Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg ( 13 November 1904 – 8 August 1944 ) was a German jurist and a member of the German Resistance against Nazism . He studied law and politics in Bonn and Breslau from 1923 to 1926 , gaining his doctorate in Breslau in 1927 and passing the civil service entrance examination for lawyers in Berlin in 1930 . He married Marion Winter that same year . After working as a lawyer , a legal consultant for the Osthilfe government program reducing agricultural debt in East Prussia , and for the municipal government in Breslau , Yorck served on the Reich Price Commission in Berlin from 1936 to 1941 as the department head responsible for fundamental issues . He refused to join the NSDAP and was thus no longer promoted from 1938 on . He first became involved in the resistance in 1938 , working in close collaboration with his friends Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg and Ulrich-Wilhelm Graf von Schwerin von Schwanenfeld . After the Kristallnacht pogroms of 9-10 November 1938 , he set up a discussion group on the principles of a new Reich constitution . He was called up as a reserve officer on the outbreak of war , transferring to an administrative post ( Wirtschaftsstab Ost ) assigned to the Armed Forces High Command in Berlin in 1942 . In January 1940 , he began to work closely with Helmuth James Graf von Moltke , with whom he initiated and led the discussions of the Kreisau Circle , which met very often at Yorck ’s home in Berlin-Lichterfelde . Yorck , who took part in all three of the circle ’s conferences in Kreisau , supported a coup attempt to be launched with an assassination , unlike his friend Moltke . When Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg began to speed up the preparations for the coup in Berlin in September 1943 , he and Yorck came into close contact . Designated as an undersecretary of state for a future Reich Chancellor , Yorck remained in the innermost circle of the conspirators until the very end . After the failed coup attempt , Yorck was arrested in the Bendler Block in Berlin in the late evening of 20 July 1944 , sentenced to death by the People ’s Court on 8 August 1944 , and executed the same day in Berlin-Plötzensee
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Peter Yorck von Wartenburg