Hans von Dohnányi was a German jurist of Hungarian ancestry, rescuer of Jews, and German resistance fighter against the Nazi régime.
Background
Hans von Dohnányi was born to the Hungarian composer Ernő Dohnányi and his wife, the pianist Elisabeth Kunwald.The name was pronounced Dough nanyce (CE), and Hans became nicknamed "Do," pronounced dough (Harold C. Deutsch). But grandson Christoph von Dohnanyi, music director of the Cleveland Orchestra since 1984, pronounces the family name DOCK nanyee, and the maestro’s brother. Dr Klaus von Dohnanyi, a former mayor of Hamburg, does not confirm Professor Deutsch’s finding (above). Dohnanyi (without accent) is accepted by CE and other authorities in English- language reference to the subject of this sketch, but his sons adopted the original spelling, Dohnanyi, and, like their father, have the particle of nobility "von.”
Education
He went to the Grunewald Gymnasium there, becoming friends with Dietrich and Klaus Bonhoeffer. From 1920 to 1924, he studied law in Berlin. In 1925, he received a doctorate in law with a dissertation on "The International Lease Treaty and Czechoslovakia's Claim on the Lease Area in Hamburg Harbour".
Career
Hans became a lawyer, practicing at the Mcndelson International Law Institute in Hamburg and with the supreme court at Leipzig. In 1929 he went to Berlin as adjutant and chief adviser to Reich Ministers of Justice Joal and his successor, Franz Guertner. Devoted to legal reform even before Hitler's rise to power in 1933, he opposed Hans Frank's corruption of German law and also assisted Count Ruediger von der Goltz, a cousin of his wife, Christine Bonho-Effer. in defending Werner von Fritsch against trumped-up charges in the winter of 1937-38. Having thus "gained the unfavorable notice of Nazi hierarchs", and there being a debate about his possibly having Jewish blood (which he never would have joined) but he was "Aryanized" by a "Fuehrer Order."
Presumably to get him out of Berlin, Hans was appointed a supreme court judge in Leipzig. He had long been associated with Hans Osier and other anti-Nazi conspirators, and after a year in Leipzig he was assigned to Oster's section of the Abwelir. This made him a key member of the German resistance, and with Teutonic thoroughness he kept copious records for whaL he hoped would be postwar criminal action by German courts against Third Reich officials.
On 5 Apr 1943 an SS judge advocate. Dr Manfred Roeder, quietly entered the Abwehr offices just before 10 AM with a small group including Franz Xaver Sonderegger, a Gestapo official. Canaris was reassured to be confronted only with the accusation that Dohnanyi was taking bribes for smuggling Jews into Switzerland. The Gestapo had extracted this unfounded lead from the disgruntled Wilhelm Schmiduher, but the secret police also had well-founded suspicions that Dohnanyi had long been conspiring against the regime with Dietrich Bohnhoeffer and others. Having a warrant to search Dohnanyi's office, the legally correct Roeder asked Oster to join Canaris in watching. Contents of the office safe were being displayed on desks when Dohnanyi noticed an Abwehr
"playing card." This had instructions to Dr Josef Mueller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer on a planned mission to the Vatican. "Dough" whispered to Oster that they should pretend the card was "disinformation” concocted to mislead the enemy. But Oster misunderstood, tried to pocket the card, and Sonderegger caught him in the act. Finding other incriminating evidence, Roeder arrested Dohnanyi. Later in the day Mueller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and his sister Christine were taken into custody.
Held in the Wehrmacht jail in Berlin, Dohnanyi used his skills as an attorney to fend off the interrogation of Roeder, who was also a good lawyer. The prisoner argued convincingly that he and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (held separately in Tegel Prison) had engaged only in legitimate Abwehr affairs including disinformation. After Canaris complained to Keitel that Roeder was interested primarily in an SS effort to malign the army, Roeder was replaced by a certain Kutzmer. Now facing a less skilled interrogator, the prisoner had a respite.
In smuggled messages Dohnanyi pleaded that his voluminous records of the conspiracy be destroyed, but the ailing Gen Ludwig Beck insisted they be preserved for historical evidence of what Good Germans had done to fight Nazism. On 22 Sep 1944 the Gestapo found Dohnanyi's archives, which led them to previously unincriminated officers including Kripo chief Arthur Nebe.
The strain of prison and brutal interrogation so affected Dohnanyi's health that he was transferred to a clinic. But on 22 Jan 1944 the Gestapo had him moved to an SS medical facility, claiming the army no longer had jurisdiction. Determined to postpone trial, Dohnanyi had his wife smuggle him a dysentery culture. When this did not work he had her get a diphtheria culture, which on the second attempt produced a grave case of the disease that provided periodic relief from the ordeal of interrogation. Although clearly guilty of high treason, the prisoner (like others) was kept alive as a possible source of further information. But when the Canaris diaries were discovered on about 4 Apr 1945 Hitler ordered the SS to liquidate all surviving conspirators. Still paralyzed, carried on a stretcher by SS guards, Dohnanyi was summarily tried on 6 April at Oranienburg/ Sachenhausen and sentenced to death for "high treason and treason in the field". Authorities do not agree on details, but the heroic Dohnanyi apparently was hanged at Sachenhausen on 9 Apr 1945 (personal information), when Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Canaris, and Oster were executed at Flossenbuerg.
The late Harold C. Deutsch, an American authority on the anti-Hitler conspiracy who interviewed many surviving participants, was of great assistance on this troublesome sketch. Hans von Dohnanyi's sons, identified above, gave it a careful last minute review in 1996 and contributed valuable detail.