![]() ![]() And that was the beginning of the romance.” And he proposed he study English with her and she study German with him. He apologized for his faltering English, and she apologized that she didn’t speak German very well. She was absolutely gorgeous,” says Shareen Blair Brysac, author of “Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra,” in the documentary. Everyone says that Mildred was the most beautiful girl on the university campus. “He saw this radiant teacher with this blonde hair. Arvid met Mildred when he went to the wrong building and ended up in her class. He was on fellowship while attending UW–Madison and was working on getting his second doctorate. At long last, her story was being shared, this time using recently uncovered information, including official German documents and papers from U.S.Īrvid Harnack, a Rockefeller Scholar from Germany, came from a family of academics. In 2011, “Wisconsin’s Nazi Resistance: The Mildred Fish-Harnack story,” aired on Wisconsin Public Television. Mildred graduated in 1925 with her bachelor’s degree and stayed at the university to teach English and attend graduate school. (Samples of her writing while at UW–Madison can be seen here and here.) Ruth Wallerstein, an assistant professor of English, described Mildred as “quite distinguished as a poet.” Warner Taylor, chairman of the English department, described her as “very aesthetic and a little on the radical side.” Mildred dreamt of becoming a writer and joined the Wisconsin Literary Magazine. The dedication was attended by an academic delegation of representatives from eight German universities. A similar sculpture is planned for the campus of the University of Giessen, where she completed a PhD in literature. 31, 2018 by the city of Madison Arts Commission. The black granite obelisk was designed by John Durbrow, a longtime Manitowoc-area resident and retired professor of architecture at Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology. “Mildred,” a sculpture by John Durbrow, was dedicated by the city of Madison in her honor July 12 in Marshall Park, 2101 Allen Boulevard in Madison. In the Cold War years after World War II, Fish-Harnack’s name and legacy were not honored in the U.S., because she and her husband were believed to have been connected with Communism. But the smearing of her name and the burying of her story has become part of why she’s being recognized today. The punishment continued long after her death. Her story has gotten somewhat lost in the vast horrors of the Third Reich. Fish-Harnack became the only American civilian to be executed on the direct order of Hitler. She was sentenced to six years of hard labor for the crimes of treason and espionage but that wasn’t enough for Adolf Hitler. Those were the last words of Mildred Fish-Harnack before the blade of the guillotine fell. Arvid and Mildred Fish-Harnack sit on the grass in Saalfeld, Germany, in 1930.
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