August Reinsdorf

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August Reinsdorf (drawing by an unknown hand)

Friedrich August Reinsdorf (born January 31, 1849 in Pegau ; died February 7, 1885 in Halle an der Saale ) was a German typesetter and anarchist assassin .

Life

Youth and years of traveling

August Reinsdorf was the eldest son of the shoemaker Friedrich August Reinsdorf and his wife Christinae Emilie . He had eleven siblings, including his brother August Bruno Reinsdorf .

Reinsdorf attended elementary school in Pegau and learned the profession of typesetter. After completing his apprenticeship at Easter 1865, he went on a journey that took him to Frankfurt am Main , Naumburg , Stettin , Berlin , Hanover and London . It was here that he met Johann Most in 1869 . Then he went to Freiburg im Breisgau , Mannheim , Stuttgart , Tübingen , Messkirch and Radolfzell . From there to Winterthur , Geneva , St. Gallen , Zurich , Basel , Solothurn and Lausanne . In Switzerland he was active in the trade union "Typographia" Reinsdorf, according to his own statements, attended meetings of the Swiss section of the International Workers' Association in Zurich . In Geneva he met Johann Philipp Becker , Bakunin , Kropotkin , Paul Brousse and others in early 1874. In 1874 August Reinsdorf returned to Germany and worked in Leipzig for a long time in his profession until he was fired because of his views. Then he turned to Munich and Pest . He had to leave Pest because he couldn't find enough work there. In June 1876, Reinsdorf met Most in Berlin. He took part in the Bern Congress of the so-called Anti-Authoritarian International as a delegate and wrote correspondence about it to the “Berlin Free Press” edited by Most. Reinsdorf was expelled from the Social Democratic Workers' Party as early as 1877 .

In Most's opinion, Max Hödel was a “student” of Reinsdorf who was supposed to “shoot the imperial beast on the brightest day in Berlin [...]”. Reinsdorf was interrogated by the Berlin police officer Krüger in connection with the assassination attempt by Max Hödel in May 1878, but without result. In 1881 he was temporarily arrested in Berlin and expelled on June 2, 1881. Back in Leipzig he was expelled on June 28, 1881 because of the minor state of siege .Reinsdorf went to Pegau and then to Nancy . In 1883 he lived in Elberfeld under the name "Pelsenbach".

Planning and implementation of the Niederwald monument attack

National monument, Niederwald (planning 1874)

In April 1883, Kaiser Wilhelm I set September 28, 1883 as the inauguration day of the Niederwald Monument, because on September 28, 1870, Strasbourg was conquered by the Prussian troops in the Franco-German War . Reinsdorf, who was in Elberfeld in 1883, planned an attack at the opening ceremony, but it failed.

As early as July 17, 1883, the social democrat Wilhelm Fuhrmann (code name "Eintracht Nachsteiger") from Ronsdorf reported to the red field postmaster Julius Motteler that Reinsdorf and the informer Robert Palm were in possession of dynamite.

Reinsdorf had been in hospital since early September 1883 because of a leg injury. Since he could not carry out the attack himself, he commissioned Franz Reinhold Rupsch and Emil Küchler to carry out the attack.

The dynamite mines - attack on Kaiser Wilhelm I, the heir to the throne (. The future Emperor Frederick III), the King of Saxony and many German princes that the national monument on the occasion of the inauguration of Niederwald in Rudesheim had traveled failed. Rupsch and Küchler had deposited the dynamite and ignition device in a drain the day before and could not ignite the fuse at the crucial moment because it had become damp overnight.

On December 26, 1883, workers celebrated in Elberfeld and Barmen. The festivities produced a substantial surplus. The following day two of the assassins, Emil Küchler and Rupsch, asked them to reimburse their expenses they had incurred for the trip to the Niederwald monument. Presumably one of the informers assigned to her was present, because on December 27th both were arrested.

Reinsdorf, who suffered from tuberculosis , was arrested in Hamburg on January 11, 1884 . Although all suspects were now in police custody, it was not reported in the press.

On April 23, 1884 the emperor wrote to the minister Robert von Puttkamer : “ Since I have never heard a syllable about the discovered sacrilege for months […], the matter seems to be important for them shortly before the debate about the socialist law Poll. 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 Niederwald attack. This achieved that even more MPs would agree to an extension of the Socialist Law that was not yet secure.

The trial from December 15-22, 1884

The assassins (contemporary drawing). August Reinsdorf (first row, second from left)

Under the chairmanship of the Senate President Edwin Drenkmann , the proceedings were held before the Second Criminal Senate at the Reich Court in Leipzig . The indictment represented Oberreichsanwalt August Heinrich von Seckendorff and prosecutor Louis Treplin . The defendants were Reinsdorf, Karl Rheinbach , Karl Bachmann , Emil Küchler , August Töllner , Karl Holzhauer , Fritz Söhngen and Franz Reinhold Rupsch . 48 witnesses and six experts were summoned. Reinsdorf's defense counsel was Gottfried Fenner .

The charges related to the arson attack on the "Willems" inn in Elberfeld on September 4, 1883, the unsuccessful attempt on September 27-28, 1883 and the attack on the festival hall in Rüdesheim on the evening of September 28, 1883. Reinsdorf was supposed to be the instigator of all three acts. Küchler and Rupsch were charged with the last two offenses. Holzhauer, Söhngen, Töllner and Rheinbach were charged with participating in the last two crimes.

Bachmann's indictment was § 112 RStGB , § 43 RStGB , § 306 No. 2 RStGB , § 311 RStGB and § 73 RStGB .

The witness Roland Palm, who is said to have financed the procurement of explosives, was not sworn in.

Judgment and death

He was sentenced to death by the Imperial Court on December 22, 1884 for inciting high treason and executed with the guillotine on February 7, 1885 in the Rote Ochsen in Halle together with Küchler . Rupsch's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment for his youth and Karl Bachmann received ten years in prison. Karl Holzhauer was sentenced to ten years in prison for aiding and abetting high treason. The other three defendants Karl Rheinbach , Fritz Söhngen and August Töllner were acquitted.

In his defense he said in court: “The workers build palaces and live in poor huts; they produce everything and maintain the entire state machine, and yet nothing is done for them; they all produce industrial products, and yet they have little and bad to eat; they are an always despised, raw and superstitious mass full of servitude. Everything that the state does has the sole tendency to maintain these conditions forever. The top ten thousand are to be kept on the shoulders of the great masses. Is this really supposed to take forever? Isn't it our duty to change? Shall we put our hands in our laps forever? "

reception

Johann Most paid tribute to him in his newspaper " Freiheit " on February 14, 1885 with a picture and an obituary.

The worker friend. The magazine of the Centralverein in Prussia for the welfare of the working classes wrote about him in 1888: "Reinsdorf, the first German anarchist agitator of German origin, and Dave seem to have been Most's teachers."

Wilhelm Liebknecht said: Von Reinsdorf, who always marched with police escort to the Niederwald monument and was not able to shake off this police escort for a moment since he entered the political scene [...]. His trial brought two things to the clearest evidence: that the police needed an assassination attempt and that people like Reinsdorf have no police behind them and are completely lonely within the German proletariat.

Franz Mehring wrote: “Another series of anarchist acts started in the autumn of 1883 by Elberfeld-Barmen. Its head was the typesetter August Reinsdorf […]. He was not a police spy, which he was considered to have been for a long time, and he did not [...] engage in common crimes, but he couldn't get beyond a conspirator to the liking of the police. "

Hermann Tobias said: “August Reinsdorf [had] created an obedient tool for himself in the Elberfeld anarchist group that worshiped him like a god. [...] [He created] the most horrific murder plan ever devised. "

Max Schütte came to the conclusion: "Yes, it is instructive in many respects, the story of August Reinsdorf and the Niederwald conspiracy."

Works

Newspaper correspondence

Letters

literature

swell

  • The high treason trial against the anarchists Reinsdorf and comrades before the Imperial Court of Leipzig in December 1884. According to stenographic transcription . IH Robolsky, Leipzig 1884.
  • S [alo]. 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
  • Johann Most : August Reinsdorf and the propaganda of the fact . Self-published, New York 1885. New York 1890 edition: archive.org

Secondary literature

  • Cousin Nobody: Trutz-Eisenstirn. Educational things from Puttkamerun. A four-leaf brochure clover with an appendix . German Coop. Print. and Publ. Co., London 1886 (= Social Democratic Library 29)
  • Anarchism and its bearers. Revelations from the anarchist camp . From the author of the London Letters in the Kölnische Zeitung Neufeld & Mehring, Berlin 1887, p. 25 ff.
  • Franz Mehring: History of the German Social Democracy . Part 2. JHW Dietz, Stuttgart 1898
  • 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 . Publishing house of "New Life", Berlin 1902.
  • The first pioneers of anarchism in Germany - August Reinsdorf and his time . In: The Anarchist. Anarchy is order, freedom and prosperity for everyone . 1st year Richard Klose, Berlin 1903.
  • Johann Langhard: The anarchist movement in Switzerland from its beginnings to the present and the international leaders . O. Häring, Berlin 1903, pp. 249-263. ("Eighth chapter. August Reinsdorf".) 2nd edition. 1909, Textarchiv - Internet Archive
  • Hugo Friedländer : The dynamite assassination at the unveiling ceremony of the Niederwald monument on September 28, 1883 before the Reich Court . In: Interesting criminal trials of cultural and historical importance . Volume 4, Hermann Barsdorf, Berlin 1911, pp. 159-240. zeno.org .
  • Dieter Fricke : Bismarck's Praetorian . The Berlin political police in the fight against the German labor movement (1871–1898) . Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1962.
  • 112. Reinsdorf, Friedrich August . In: Helga Berndt: Biographical sketches of Leipzig worker functionaries. Documentation on the 100th anniversary of the Socialist Law (1878–1890) . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1978, pp. 216-219. (Licensed edition Topos, Vaduz 1979)

filming

  • A German assassination attempt with Vadim Glowna as August Reinsdorf (TV film, Federal Republic of Germany 1975)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nord und Süd , 1885, p. 82; Max Schütte (1902), p. 3 ff .; Helga Berndt, p. 216; Johann Langhard, p. 263.
  2. ↑ Helga Berndt, p. 217.
  3. ↑ Born on December 10, 1857 in Pegau, died on March 22, 1910 in New York . (Helga Berndt, pp. 219–220.)
  4. ↑ S. Werner, p. 13; Johnann Most, p. 8. Hugo Friedländer calls differently "1867" (p. 173.)
  5. ↑ Johann Most, p. 9. According to S. Werner but "1877" (p. 14.)
  6. ↑ Johann Most, ibid.
  7. ↑ F. Bäschlin: 100 Years Typographia Bern, 1848-1948 . Woodcuts by Paul Boesch. In: Typographic monthly sheets . Bern 1948, No. 5.
  8. ↑ S. Werner, p. 14.
  9. ↑ Johann Most, p. 9.
  10. ↑ (S. Werner, p. 14.)
  11. ↑ "There in Hungary there was absolutely nothing to be earned, because too many Israelites worked there as typesetters". (S. Werner, p. 14.)
  12. ↑ August Reinsdorf stayed here under the name "Steinberg" (Johann Most, p. 16).
  13. ↑ October 26-29, 1876.
  14. ^ Berlin free press. Berlin news . Baumann, Berlin 1875–1878.
  15. ↑ Johann Most, p. 16.
  16. ^ Franz Mehring: History of the German Social Democracy . Second part. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1960, p. 589.
  17. ↑ Johann Most, p. 21.
  18. ↑ Helga Berndt, p. 216.
  19. ↑ S. Werner, p. 16 and p. 20.
  20. ↑ Reinhard Alings: Monument and Nation. The image of the nation state in the monument medium. On the relationship between nation and state in the German Empire, 1871–1918 . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-11-014985-0 , p. 168.
  21. ↑ Conquest of the city of Strasbourg from August 13 to September 28, 1870  in the German Digital Library
  22. ↑ The public prosecutor of Elberfeld wrote about him on January 8, 1884 to the Berlin police president Guido von Madai : "After confidential information - the shop steward cannot be exposed for the time being." (Quoted from Dieter Fricke, p. 160, note 307.)
  23. ^ IISG , Amsterdam. Julius Motteler Papers. Six letters from 1883.
  24. ↑ Dieter Fricke, p. 160, note 305.
  25. ↑ Hugo Friedländer: The dynamite attack at the unveiling ceremony of the Niederwald monument , p. 51.
  26. ^ Hugo Friedländer, p. 162.
  27. ^ Albert von Puttkamer: Minister of State Robert von Puttkamer. A piece of the Prussian past 1828–1900 . KF Koehler, Leipzig 1928, p. 139. (Quoted from Dieter Fricke, p. 160–161.)
  28. ↑ Dieter Fricke, p. 162 ff.
  29. ↑ Without a permanent address.
  30. ↑ Born on December 3, 1841 in Ronsdorf . Profession: Bandmaker , lives in Barmen. (S. Werner, p. 8.
  31. ↑ Born on December 4, 1859 in Triptis , Duchy of Saxony-Weimar . Profession: Weber , last stay in Luxembourg . (S. Werner, p. 6.)
  32. ↑ Born on February 9, 1844 in Krefeld . Profession typesetter, lives in Elberfeld . (S. Werner, p. 8.)
  33. ↑ Born on December 11, 1849 in Barmen . Profession: Weber, lives in Barmen. (S. Werner, p. 8.)
  34. ↑ Born on May 16, 1835 in Weiderode . Profession: Shoemaker , lives in Barmen. (S. Werner, p. 8.) He hanged himself in his cell on September 19, 1885 (Max Schütte 1983).
  35. ↑ Born on October 3, 1851 in Haßlinghausen . Profession: Dyer , lives in Barmen. (S. Werner S. 8.)
  36. ↑ Born on March 19, 1863 in Rathewitz , Naumburg an der Saale district . Profession saddler , lives in Roßbach an der Saale . (S. Werner, p. 7.)
  37. ↑ S. Werner, p. 4.
  38. ↑ S. Werner, pp. 7-9.
  39. ↑ S. Werner, p. 6.
  40. ↑ S. Werner, p. 61 ff.
  41. ↑ Franz Mehring: “According to Reinsdorf's own assertion, most of the costs of the expedition flowed from police funds, and this assertion was only not recorded in a document because the weaver Palm, who contributed the 40 marks in question, was not also indicted , but was heard as a witness, refused to give any information about the origin of the money. The Reichsgericht refrained from swearing in this 'witness' ”. (Franz Mehring: History of German Social Democracy .)
  42. ↑ § 80 RStGB
  43. ↑ United II. And III. Criminal Senate, Rep. C. 2/84; Chairman: Edwin Drenkmann; Excerpt from the judgment (concerning the co-defendants Bachmann and Holzhauer) in RGSt 12, 64–67
  44. ↑ Johann Most, p. 62.
  45. ↑ Johann Langhard, p. 263; Johann Most, p. 61 f.
  46. ↑ Hugo Friedländer, p. 262-
  47. ↑ Johann Langhard, S. 262nd
  48. ↑ S. Werner, p. 91.
  49. ↑ ibid.
  50. ^ Johann Most: August Reinsdorf and the propaganda of the fact . S. 59, Textarchiv - Internet Archive
  51. ↑ Quoted in: The anarchist movement in Switzerland from its beginnings to the present and the international leaders , p. 263, Textarchiv - Internet Archive
  52. ↑ page 301.
  53. ↑ Quoted from Wolfgang Schröder: Wilhelm Liebknecht. Small Political Writings , p. 211.
  54. ^ Franz Mehring: History of the German Social Democracy . Part 2.
  55. ↑ Hermann Tobias: Anarchism and the anarchist movement . Simon Berlin 1899 (= Economic Time Issues. Lectures and Treatises ) Volume 21, Issue 3, p. 19.
  56. ↑ 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 . (1983)
  57. ↑ Misprint in the source, there “20. June 1890 "(sic)
  58. ^ Herbert Birett (ed.): Forbidden publications in Germany. A documentation . Topos, Vaduz 1987, p. 159. ("March 31, 1885")
  59. ^ Pseudonym of Wilhelm Liebknecht.
  60. ↑ Quoted from: Wolfgang Schröder : Wilhelm Liebknecht. Small political papers . Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main 1976 ISBN 3-87682-418-4
  61. ↑ that is Rudolf Emil Martin .
  62. ↑ Quoted from Franz Mehring: History of the German Social Democracy . Second part. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1960, p. 589. (= Franz Mehring. Collected writings . Volume 2)
personal data
SURNAME Reinsdorf, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reinsdorf, Friedrich August (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anarchist assassin
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Pegau
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 1885
Place of death Halle on the Saale