Frankfurt beer riot

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As Frankfurter beer ruckus from the 21st April 1873 the most momentous social unrest between the revolutions of are 1848 and 1918 in Frankfurt am Main in the city's history received. During the crackdown by the Prussian military , 20 people were killed. The trigger for the unrest was the increase in the price of beer by the local breweries ; Research disagrees on the assessment of a possible political background.

trigger

The trigger for the riots was the increase in the price of beer from 4 Kreuzer (1 Batzen ) to 4½ Kreuzer by the Frankfurt brewery restaurants on April 1, 1873. At that time, beer had the status of a staple food for workers . The price increase of 12.5% ​​hit the poorly paid lower class hard. In addition, there were no half-kreuzer coins, so you first had to pay five kreuzers for the beer and received a voucher for half a kreuzer from the host. However, the voucher could only be redeemed at the same host.

April 21st was the last day of the spring fair . On this day, the Frankfurt workers were traditionally off work. A folk festival took place in the Bleichgarten on Breiten Gasse . The increased beer prices, which were also raised at the festival, and the amount of alcohol consumed nevertheless led to an increasingly aggressive mood among the festival visitors. Clashes had already been feared in advance; in the previous weeks there had been riots in Mannheim and Stuttgart also due to increased beer prices.

course

Around 4 p.m., a procession of around 100 people formed from the crowd of festival visitors, who were quickly joined by other people. A flag was made out of a red curtain, behind which the crowd moved into the city center with the battle cry I want Batzebier .

In the hours that followed, numerous brewery restaurants were destroyed by the crowd of insurgents. Furniture and windows were smashed, beer poured into the street. Neighboring, albeit uninvolved, shops were looted. In some breweries, the staff defended their workplaces against the angry crowd: in the Schwager brewery on Neue Mainzer Straße with the help of a hose full of boiling beer, in the Reichsapfel brewery in Große Friedberger Straße with glowing sticks .

The Frankfurt police under police chief August von Hergenhahn were completely overwhelmed by the situation. In the fast-growing city, which had around 100,000 inhabitants at the time , only five sergeants and 53 policemen were available who were based in the medieval Clesernhof on Karpfengasse near the Römer . Since the Prussian occupation of 1866 , however, the 1st Kurhessian Infantry Regiment No. 81 was located in its barracks in the former Carmelite monastery and was now alerted.

The bloody suppression of the uprising

The garrison dispatched six companies that evening to put down the unrest. In the tramline in the old town , the soldiers shot into the crowd. The army was only able to bring the situation under control around midnight. 20 people were shot dead by soldiers, including an old woman and a ten-year-old boy. The dead were laid out in the Hospital of the Holy Spirit .

The morning after the riot, the city was under siege . All important public spaces, bridges and train stations were occupied by the military. Schools, shops and hotels remained closed. In addition to the troops stationed in Frankfurt, three infantry battalions from Homburg , Mainz and Offenbach had been brought together in Frankfurt. Around 300 suspects were arrested in the city and in the city ​​forest .

consequences

On July 14, 1873, the city ​​court to try the insurgents met in the canvas house . 47 defendants, including many foreigners, were sentenced to prison or prison, the maximum sentence was 4½ years.

After the beer riot, the Frankfurt breweries announced that they would withdraw the price increases, as their lives and property should not be threatened.

Political classification

The political and sociological assessment of the Frankfurt beer riot is controversial. On the one hand, the event can in no way be reduced to the raging of a drunken mob, on the other hand, there is no theoretical-ideological background, for example the Paris Commune uprising two years earlier. The classification in the socio-political context of the Wilhelminian era suggests a connection with similar hunger riots of this era , which was marked by drastic social injustices. In June 1872, for example, violent riots broke out in Berlin over exorbitant prices for workers' apartments. In Munich there was already a " Munich beer riot " in 1844 , which claimed one person .

The fear of the “communist ghost” , which was widespread at the time, and the high proportion of foreign “agitators”, however, also fueled conjecture and conspiracy theories. Some sensed an attempted left-wing coup and blamed the socialist agitation , while others, such as the Frankfurter Zeitung , suspected the masterminds in the right-wing spectrum and asked whether the “Red Danger” had been deliberately staged for the public.

See also

literature

  • Walter Gerteis: The unknown Frankfurt. Volume I. Societäts-Verlag Frankfurt, 1961. ISBN 3-920346-05-X . Pages 37-41.
  • Christoph Jenisch : I want Batzebier. A popular historical social consideration of the character of the Frankfurters and his aversion to insurrection, revolution and fresh vegetables. Part 4: The beer riot of 1873. Archived from the original on September 29, 2007 ; accessed on February 10, 2016 .
  • Lothar Machtan : Why and what people went on strike in the 19th century
  • Lothar Machtan, René Ott: “Batzebier!” Reflections on the social protest movement in the years after the founding of the Empire using the example of the southern German beer riot of spring 1873 . In: Heinrich Volkmann , Jürgen Bergmann (eds.), Social Protest. Studies on traditional resistance and collective violence in Germany from the Vormärz to the founding of the Reich . Opladen 1984, pages 128-166.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roet de Rouet, Henning: Frankfurt am Main as a Prussian garrison from 1866 to 1914. Frankfurt am Main 2016. P. 138.