A fresh look at a female WWII reporter
THE LIFE OF A WESTPORTER WHO EXPOSED NAZI SECRETS IS GIVEN ITS DUE IN A COMPELLING EXHIBIT
The immediate inspiration for the Sigrid Schultz exhibit at the Westport Museum of Culture and History is the battered suitcase she carried covering central Europe — and the rise of Nazi Germany — as bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune.
The suitcase, all but forgotten in storage after Schultz’s death in 1980, was rediscovered, along with its owner’s identity, when by sheer chance it was retrieved during a search for artifacts to use in an earlier exhibit on immigration.
Executive director Ramin Ganeshram recalls the moment the suitcase was examined: “We notice near the clasp there’s a transit visa with a swastika on it, and we were, ‘ Oh my God. What is this?’ So we look it up in the collections database and we see it belonged to Sigrid Schultz.”
That was about a year ago. Schultz was already known in town. She rated a mention in the immigration exhibit, and some independent researchers were pushing to have her formally recognized. For Ganeshram the suitcase was a jolt. “We remembered her and started doing research. The more we read, the more we got interested. We realized she deserved her own exhibit.”
Now the suitcase, plastered with travel stamps, is the exhibit’s visual focal point. It stands upright on a pedestal, protected by plexiglass, all by itself in the center of the room. The Nazi stamp is easy to miss; its papery edges are worn away, perhaps from all the times Schultz opened and closed that clasp.
Most of the other artifacts — biographical panels summarizing Schultz’s exploits, blown up copies of her stories, photographs, communications stamped secret from U. S. intelligence — are arranged around the room’s four walls. A lot of reading is required. Yet spending time in the room, browsing its walls, can create a you- are- there sensation of the history Schultz helped write.
A vivid example is the short article she filed in August 1945 that suggests she was on the plane carrying top Nazi officials to the trials that would end in their death sentences. She observes that Hermann Goering, once Hitler’s chief deputy, seemed strangely upbeat to the annoyance of others, then writes:
“Ribbentrop slept during the ride and disregarded Goering’s ebullience. The dapper ex- foreign minister was dressed on somber black but without necktie and hat, while Goering was still sporting his field marshal’s uniform, but without decoration.”
Joachin von Ribbentrop would be the first Nazi official hanged for his crimes. Goering ( now often spelled Goring) avoided hanging by taking cyanide just before his scheduled execution.
He was particularly important to Schultz’s journalistic success and later fame. They first met in 1930, when the Nazi party was gaining traction. He attended dinners she gave and was an important source. He also introduced her to Hitler. By 1935, however, Goering had become chief of the Gestapo and sought to discredit Schultz by sending secret documents to her home.
Schultz, like other journalists, was wise to such traps and was bold enough to confront Goering about the scheme at a hotel party. It was on that occasion, according to her own account, that the angry Goering referred to her as a “that dragon from Chicago.”
In the exhibit, the episode is retold in graphic novel style by Rowan MacColl, a Westporter who is Rhode Island School of Design student. It also probably led to Schultz being dubbed “Dragon Lady” in a 1988 book on famous women foreign correspondents, and to the title of the Westport exhibit, “Dragon Lady: the Life of Sigrid Schultz.”
Her capsule biography goes like this. She was born in Chicago in 1893, but came of age in Europe where her father was a well- known portrait painter. Her facility with languages got her hired as interpreter for the Tribune correspondent stationed in Berlin. In 1926, she took over as the Tribune’s chief correspondent, the first woman to hold such an important post. In 1936, she bought a house in Westport for her mother, but soon returned to Berlin. Watched by the Gestapo, she sometimes filed stories under a pseudonym, John Dickson.
Schultz left most of her papers, 50 boxes worth, to the Wisconsin Historical Society. But the suitcase and two boxes of papers, including those secret OSS documents, stayed in Westport. The local researchers promoting her memory claim to have evidence Schultz hid the fact that her mother was Jewish. Even if true, it doesn’t alter her significance as a journalist.
Ganeshram says the bulk of the work on the current exhibit was done by Nicole Carpenter, museum program director, and Sara Krasne, the volunteer archivist. One record they relied on is an oral history Schultz gave years ago. They also consulted the Wisconsin Historical Society and an early biographer of Schultz. The exhibit’s achievement is that it puts Schultz back in the thick of things, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Besides the Gestapo, she had to contend with the Tribune’s powerful owner and publisher Col. Robert McCormick, who was a prominent isolationist and sometime German sympathizer. She cultivated top Nazis as sources.
The OSS letter on display asks Schultz for information on women close to Hitler, including his sister and his mistress’ sister
The exhibit quotes Willian Shirer, author of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” as saying: “No other American journalist in Berlin knew so much about what was going on behind the scenes as did Sigrid Schultz.”
Ganeshram says Schultz was quick to recognize Hitler’s broad appeal. “She truly understood the danger of what she was witnessing,” she says. “And she crossed over into the role where, yes she’s an objective reporter, but she has to warn the world. And she took great personal risk to do it.”
Schultz, whose reporting already has been the subject of academic studies, is due for a full scholarly biography to be published by Oxford University Press. The working title is “Witness to Catastrophe” and the author is David Milne, an English university professor who has published books on American diplomacy. He has been in contact with Ganeshram and in an email says he hopes to visit the Westport exhibit. It runs until November.