as secretary, and the American Church.[4]

It was during her time in Berlin that Fish-Harnack became interested in the Soviet Union and communism, seeing them as a solution to poverty. In 1932, however, she was let go from her teaching position, as were many other women and foreigners. She toured the Soviet Union later that year with her husband and leading academics.

In May 1932, the funding that enabled Harnack to teach at Friedrich-Wilhelm University was canceled.[24] In 1933, Harnack began teaching English literature at the Berliner Abendgymnasium ("Berliner Städtische Abendgymnasium für Erwachsene"),[28] an evening high school for adults that taught a curriculum that was suitable for university admission.[28]

By 1933, the Harnack's had adopted a left-wing ideology and were committed to the Soviet Union. In 1 January 1933 and 4 February, Harnack wrote to her mother where she was believed that the Soviet Union was the couples best hope for a better world.[28]

She sometimes discussed economic and political ideas from the United States and the Soviet Union with her students. She also joined the National Socialist teachers' organization, as required by law.

Harnack edited a book column in the English-language periodical Berlin Topics along with the US Ambassador's daughter Martha Dodd. She also wrote in German for the Berliner Tageblatt and Die Literatur until 1935, when the Nazis' strictures made this too difficult. In 1936, her German translation of Irving Stone's biography of Vincent van Gogh, Lust for Life was published. She continued to work as a translator for various publishing houses. In 1937, Harnack visited the United States and stayed with Clara Leiser in New York. That was the last time that Leiser saw Harnack.[29] Harnack went on a campus lecture tour whose theme was "The German Relation to Current American Literature". and

Together with her husband Arvid, the writer Adam Kuckhoff and his wife Greta, Fish-Harnack brought together a discussion circle which debated political perspectives on the time after the National Socialists' expected downfall or overthrow. From these meetings arose what the Abwehr called the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) resistance group.[9]

In 1940–41, the group was in contact with Soviet agents, trying to thwart the forthcoming German attack upon the Soviet Union. On the instructions of her husband, Mildred had an affair with Lieutenant Herbert Gollnow who worked in Section II of the Abwehr. She was able to obtain numerous and detailed information about German sabotage agents planning to infiltrate Russian lines.[30]

Brysac. p.216 Erdberg.

Fish-Harnack even sent the Soviets information about the forthcoming Operation Barbarossa. Meanwhile, she was making contact with people who were against the Nazi régime, recruiting some for the resistance, and serving as go-between for her husband, other members of the Red Orchestra, and Soviet agents.

CIC file ref. Mildred Harnack (about 1947)

In July 1942, the Decryption Department of the Oberkommando des Heeres managed to decode the group's radio messages, and the Gestapo pounced. On 7 September, Arvid Harnack and Mildred Fish-Harnack were arrested while on a weekend outing. At this time, Mildred had been teaching English at the Foreign Studies Department of the University of Berlin. Arvid Harnack was sentenced to death on 19 December after a four-day trial before the Reichskriegsgericht ("Reich Military Tribunal"), and was put to death three days later at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. Mildred Fish-Harnack was initially given six years in prison, but Hitler refused to endorse the sentence and ordered a new trial, which ended with a sentence of death on 16 January 1943. She was beheaded on 16 February 1943. Her last words were purported to have been: "Ich habe Deutschland auch so geliebt" ("I loved Germany so much as well"). She was the only American woman executed on the orders of Adolf Hitler.[31]

Following her execution, her body was released to Humboldt University anatomy professor Hermann Stieve to be dissected for his research into the effects of stress, such as awaiting execution, on the menstrual cycle. After he was through, he gave what was left to a friend of hers, who had the remains buried in Berlin's Zehlendorf Cemetery. She is the only member of the Berlin based anti-fascists whose burial site is known.[32]

When her friend and colleague Clara Leiser learned of the execution, she wrote the unfinished poem, "To and from the guillotine", in remembrance of her friend.[33]

• 
  Commemorative stamp honoring Mildred Harnack and her husband Arvid issued by the Deutsche Post of the GDR in 1964
• 
  Commemorative plaque at the Peter A. Silbermann School/Friedrich Ebert Secondary School in Berlin-Wilmersdorf
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  Memorial plaque for Arvid and Mildred Harnack at the Berlin building where they lived, 61 Hasenheide, Neukölln
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  Memorial stone, "NS-Opfer" by Johanna Jura erected in 1976 at 6 Unter den Linden in Mitte
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  A Stolperstein for Mildred Harnack at 14 Genthiner Straße at Tiergarten
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  Memorial stone to Arvid and Mildred Harnack at Friedhof Zehlendorf at 33 Onkel-Tom-Straße, Berlin-Zehlendorf

• A cenotaph for Harnack and her husband Arvid Harnack stands in the Zehlendorf cemetery in Berlin, Germany
• Mildred Fish Harnack Day is observed by schools in the U.S. state of Wisconsin[34]
• In 2006, a street in Berlin's Friedrichshain neighborhood was re-named Mildred Harnack Street (Mildred-Harnack-Straße)[35]
• A school named in honor of Harnack in Berlin is located on Schulze-Boysen-Straße,[3] a street named for fellow members of the Red Orchestra[36] Libertas Schulze-Boysen and Harro Schulze-Boysen
• A public school complex in her hometown of Milwaukee was named in honor of Mildred Fish-Harnack in 2013.[37][38]
• Mildred's alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, hosts the annual Mildred Fish-Harnack Human Rights and Democracy Lecture in her memory, which was established in 1994.[39]
• In 2019, the city of Madison, Wisconsin, dedicated a sculpture to Harnack in Madison's Marshall Park.[40]

• Stone, Irving (1936), Vincent van Gogh. Ein Leben in Leidenschaft [Lust for Life], Berlin: Universitas.
• Edmonds, Walter D. (1938), Pfauenfeder und Kokarde [Drums along the Mohawk], Berlin: Universitas.

• Harnack, Mildred (1941). Die Entwicklung der amerikanischen Literatur der Gegenwart in einigen Hauptvertretern des Romans und der Kurzgeschichte [The Development of Contemporary American Literature with some Main Representatives of the Novel and Short Story]. Gießen: Philosophische Fakultät der Ludwigs-Universität zu Gießen.
• Harnack, Mildred (1988). Variationen über das Thema Amerika: Studien zur Literatur der USA. Berlin: Aufbau.

• Martha Dodd
• William E. Dodd
• Bella Fromm
• Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (2011)

• Brysac, Shareen Blair (2000). Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515240-9.
• Nelson, Anne (2009). Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6000-9.

• Roloff, Stefan (2002). Die Rote Kapelle. Die Widerstandsgruppe im Dritten Reich und die Geschichte Helmut Roloffs (in German). Berlin: Ullstein. ISBN 3-548-36669-4.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mildred Harnack.

• Honoring Mildred Harnack at University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives Collection
• Wisconsin's Nazi Resistance: The Mildred Fish-Harnack Story, Wisconsin Public Television video; accessed 6 May 2014.
• Mildred Harnack Schule
• When the Red Orchestra Fell Silent, New York Times; accessed 6 May 2014.
• Mildred Fish-Harnack: Germany's Secret Hero
• Wisconsin's Nazi Resistance: The Mildred Fish-Harnack Story Timeline
• To and from the Guillotine