Railway attack near Leiferde

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The railway assassination attempt at Leiferde in the Gifhorn district was carried out on August 19, 1926 at around 02:10 a.m. 21 deaths were the result. This was the most momentous attack on rail traffic in Germany to date.

Recovery work after the accident

Starting position

To the night express D 174 of Berlin according Amsterdam stop and its Bahnpostwagen rob , the traveling musician Otto Schlesinger damaged (21) and Willy Weber (22) with tool, which they previously from the site of the nearby Okerbrücke stolen had a piece of track of the Railway line between the Leiferde and Meinersen stations , today's Hanover – Berlin high-speed line . They loosened a tab and wanted to bend the rail outwards in order to derail the train .

the accident

The D 174 ran over the damaged area, however, when the perpetrators only removed the tab. In the process, the axle of a six-axle sleeping car jumped off the track, only to then pull itself up again. That was noticed inside the car. But since the car then drove on quietly, no one pulled the emergency brake .

The perpetrators bent the rail further outwards. The D 174 was followed after 40 minutes by the D 8 express train from Berlin to Cologne . Its locomotive , a Prussian S 10 , and the two following cars derailed at a speed of around 85 km / h. Two cars of the (old) first and second class - still made of wood - pushed into one another.

consequences

21 people died, one was seriously injured and 39 people were easily injured. In the two wrecked wooden wagons alone, 18 travelers were killed. The Dortmund politician Ernst Mehlich was one of the victims .

Since a repetition of the act was feared, the Reichsbahngesellschaft warned its employees across the country. The perpetrators, who had been observed by witnesses while fleeing, were arrested by the Hanover police on September 8, 1926 and sentenced to death by the Hildesheim jury on November 4, 1926 . Due to a petition for clemency (signed by Otto Dix , Max Liebermann and Albert Einstein , among others ), they were pardoned in 1927 and given life imprisonment .

The assassination provided the material for Willi Schäferdiek's first play Murderer for Us (1927) and Georg W. Pijet's radio play Treibjagd (1930) .

literature

  • Helmut Pietsch: The railway attack near Leiferde in August 1926. Gifhorn 2006, ISBN 3-929632-74-8 .
  • Bernhard Püschel: Historical railway disasters. A chronicle of accidents from 1840 to 1926 . Freiburg 1977. ISBN 3-88255-838-5 , p. 128.
  • Hans Joachim Ritzau: Railway disasters in Germany. Splinters of German history. Volume 1, Landsberg-Pürgen 1979.
  • Hans Joachim Ritzau: From Siegelsdorf to Aitrang. The railway disaster as a symptom. A study of the history of traffic. Landsberg 1972, p. 21 f.
  • Friedrich Karl Kaul : There is a crackling in the beams. Pitaval of the Weimar Republic. Volume 3 . The New Berlin, Berlin 1961.
  • Erhard Born: Classic railway accidents (part 3) In: Hamburger Blätter für alle Freunde der Eisenbahn , 3rd year, No. 5/6 (from April 1956), p. 9.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ritzau: Eisenbahn-Katastrophen , p. 92.
  2. ↑ Ritzau: Von Siegelsdorf , p. 27, note 19
  3. ^ A b c d Erhard Born: Classic railway accidents. (Part 3) In: Hamburger Blätter für alle Freunde der Eisenbahn , 3rd year, No. 5/6 (from April 1956), p. 9.
  4. ↑ a b Hans Joachim Ritzau: From Siegelsdorf to Aitrang. The railway disaster as a symptom. A study of the history of traffic. Landsberg 1972, p. 21.
  5. ^ Reichsbahndirektion in Mainz (ed.): Official Gazette of the Reichsbahndirektion in Mainz of August 7, 1926, No. 35. Announcement No. 622, p. 317.
  6. ↑ Pietsch.

Coordinates: 52 ° 27 '24 "  N , 10 ° 23' 59"  E