Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg


Nina Schenk ''Gräfin von Stauffenberg was the wife of Oberst Claus Schenk Graf'' von Stauffenberg, the leader of the failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944. Following the plot's failure and her husband's execution, she was arrested and imprisoned, during which time she delivered her youngest child.

Biography

Born Elisabeth Magdalena Freiin von Lerchenfeld in Kowno, Imperial Russia, in 1913, she was known by her nickname "Nina". She was the only child of Bavarian nobleman and politician General Consul Gustav Freiherr von Lerchenfeld and his wife, Anna Elfriede Louise Freiin von Stackelberg. Her mother was a Baltic German noblewoman, great-granddaughter of Johan Mauritz Graf von Hauke, which made Nina a third cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, consort of Queen Elizabeth II.
Nina von Lerchenfeld and Claus Schenk ''Graf von Stauffenberg were married on 26 September 1933 in Bamberg, Bavaria, making Nina the Countess von Stauffenberg. Count Claus belonged to the House of Stauffenberg, an ancient Bavarian noble family. Although Nina's and Claus von Stauffenberg's mothers were both Lutherans, the couple's children were raised as Roman Catholics, in accordance with the wishes of Stauffenberg's father.
The marriage produced five children:
After her husband's failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, the Countess von Stauffenberg was arrested by the Gestapo and taken into custody under the ancient Sippenhaft law reinstated by the Nazi government. Her five children were placed in an orphanage in Bad Sachsa, Lower Saxony, under the surname of Meister. At the time of her husband's death, Stauffenberg was pregnant and gave birth while imprisoned in a Nazi maternity center in Frankfurt an der Oder. That same year, her own mother, Anna, died in a Soviet detention camp.
By the end of the Second World War, Stauffenberg had been moved to the Italian province of South Tyrol. There she was held as a hostage in return for the redemption of Nazi property. After the war, she was reunited with her family at the Stauffenberg family seat in Lautlingen, Baden-Württemberg. She died in Kirchlauter, near Bamberg, Bavaria, on 2 April 2006 at the age of 92.
The biography Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg – Ein Porträt'' by Konstanze von Schulthess-Rechberg, Stauffenberg's youngest daughter, was published in 2008.