Solf Circle - The Tea Party and Betrayal of The Solf Circle

The Tea Party and Betrayal of The Solf Circle

On September 10, 1943, the Solf Circle met at a birthday party given by Elisabeth von Thadden, the Protestant headmistress of a famous girls' school in Wieblingen, near Heidelberg. Among the guests were:

• the Countess Hannah von Bredow, the granddaughter of Otto von Bismarck;
• Count Albrecht von Bernstorff, the nephew of Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to the United States during World War I;
• Father Erxleben, a well-known Jesuit priest;
• Nikolaus-Christoph von Halem, a merchant;
• Legation adviser Richard Kuenzer; and
• Otto Kiep, a high official from the Foreign Office, who was once dismissed from his position as Consul General in New York City for attending a public luncheon in honor of Albert Einstein, but was able to get himself reinstated in the diplomatic service.
• State Secretary Arthur Zarden and his daughter Irmgard Zarden

To the party, Thadden brought a handsome Swiss doctor named Paul Reckzeh, who was said to be practicing at the Charité Hospital in Berlin under Professor Ferdinand Sauerbruch. Like most Swiss, he expressed anti-Nazi sentiments in a discussion joined by others present, most vocal of which were Kiep and Bernstorff. Before the end of the party, Reckzeh offered to convey the correspondence of those present to their friends in Switzerland, an offer which many accepted. However, Reckzeh was actually an agent or informer working for the Gestapo, and he turned over these letters and reported on the gathering.

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, a member of the Kreisau Circle, learned of this betrayal through a friend in the Air Ministry who had tapped a number of telephone conversations between Reckzeh and the Gestapo, and he quickly informed Kiep, who in turn informed the rest of the guests. They hurriedly fled for their lives, but it was too late, as Heinrich Himmler had his evidence. He waited four months to act on it, hoping to cast a wider net; apparently he succeeded, for on January 12, 1944, some seventy-four persons, including everyone who had been in the tea party, were arrested. The Solfs themselves fled to Bavaria and were caught by the Gestapo; they were then incarcerated in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Moltke himself was arrested at this time due to his connection with Kiep. But that was not the only consequence of Kiep's arrest - its repercussions spread as far as Turkey, and resulted in the final demise of the Abwehr, already under suspicion as a hotbed of anti-Nazi activity.