25 Sep Alfred Delp SJ

The schloss, or main house of the Kreisau estate. The estate now houses the Krsysowa Foundation for European Understanding.

The loosely knit, so-called “Kreisau” group was named after the estate in Silesia (now part of Poland) of the same name, which belonged to the aristocrat and lawyer Helmut von Moltke. Moltke was six months older than Delp.  Three clandestine meetings of the group were held at a modest house called the berghaus on the estate, where Moltke lived with his wife Freya and their two young sons.  Such meetings were considered treasonable by the Third Reich.  Freya von Moltke kept the written proceedings of the meetings in the Kreisau beehive.

The berghaus, where the Kreisau meetings were held

Through torture, the names of most of the members of the group were gradually divulged after the July 20 assassination attempt. Some had been active participants in the plot to assassinate Hitler, while others knew little or nothing about it.  Delp was said to know of the plot in only general terms.

Helmut and Freya von Moltke

The other two Jesuits who were part of the Kreisau group, Augustin Rösch and Lothar König, went into hiding after Delp’s arrest. In their place, three other Jesuits as well as König’s sister were arrested.