Freya von Moltke (1911–2010)

Freya von Moltke, née Deichmann, was born in Cologne, Germany. In 1930, she entered the University of Bonn to study law and also attended seminars at the University of Breslau. In 1931, she married fellow law student Count Helmuth James von Moltke, and the couple moved to Berlin to complete their legal training. Freya received her a J.D. degree from Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Berlin (now Humboldt University) in 1935. The von Moltkes were both participants in the anti-Nazi opposition group called the Kreisau Circle after the count's ancestral estate in rural Kreisau, Silesia (part of present-day Poland) where they usually met. Helmuth James von Moltke was executed by the Nazis, as were many of the others in the group. Freya von Moltke preserved and then published her husband's letters that detailed his activities as Letters to Freya in 1990. These and other documents she saved proved valuable to scholars researching the resistance, as well as for their glimpses at daily life under the Third Reich. She also published her own memoirs, translated into English as Memories of Kreisau and the German Resistance in 2003. She moved to the USA in 1960 to join philosopher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, an old friend who became her long-time companion. She helped turn the former von Moltke estate at Kreisau (Krzyzowa in Polish) into a center to promote German-Polish relations.