Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg
Biography. Born Magdalena von Lerchenfeld in Kowno, Imperial Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania), she was known by her nickname "Nina". Her father was the Bavarian nobleman and politician General Consul Gustav Freiherr von Lerchenfeld (1871–1944) and her mother Anna Freiin von Stackelberg (1879–1945), a Baltic-German noblewoman, who in turn was great-granddaughter of Johan Mauritz von Haucke, which makes Nina third cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Nina von Lerchenfeld and Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg were married on 26 September 1933 in Bamberg, Bavaria, making Nina the Countess ("Gräfin") von Stauffenberg. Although Nina 's and Claus von Stauffenberg's mothers were both Lutherans, the couple's children were raised as Roman Catholics, in accordance with the wishes of Stauffenberg's father. The marriage produced five children: After her husband's failed attempt to assassinate Hitler (he was summarily executed the following evening), the Countess von Stauffenberg was arrested by the Gestapo and taken into custody under the ancient "Sippenhaft" law reinstated by the Nazi government. Her five children were placed in an orphanage in Bad Sachsa, Lower Saxony, under the surname of Meister. At the time of her husband's death, Stauffenberg was  pregnant and gave birth while imprisoned in a Nazi maternity center in Frankfurt an der Oder. That same year, her own mother, Anna, died in a Soviet detention camp. By the end of the Second World War, Stauffenberg had been moved to the Italian province of South Tyrol. There she was held as a hostage in return for the redemption of Nazi property. After the war, she was reunited with her family at the Stauffenberg family seat in Lautlingen, Baden-Württemberg. She died in Kirchlauter, near Bamberg, Bavaria, on 2 April 2006 at the age of 92. The biography "Nina  Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg – Ein Porträt" by Konstanze von Schulthess-Rechberg, Stauffenberg's youngest daughter, was published in 2008 (Munich: Pendo Verlag, ).