Assassination attempt on the Niederwald monument
The attack on Niederwalddenkmal was an attempted, failed and the whole fourth stop on Kaiser Wilhelm I . Anarchists around August Reinsdorf attempted the attack on the occasion of the inauguration of the Niederwald monument in Rüdesheim am Rhein .
Starting position
Location
The Niederwald monument was erected in memory of the victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War above Rüdesheim at the height of the Niederwald above the Rhine . It was to be officially opened on September 28, 1883, with the participation of the highest political prominence of the German Empire , at their head the Kaiser.
preparation
The anarchist August Reinsdorf , then based in Elberfeld (today: Wuppertal ) under an alias , had a small conspiratorial group organized around him and intended to use the inauguration for a spectacular assassination attempt. He procured dynamite , although it is unclear what part a police spy played in it and in the other preparations for the assassination attempt. Through the informer, which Police Councilor Ludwig Rumpff had smuggled in from the police in Frankfurt am Main in the group around August Reinsdorf, the police already knew in July 1883 that an assassination attempt was planned.
However, on September 8, 1883, Reinsdorf sustained an injury to his leg. He was in the hospital and could not carry out the attack himself. Therefore he commissioned two members of his group, Franz Reinhold Rupsch and Emil Küchler , to place the explosive device. On September 25, 1883, Küchler procured the fuse , a tarred hemp cord, because it cost 50 pfennigs less than a waterproof cord sealed with rubber . The dynamite was in a bottle or a mason jar and a stoneware jug .
execution
On September 26, 1883, Rupsch and Küchler traveled to Assmannshausen , the neighboring town of Rüdesheim. The police informer Palm contributed 40 marks to travel expenses - probably from police resources - which he later denied as a witness. On September 27, 1883, they drove on to Rüdesheim. Here they discovered that their original plan of placing the dynamite under the emperor's marquee at the monument itself could not be carried out: final work was still being carried out there, and there was no way to deposit the explosives unobserved.
The plan was changed: the attack should now be carried out on the road that led from Rüdesheim up to the memorial. To do this, they chose a place where drainage would be carried out under the road near a forest . There they pushed the dynamite in. They laid the fuse in the trench into the forest. It began to rain.
The next day Küchler watched the approaching pageant, in which the Emperor, the Crown Prince and various Federal Princes were also present, and gave Rupsch an agreed signal. He tried to light the cord with a cigar, but it didn't work: It was so damp that it didn't catch fire. The assassins made a second attempt when the emperor drove back on the same route after the inauguration. Rupsch lit the cord in a dry place. But it burned only inches before it went out. Küchler proposed an attack against the court theater in Wiesbaden , where the emperor attended a festival performance that evening. But Rupsch refused. Rather, they carried out an attack on the festival hall in Rüdesheim, which only caused property damage, and then returned to Elberfeld.
Criminal Law and Politics
Presumably on the basis of information from the police spy, the police succeeded in arresting Reinsdorf, who was released from hospital on October 23, 1884, and subsequently almost all those who knew about it. Only one managed to escape to America.
Although all indeed suspects in custody were taken, was in the press not reported. On April 23, 1884, the Kaiser wrote to Minister Robert von Puttkamer :
“Since I have never heard a syllable about the discovered sacrilege for months [...], the matter seems to be important for the vote shortly before the debate on the Socialist Law . Since there is a confession, the secret can no longer be kept in order to research those who knew it. Please speak to Prince Bismarck about this announcement to get the press moving. "
The next day, Eugen Richter , a member of the Reichstag Commission for the Socialist Law, announced that the authorities had evidence of the attack on the Niederwald Monument. This was intended to ensure that more MPs voted for an extension of the Socialist Law that was not yet safe. It was only through this communication from the Reichstag member that the public found out about the unsuccessful assassination attempt.
The criminal case against the assassins caused a sensation. As a high treason trial it took place before the Reichsgericht in Leipzig under the chairmanship of the Senate President before the Second Criminal Senate , Edwin von Drenkmann . Since the imperial court building was not yet completed, the hearing took place in the rooms of the Leipzig district court .
A total of eight men were charged, partly for perpetration and partly for aiding and abetting . On December 22, 1884, Reinsdorf, Küchler and Rupsch were sentenced to death, two other defendants were sentenced to long imprisonment terms , three were acquitted because they could not prove that they were involved in the crime. Wilhelm I pardoned Rupsch to life imprisonment , the other two were executed with the guillotine on February 7th, 1885 in the courtyard of the " Red Ox " in Halle by executioner Julius Krautz from Charlottenburg , first Reinsdorf, then Küchler. One of the long prison sentences convicts committed the same year suicide .
Worth knowing
On January 14, 1885, Police Rumpff was stabbed to death in front of his apartment. Whether this was done by an anarchist hand or part of a dispute between the police officer and the pimp scene in Frankfurt has never been satisfactorily clarified - at least in the eyes of the critics of the Bismarck state. Schuhmacher Lieske from Bockenheim , a young anarchist, was arrested as a perpetrator, denied the act and was sentenced to death in a circumstantial trial and beheaded on November 17, 1885 in the Wehlheiden prison .
filming
The event was filmed in 1975 by ZDF under the title A German Assassination (Director: Günter Gräwert ).
literature
- Dieter Fricke : Bismarck's Praetorian . The Berlin political police in the fight against the German labor movement (1871–1898) . Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1962.
- Hugo Friedländer : The dynamite attack at the unveiling ceremony for the Niederwald monument . In: Interesting criminal trials of cultural and historical importance , Vol. 4, Berlin 1911.
- Max Schütte: August Reinsdorf and the Niederwald Conspiracy. A historical description of the planned assassination attempt against the imperial court train on September 28, 1883, the trial and execution of the convicted . Verlag von "Neues Leben", Berlin 1902. [Reprint: Berlin 1983. ISBN 3-88999-002-9 ]
- S. Werner: The anarchist trial Reinsdorf and comrades negotiated before. 2nd and 3rd criminal senate of the Imperial Court of Leipzig from 15 to 22 Decbr. 1884 . Publishing house of the Leipziger Rechts-Zeitung. Werner & Comp., Leipzig 1885. Digitized
Web links
- Marcus Mühlnikel: Reinsdorf, August and Comrades (1884) . In: Kurt Groenewold , Alexander Ignor, Arnd Koch (eds.): Lexicon of Political Criminal Trials , as of September 2017.
Remarks
- ↑ Schütte succumbs to the misunderstanding that the assassination attempt was aimed at the emperor's court train with which he came to Rüdesheim. However, this is clearly refuted by the findings in the criminal proceedings (Werner; Friedländer). The attack was supposed to take place on the access road to the memorial.
- ↑ Schütte, p. 25, otherwise not always reliable in the details, writes: “Wehl s heiden”.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schütte, p. 11; Dieter Fricke, p. 160.
- ↑ Fricke, p. 160, note 305.
- ↑ Schütte, p. 12.
- ↑ a b c d Werner, p. 94.
- ↑ a b Schütte, p. 13.
- ↑ Werner, p. 45.
- ↑ Werner, p. 26.
- ↑ a b Werner, p. 34.
- ↑ a b Schütte, p. 14.
- ↑ Schütte, p. 15.
- ↑ Schütte, p. 16.
- ↑ Schütte, p. 16f.
- ↑ Schütte, p. 17f.
- ^ Albert von Puttkamer: Minister of State Robert von Puttkamer. A piece of the Prussian past 1828–1900 . Leipzig 1928, p. 139. (Quoted from Dieter Fricke, p. 160–161)
- ↑ Dieter Fricke, p. 162 ff.
- ↑ Werner, p. 4.
- ↑ Friedländer: Das Dynamit-Assentat , p. 163f.
- ↑ Schütte, p. 19f.
- ↑ Werner, p. 97.
- ↑ a b Schütte, p. 22.
- ↑ Schütte, p. 23f.
- ↑ Friedländer: Das Dynamit-Assentat , p. 239f.
- ↑ Schütte, p. 24.
- ↑ Schütte, p. 25.
- ↑ A German assassination attempt in the Internet Movie Database (English)