German countess, 102, dies; among last survivors of anti-Nazi circle

Marion Countess Yorck von Wartenburg, who has died aged 102, was among the last survivors of the Kreisau Circle, the group of intellectuals opposed to Hitler from which sprang the attempt to kill him with a bomb in July 1944.

The circle derived its name from having met several times at the country estate of Helmuth Count Moltke. Yet though Moltke was the Kreisauers' driving force, they owed their harmony to the more measured temperament of Peter Count Yorck von Wartenburg, Marion Yorck's husband, and it was at their Berlin apartment that the group usually gathered in the later years of the war.

Its members constituted a wide array of anti-Nazis, not merely aristocrats and soldiers, but also trades unionists and teachers. Many had firm Christian convictions, most were influenced by the maltreatment of the Jews, and not a few had rather utopian ideals. Indeed, the circle's original purpose was to plan for the renewal of Germany after the fall of Hitler, and only gradually did it move to plotting to bring about that end itself.