Ferdinand Wiesmann
Ferdinand Wiesmann (born August 27, 1896 in Erlangen , † January 9, 1924 in Speyer ) was a German political activist. He became known for his participation in the fatal assassination attempt on Heinz-Orbis , the President of the Autonomous Palatinate in January 1924, in which he was also killed.
Life
Ferdinand Wiesmann was the son of a turnout attendant. He was a tax officer and at the end of 1923 joined the secret "Rheinisch-Palatinate Combat League", which was co-founded by Edgar Jung , which sought to remove the French occupation after the First World War and from 1923 planned and carried out violent actions against the Palatinate separatists supported by France .
Wiesmann was one of the 20-strong troop of so-called "defensive fighters" put together by Jung who carried out a fatal assassination attempt on the Palatinate separatist Franz Josef Heinz on January 9, 1924 . Heinz, who was also called Heinz-Orbis after his home community, advocated detaching the Palatinate , which belongs to Bavaria, from the German Empire and integrating it into a "Rhenish Republic", a state to be created west of the Rhine based on France .
After Heinz proclaimed the Autonomous Palatinate in Speyer on November 12, 1923 , France initiated the process of recognizing this Autonomous Palatinate as a new state on January 12, 1924. This was to be prevented with the assassination attempt on Heinz on January 9, 1924.
On the initiative and with the knowledge of Bavarian government agencies, the killer squad crossed the partially frozen Rhine on the evening of January 9th and attacked the separatist Heinz, his companions and the guests present in the dining room of the Hotel Wittelsbacher Hof in Speyer. Heinz, the Trier separatist Nikolaus Fußhöller and an uninvolved guest, Matthias Sand from Würzburg, were killed. The assassins Ferdinand Wiesmann and Franz Hellinger were fatally injured in the subsequent exchange of fire .
The assassination of Heinz became a heroic act in right-wing propaganda in the years that followed. The murdered assassins were transfigured into martyrs. When Wiesmann was buried in his Bavarian home town of Schollbrunn, sympathizers began collecting money for a memorial.
Honors and commemorations
In 1926 a memorial was inaugurated in the Schollbrunn cemetery. At the ceremony, two of the assassins made speeches. The regional president of the district of Lower Franconia and Aschaffenburg, Julius Ritter von Henle laid a wreath.
The Hellinger Wiesmann memorial was inaugurated in the Speyer cemetery on January 10, 1932. It consists of two cross shafts connected by a cross bar on a lava stone base. On the front of the plinth, under the relief of two holding hands next to each other, the names, dates of birth and death of the Hellinger and Wiesmann involved in the assassination are written. An iron cross was originally attached there. The inscription on the back can no longer be read clearly. It evidently refers to the reason for the honor.
Edgar Jung gave a commemorative speech at the inauguration of the monument by Domkapitular Brauner. The inauguration ceremony broadcast by Bayerischer Rundfunk was like a mass gathering of the political right. Representatives of patriotic associations, the military and the authorities appeared. Greetings were received from President von Hindenburg , Chancellor Heinrich Brüning and from the Bavarian Prime Minister Heinrich Held . The President of the Bavarian Warrior League laid a wreath on behalf of Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria . At the end of the celebration, three aircraft from the aviation associations in Neustadt and Mannheim circled the memorial and threw two wreaths. A band from the Bavarian State Police from Aschaffenburg provided the appropriate music.
Until 2001, the memorial was on the tour of the city's honorary delegation on the day of national mourning . According to a report by the broadcaster SWR2 in 2002, the then Lord Mayor of Speyer, Werner Schineller , had the maintenance stopped. The tour no longer leads past the monument.
On the day of the inauguration of the monument, a memorial plaque was unveiled at the crime scene, the Wittelsbacher Hof in Speyer. It was removed in the 1970s. In 2005, at the suggestion of the historian Matthias Spindler, another plaque was installed.
In the period before the Second World War, some buildings and streets were named after Ferdinand Wiesmann, for example in Partenstein (street) or in Marktheidenfeld (new construction of the Marktheidenfeld-Karlstadt district management).
The labor service camp 3/320 in Schifferstadt was named after Wiesmann.
literature
- Gerhard graves, Matthias Spindler : Revolver republic on the Rhine. The Palatinate and its separatists . tape 1 : November 1918 to November 1923 . Pfälzische Verlags-Anstalt, Landau / Pfalz 1992, ISBN 3-87629-164-X .
- Gerhard graves, Matthias Spindler: The Palatinate Liberators. People's anger and state violence in the armed struggle against Palatinate separatism 1923/24 . Pro Message, Ludwigshafen / Rhein 2005, ISBN 3-934845-24-X .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Memorial commemorates an assassination attempt . Historischer Verein Speyer, January 25, 2014, accessed on March 16, 2020
- ↑ Right-wing extremist assassin or freedom fighter? . Mainpost, January 18, 2006, accessed March 16, 2020
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wiesmann, Ferdinand |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German political activist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 19th century or 20th century |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 9, 1924 |
| Place of death | Speyer |