Freya von Moltke (1911-2010)

I did not know my Norwich neighbor Freya von Moltke, who died on New Year's Day at the age of 98. I only learned today that she and I had in common the honor of serving as a board member, Nominating Committee chair, Vice President, and President of the Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society. (We were also both trained as lawyers, though she apparently didn't ever practice the profession.)

The small tribute the Co-op placed in today's Local Daily Newspaper attributed this eloquent statement to Mrs. von Moltke:

"I have always believed in cooperatives. I consider them to be one of the basic forms of human organization for a group of people wanting to achieve a common object, getting things done through trial and error, learning and teaching, exchanging different opinions in the democratic way. The Co-op is there to serve its members. Such an organization, however, should also be used as a tool to further the interests of the community and consumers in general."

It would be fair to say that when Freya von Moltke decided to comment on how people can work together to achieve a common object, furthering the interests of the community thereby, she spoke with real moral authority.

Here is her Boston Globe obituary. It describes a woman who was a prominent member of the resistance movement in Germany during the Nazi era, along with her husband. The Nazis executed him; she eventually ended up in Vermont.

This is an occasion to remember how rooted the cooperative movement is in European culture. And it is also an opportunity to reflect on how, from Hanover, New Hampshire to Hannover, Germany, visionary people saw during the economic turmoil of the 1930s that cooperatives could be a compelling alternative to then-popular social movements of a more disturbing character, including but not limited to the one the von Moltkes are remembered for resisting.