Ferdinand Cohen-Blind

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Ferdinand Cohen-Blind

Ferdinand Cohen-Blind (born March 25, 1844 in Mannheim ; † May 8, 1866 in Berlin ) committed an assassination attempt on Otto von Bismarck on May 7, 1866 .

Childhood and adolescence

Ferdinand Cohen-Blind was born in Mannheim to Jewish parents, Jakob Abraham Cohen and his second wife Friederike, née Ettlinger. Shortly after the birth of her son, his mother began a relationship with Karl Blind , a former student who had been expelled from Heidelberg University because of his radical democratic convictions . With her husband's money, Friederike Cohen supported Karl Blind's political activities, was arrested with him in the summer of 1847 and temporarily imprisoned. After Jakob Abraham Cohen died in 1848, Friederike married Karl Blind in 1849, who became Ferdinand's stepfather .

After the suppression of the Baden Revolution , in which Karl Blind had fought on the side of the republican insurgents, he had to go into exile with his wife and their children , first to Paris , later to Brussels and in 1852 to London . The childhood in exile shaped Cohen-Blind, who rejected the monarchical systems of the German states and hoped to be able to emulate his stepfather as an advocate of democracy.

1862 returned Cohen-Blind to Germany and was initially a guest student at the University of Tübingen , from 1864 then a student at the Agricultural University of Hohenheim , where he provided very good performances.

Assassination attempt on Bismarck

Cohen-Blind carried out the assassination attempt on Bismarck (unknown engraver )

After completing his studies in March 1866, he went on a hike through Bavaria and Bohemia . The increasing likelihood of war between Prussia and Austria (from 14 June to 23 August 1866 actually took place ) brought him to the conclusion, the Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck , whom he saw as the author of the threat of fratricidal war, by an attempt to kill to avert the war. He drove from Karlsbad to Berlin, where he arrived on May 5th and stayed at the Hotel Royal on Unter den Linden .

Cohen-Blind wrote his stepfather a letter from Berlin about his plan. This letter was intercepted by the Prussian police and has disappeared. He also wrote a letter to Mathilde Weber in Tubingen on May 7 , in which he explained his plan to her.

On the afternoon of May 7th, Cohen-Blind checked in on Unter den Linden , near the Russian embassy , Bismarck, who had reported to King Wilhelm in his palace and was now on his way home on foot. He fired two shots at Bismarck from behind from a revolver . He turned around quickly and grabbed Cohen-Blind, who was still able to fire three more shots. Soldiers of the just marching past 1st Battalion of the 2nd Guards Regiment on foot rushed up and arrested Cohen-Blind. Bismarck continued on his way home and was examined later that evening by the king's personal physician , Gustav von Lauer , who found that the first three bullets had only grazed the body and the last two bullets had ricocheted off the ribs and had caused no significant injuries .

Cohen-Blind was taken to police headquarters for interrogation, where he cut his carotid artery with a knife in an unobserved moment and died shortly after 4 a.m. on May 8th. His body was later buried without ceremony and at night in the Nikolaifriedhof .

The murder weapon, a six-shot bundle revolver of the Lefaucheux type , is on display in the Bismarck Museum in Friedrichsruh .

literature

Web links

Commons : Ferdinand Cohen-Blind  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Correction according to Volker Ullrich : Five shots on Bismarck. In: Zeit Online . July 23, 1998, archived from the original on February 16, 2018 ; accessed on May 7, 2021 . and the English version of this article.
  2. ↑ Letter excerpt from: Arno Widmann : What do you think of that? In: Frankfurter Rundschau , May 7, 2016, p. 36 f.
  3. ↑ Locations and museums: Bismarck Museum, German Historical Museum, Reichstag, Fontane Archive, Zeppelin Museum. In: Spiegel Geschichte 3/2013, May 27, 2013.
    Locations and museums: revolver on the desk; Panorama in the old hall of fame; Bebel's tribune against the authorities; Poetry and journalism; Airship atmosphere. (No longer available online.) In: Spiegel Online. May 27, 2013, formerly in the original ; accessed on June 9, 2020 .  (     Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.spiegel.de
personal data
SURNAME Cohen-Blind, Ferdinand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Assassin against Otto von Bismarck
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1844
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1866
PLACE OF DEATH Berlin