The Power of Faith


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Elisabeth von Thadden lived according to the principle that faith beyond the human sphere in a personal God demanding accountability was the prerequisite for the strength to endure in everyday life. For her, this faith meant the center, assurance and security in life. The author Ricarda Huch characterized her piety as something that had grown naturally: Religious faith was as natural for her as love of the Fatherland and one’s own people, something cannot be taken from one, with which one lives and dies.


The school routine was also influenced by Elisabeth’s practice of piety, which testified to austerity and self-assuredness.


Whereas her faith had been the foundation of her conduct in life until her arrest in 1944, it had to become what gave her life meaning in the weeks and months until her death.


During a vacation in Elmau, she wrote in Inge van Scherpenberg’s autograph album on October 24, 1943:


My time is merely an episode in God’s eternal present. (an early Church Father)


Thus, we all live and die


without any sure footing.


And I myself am lost


I know I have been born for a miracle


And will fall wherever I fall


In God’s outspread hand!


(Paul Graf Hohenstein, killed in action)


Source / title


  • © Private archive of Rudolf von Thadden, Göttingen

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