Battle at Rinnthal

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The battle near Rinnthal (sometimes also called the Battle of Rinnthal) was the most violent battle of the Palatinate uprising and took place on June 17, 1849 near Rinnthal in the Annweiler Valley. The revolutionary troops under August Willich tried in vain to stop the advance of the Prussian troops on Landau .

Battle at Rinnthal
date June 17, 1849
place Rinnthal
output The troops are defeated
consequences The Prussians advance on Landau
Parties to the conflict

Flag of Germany (3-2 aspect ratio) .svg Palatinate Revolutionary Army

Prussia KingdomKingdom of Prussia Prussia ; Vanguard of the 2nd Division of the 1st Army Corps

Commander

Flag of Germany (3-2 aspect ratio) .svg August Willich

Prussia KingdomKingdom of Prussia Louis of Mutius

Troop strength
1,600 1,300
losses

20 dead; 20 wounded; 20 prisoners

9 wounded

Annweiler Friedhof, memorial for those who fell in battle
Annweiler Friedhof, memorial for the fallen, list of names of those buried there

prehistory

The movement of the March Revolution in the member states of the German Confederation led to the election of the Frankfurt National Assembly as the first all-German parliament. On March 28, 1849, this parliament had promulgated a constitution for the German Empire , which provided for the form of a hereditary constitutional monarchy. The Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV refused the offered imperial crown. On April 23, the Bavarian king and his government rejected the Paulskirche constitution, which was viewed by the left as a coup. On May 2, it was decided to set up a ten-member state committee for the defense and implementation of the imperial constitution , and on May 7, 1849, the authorized representative of the central authority for the Palatinate, Bernhard Eisenstuck , legitimized the state defense committee.

On May 3, 1849, the Dresden May Uprising broke out, which was suppressed by Saxon and Prussian troops on May 9. The third Baden uprising began on May 11th with the mutiny of the Baden troops in the federal fortress of Rastatt .

On June 11, the invasion of an improvised "1st" Prussian army corps under Moritz von Hirschfeld began . The avant-garde of his 1st Division under Major General von Hannecken crossed the Palatinate border unchallenged at Kreuznach and advanced south.

Associations involved

On the front line of the revolutionary army was a Palatinate Volkswehr battalion under Alexander Schimmelfennig , which had withdrawn from Hinterweidenthal to Rinnthal before the advancing Prussians . On June 17th, August Willich came to Rinnthal from Frankweiler with his group . He also brought the Karlsruhe Freikorps Dreher with him and Friedrich Engels also belonged to Willich's Freischar.

Major Mutius advanced with the vanguard of the 2nd Division of the 1st Army Corps. First he went with a fusilier battalion of the 25th Infantry Regiment, a Jäger company and two guns against the position of the troopers, while a battalion to bypass the troopers was sent via Spirkelbach to Sarnstall . The other associations initially remained behind Wilgartswiesen .

course

The troops had barricaded the road between Wilgartswiesen and Rinnthal in order to stop the advance of the Prussian troops towards Landau at a narrow point in the valley. The avant-garde of the 2nd Division of the 1st Army Corps under Major von Mutius came under fire, whereupon the height to the left of the road, which was insufficiently occupied by a Volkswehr battalion under Schimmelpfennig, was stormed by the Prussian hunters. The fusiliers took the bridge in front of Rinnthal and then occupied the Buchholzer Berg, which was also too weakly occupied by the troops. After the Prussians were able to bombard the revolutionaries standing in the valley from the heights, they withdrew in an orderly manner and fighting to Sarnstall. There, however, a quick disorderly escape began. The split up troops then withdrew on July 18, together with the main forces of the Palatinate Revolutionary Army, over the Knielinger Bridge to Baden - Willich's Freikorps as the last unit on June 19.

souvenir

A notice board on Bundesstraße 10 near Rinnthal indicates the location of the battle. Eight fallen revolutionaries were buried in the Annweiler cemetery, where a memorial was erected for them in 1880 (Germania with wall crown and inscription: They too died for the fatherland ). In various places in the Palatinate, memorial stones commemorate the dead.

literature

  • Daniel Staroste: Diary about the events in the Palatinate and Baden in 1849: a memory book for the contemporaries and for all who took part in the suppression of that uprising , Volume 1, Potsdam 1852, pp. 192-194 in the Google book search
  • Friedrich Engels : The German Reich constitution campaign . In: Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels - Werke, Volume 7, pp. 109–197, Dietz Verlag, Berlin / GDR 1960, here pp. 168–171 online
  • Kurt Baumann: The Palatinate and the Revolution of 1848/49. From the Frankfurt National Assembly to the rioters fighting near Rinnthal. In: Pfälzische Heimatblätter 21 (1973) 12, pp. 1-5.
  • Kurt Baumann: Friedrich Engels and the Palatinate uprising in 1849. The battle of Rinnthal and the retreat of the Palatinate revolutionary army. In: The Rhine Palatinate. Pirmasenser Nachrichten 26 , No. 270 of November 21, 1970, p. 8

References and comments

  1. Staroste's estimate of 2200 men
  2. Estimate based on information from Staroste
  3. ^ Website of the memorial in Annweiler

Coordinates: 49 ° 13 ′ 16 ″  N , 7 ° 55 ′ 14 ″  E