Two courageous Rhodes Scholars remembered

Memorial lectures have been held in Oxford this week to honour two Rhodes Scholars, both elected for 1931, Adam von Trott (Germany & Balliol) and Bram Fischer (Orange Free State & New College), who showed great courage and paid very dearly for their roles in the struggles against tyranny in their home countries. The Warden and a number of current Rhodes Scholars attended both lectures.

On Tuesday, 27 October, Mansfield College hosted the fourth memorial lecture for Adam von Trott (Germany and Balliol 1931),  who was executed in 1944 for his role in an assassination attempt against Hitler. The lecture, on ‘Adam von Trott and the British’, was given by Dr Benigna von Krusenstjern, distinguished German historian and author of a new biography of Adam von Trott, Adam von Trott zu Solz - dass es Sinn macht zu sterben... gelebt zu haben.  Adam von Trott had spent part of 1929 at Mansfield College, Oxford, before returning to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol in 1931.

Another Rhodes Scholar, Count Albrecht Bernstorff (Germany and Trinity 1909), was executed in April 1945 for his role in the resistance to Hitler also. The names of Count Bernstorff and Adam von Trott are among the names inscribed in the Rhodes House rotunda in the memorial there to Rhodes Scholars of all nations who died in the two world wars.

2009 is the centenary of the birth of Adam von Trott, and of the election of Albrecht Bernstorff as a Rhodes Scholar. Bernstorff served on the selection committee that chose Adam von Trott as a Rhodes Scholar for 1931, and they became good friends, and kept in close contact. Adam von Trott was also a close friend of Richard Latham (Victoria and Magdalen 1931), who was presumed killed on air operations in 1943; his name is also inscribed in the Rhodes House rotunda. (Details are in Dr von Krusenstjern’s biography of Adam von Trott.)

In July, Adam von Trott’s nephew, Dr Clemens von Trott, visited Rhodes House, and viewed the rotunda with the Warden, Dr Donald Markwell.

The Adam von Trott Memorial Fund at Mansfield College is continuing to seek funds for a scholarship, just announced, for a German student to study politics or international relations in Oxford as a member of Mansfield.

On Thursday, 29 October, New College hosted a memorial lecture in honour of Bram Fischer (Orange Free State and New College 1931). Bram Fischer, who came from an Afrikaner family, was a lawyer who defended anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela, and was imprisoned for his role (as a member of the South African Communist party) in the struggle against apartheid. He died within weeks of being released from prison in 1975.

Stephen Clingman's biography of this remarkable man, Bram Fischer: Afrikaner Revolutionary, won the Alan Paton Award in 1999, and Martin Meredith's Fischer's Choice: A Life of Bram Fischer was published in 2002.

The memorial lecture was given by Justice Albie Sachs, also a South African lawyer who paid a high price for his role in the struggle against apartheid, and who was later appointed by Nelson Mandela to the Constitutional Court of South Africa. The lecture was entitled 'The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law', also the title of Justice Sachs’s recently-published memoirs.