Konradin Executed for Involvement in the Plot to Kill Hitler

Konradin Executed for Involvement in the Plot to Kill Hitler is revealed to Hans Schwarz through a printed list that turns an unresolved absence into confirmed news of Konradin von Hohenfels’s death. The discovery comes only after Hans struggles to face the name he has tried to forget, making the list both a historical record and the instrument of a painful personal reckoning.

The Name on the List

Hans cannot leave the printed appeal alone, yet cannot bring himself to look up the name that haunts him. He tries to continue with ordinary work, making phone calls and dictating letters, but remains unable to settle the question. At first he decides to destroy the document: whether Konradin is alive or dead, he reasons, they will never meet again. Still, he cannot be certain that the possibility of seeing him again is entirely closed. Hans takes up the little book, nearly tears it apart, then stops, trembling, and opens it to the letter H. The entry identifies Konradin as implicated in the plot to kill Hitler and records that he was executed.

The Record and Its Limits

The printed entry gives Hans a fact, not an account: it links Konradin von Hohenfels to the plot to kill Hitler and states that he was executed, but offers no further detail about either the plot or the execution. Its compressed wording stands against the hesitation that precedes it. Hans has struggled to consult the name at all; once he does, the list settles the question of whether Konradin is alive, while leaving the history behind that final notice unexplained.

The Form of the Notice

The entry reaches Hans through an alphabetical lookup at H, but the line itself begins with the capitalized surname VON HOHENFELS, placing family designation before Konradin’s given name. It then reduces the decisive history to two statements: implication in the plot to kill Hitler and execution. This impersonal sequence—surname, political charge, outcome—makes the notice legible as a record while withholding the circumstances that would turn its verdict into a fuller account of Konradin’s fate.

Recognition Without Reunion

The notice resolves the question of Konradin’s fate without repairing the separation that has shaped Hans’s memory of him. A printed record can establish that Konradin was implicated in the plot to kill Adolf Hitler and was executed, but it cannot supply the missing circumstances or restore the possibility of meeting again. The scene therefore ends on a stark divide: public history makes the fact legible in a few words, while the act of reading remains an intimate reckoning for Hans. What the list closes is uncertainty about whether Konradin survived, not the distance between the two men.