Plot failed, Alexander did not take the opportunity to escape to Egypt but returned to Berlin to defend himself. He was arrested, as his wife and all others bearing the family name had been. After his arrest, Stauffenberg told the Gestapo that he: “took the view that the Jewish question should have been dealt with in a "less extreme manner" because then it would have produced less disturbance among the population” Alexander's brothers were executed. He and the rest of the adult family members were held in concentration camps. However, Alexander's wife, Melitta Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg, was released on 2 September 1944, because of her importance in the development of aircraft. She was now called "Gräfin Schenk", since Hitler wanted to erase the name Stauffenberg. She still maintained contact and support for the imprisoned members of the family. In the final weeks of the war, Melitta was looking for her husband in the concentration camps, and got a Gestapo authorisation to visit the commandant at Schönberg where he had been taken. During the visit, her aircraft was shot down by an American fighter; she died hours later of injuries from the attack and crash-landing. In late April 1945, Alexander Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was transferred to Tyrol together with about 140 other prominent inmates of the Dachau concentration camp, where the SS left the prisoners behind. He was liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army on 5 May 1945. Postwar In 1948, Alexander Graf Stauffenberg became a professor of ancient history at the University of Munich, where he remained until his death. In 1951, he became the founder and first president of the Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik, which became a part of the German Archaeological Institute. His field of research focused on late antiquity, ancient Sicily, and Magna Graecia. Personal life On 11 August 1937 at Berlin-Wilmersdorf, Alexander had married the aviator and aeronautical engineer Melitta Schiller (3 January 1903 – 8 April 1945) who served as a test pilot in the Luftwaffe before and during World War II. He remarried on 23 July 1949 Marlene Hoffmann, born at Gross Roppershausen (now Großropperhausen) on 10 July 1913. He had no issue by either of his marriages. Notes Bibliography Karl Christ, Der andere Stauffenberg. Der Historiker und Dichter Alexander von Stauffenberg (München, C.H.Beck, 2008). Ernst Probst/Heiko Peter Melle: Sturzflüge für Deutschland: Kurzbiografie der Testpilotin Melitta Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg.