Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld

The Uradel House of Schwerin, named after the Mecklenburg capital, was first documented in the 12th century; the family held large estates in the Brandenburgian Uckermark region and the adjacent lands of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

As a witness of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, he found Nazism loathsome to his Christian and social convictions (he was a Knight of Justice in the Protestant Order of Saint John, to which he had been admitted in 1933[1]).

Schwerin was graduated at Breslau in 1926 and administered his family's manors in Göhren (today part of Woldegk, Mecklenburg) and Sartowice near Świecie, Pomerelia in Poland.

After Witzleben's dismissal in 1942, Schwerin was transferred to Utrecht until in March 1943, Major General Hans Oster appointed him to the Abwehr office at the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht in Berlin.

The recordings of the show trial attest how a doomed Schwerin, ravaged by the conditions of his detention and brought to court without a belt and tie, tried to preserve his dignity.