Freikorps Lichtschlag

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The Freikorps Lichtschlag was a German paramilitary association that was set up on December 14, 1918, shortly after the end of the First World War .

Lineup

The General Command of the VII Army Corps in Munster under Lieutenant General Oskar von Watter began after the November Revolution to set up Freikorps units returning from the Western Front . The Freikorps Lichtschlag was created in the Hagen area , named after its commander, Captain Otto Lichtschlag (1885–1961), and comprised around 2500 men.

Mission history

The association was used in early 1919 on the orders of Lieutenant General von Watter against the socialization movement in the Ruhr area. On February 15, he proceeded with great brutality in Dorsten and Bottrop against striking workers. On February 16, the Freikorps moved out on Watter's orders to take a "pacifist" action against Hervest . The formation's blood trail that began there earned it the name “Freikorps Manslaughter”. On February 23, 1919, the workers' leader Alois Fulneczek was shot in Bottrop by soldiers of the Lichtschlag Freikorps. As a result, the followers of the called KPD and the USPD in the Ruhr the general strike of. This was forcibly suppressed. The situation remained unsettled and was further fueled by riots by the Freikorps. On April 15, 1919 members of the Freikorps Lichtschlag shot at a gathering of striking workers in the Mettmann district ; there were dead and injured.

The Freikorps supported the putschists during the Kapp Putsch and was deployed against the striking workers, whose activities the Reich government rejected, in March 1920 in the Ruhr area. On March 15, armed workers' formations attacked an advance guard of the Freikorps under Captain Otto Hasenclever, who had advanced under the black-white-red flags of the right-wing opponents of the democratic republic and had stated that he was under the orders of Lieutenant General von Watter, who, as it was explained, was "on the floor of General Lüttwitz ", the leading putschist alongside Kapp. The battery of the putschists was wiped out, Captain Hasenclever and ten soldiers and six workers were killed.

On March 16, the advance of the Freikorps at Aplerbeck was stopped by 10,000 men of the Red Ruhr Army . Thereupon the Dortmund Social Democrats Max König , district president in Arnsberg, and Wilhelm Hansmann , district administrator in Hörde, placed themselves at the head of the Freikorps to enable it to march on Dortmund. The workers' militias were not impressed by this. The following day the volunteer corps was "crushed" by them. The armed workers captured the guns, captured 600 members of the voluntary corps and occupied Dortmund .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Niess: The Revolution of 1918/19 , Europa-Verlag 2017, ISBN 978-3-95890-074-5 , pp. 353-354.
  2. ↑ Sahin Aydin: A life for the just cause; Biographical summary of Alois Fulneczek (December 29, 1882 - February 23, 1919). Art Circle Bottrop, 2015.
  3. ↑ Thomas Alexander: Carl Severing. Social democrat from Westphalia with Prussian virtues. Westfalen-Verlag, Bielefeld 1992, p. 109.
  4. ↑ Ulrich Heinemann: The workers have their say, but not come to results. Workers and labor movement in the area between World War I and the Kapp Putsch. In: Bernd Faulenbach, Günther Högl (Hrsg.): A party in their region. On the history of the SPD in western Westphalia. Essen 1988, p. 86.
  5. ↑ Heinemann 1988, p. 86.
  6. ↑ Martin Martiny , workers 'movement on the Rhine and Ruhr from the failure of the council and socialization movement to the end of the last parliamentary government of the Weimar Republic (1920–1930), in: Jürgen Reulecke (ed.), Workers' movement on the Rhine and Ruhr. Contributions to the history of the labor movement in Rhineland-Westphalia, Wuppertal 1974, pp. 241–273, here: p. 247.
  7. ^ Wilhelm Ribhegge: Prussia in the west. Struggle for parliamentarism in Rhineland and Westphalia. Münster 2008 (special edition for the state center for political education NRW), p. 322.
  8. ↑ Chronicle 1920 at the German Historical Museum. Retrieved November 9, 2016 .
  9. ↑ https://www.deutsche-revolution.de/arbeiter-siegen-ueber-kompanie-hasenclever-vom-freikorps-lichtschlag