Battle of Ludwigshafen

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Battle of Ludwigshafen
Ludwigshafen is on fire - June 15, 1849
Ludwigshafen is on fire - June 15, 1849
date June 15, 1849 to June 18, 1849
place Ludwigshafen ; Mannheim
output The Prussians occupy Ludwigshafen; the Rhine crossing remains closed to them.
Parties to the conflict

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

Prussia KingdomKingdom of Prussia Prussia

Commander

Flag of Germany (3-2 aspect ratio) .svgColonel Türr; Otto von Corvin-Wiersbitzki

Prussia KingdomKingdom of Prussia Major Kuenzel

Troop strength
800 600
losses

17 dead; 9 wounded

2 dead; 6 wounded

The battle of Ludwigshafen and the subsequent cannonade of Ludwigshafen lasted from June 15 to 18, 1849 and were part of the Palatinate uprising and the Baden revolution . The young Ludwigshafen settlement was badly damaged by the artillery shells from Baden and the resulting fires.

Fighting in the course of the Baden Revolution of 1848/49

prehistory

The revolution of 1848 in the 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 .

The Prussian intervention in the Palatinate began on June 11th - the I. Prussian Army Corps under Lieutenant General Moritz von Hirschfeld crossed the Palatinate border unchallenged near Kreuznach and advanced south. On June 14th the battle broke out at Kirchheimbolanden . Ludwik Mierosławski , a Polish revolutionary, met on June 10th. In 1849 he moved to Heidelberg to take over the high command of the Baden-Palatinate Revolutionary Army, which had been transferred to him by the revolutionaries, and the headquarters were relocated to Mannheim.

On June 15, Lieutenant General Eduard von Peucker , the commander of the federal troops combined in the Neckar Corps , put the Lower and Middle Rhine District in Baden into a state of war. Also on June 15, a few kilometers northeast of Mannheim there was a battle near Käfertal between Hessian imperial troops and the Baden revolutionary army.

The occupation of Ludwigshafen by the Prussians

On June 15, 1849, the 1st Division of the 1st Army Corps moved into Frankenthal and sent its vanguard to Oggersheim . Major Künzel advanced from Oggersheim with the 1st Battalion of the 28th Infantry Regiment , a squadron of the 9th Hussar Regiment , a hunter division and two artillery pieces on Ludwigshafen.

Baden infantry attacked the Prussians at around 11 a.m. in front of Ludwigshafen, but withdrew to Ludwigshafen before the Prussian counterattack. The entrances to the north and west had been blocked by barricades, for which cotton bales had been used and which were covered by guns of the revolutionary troops. A detachment of the troops attempted a sortie but was repulsed. After a brief skirmish , the Prussians succeeded in gaining both entrances and storming two more barricades in Rheinstrasse. The revolutionary troops withdrew with their guns over the Rhine bridge to Mannheim . Some of them managed to escape in the direction of Speyer . While escaping across the bridge, the rebels suffered further losses from the Prussian fire. To prevent the Prussians from pursuing them, the fleeing men loosened the links of the ship's bridge , and some fell into the Rhine and drowned. After a battle of about 2 hours, Ludwigshafen was in the hands of the Prussian troops at 1.30 p.m. The 1st Division left a battalion and 4 light guns in Ludwigshafen and occupied Speyer, Schifferstadt and Mutterstadt on June 16 .

The cannonade of Ludwigshafen by the revolutionary army

During the fighting in Ludwigshafen, the Baden Revolutionary Army had placed heavy artillery on the Mannheim side of the Rhine, which began with the cannonade of Ludwigshafen after the rebels had withdrawn over the ship bridge . The Prussians had to bring their light guns out of range of the Baden artillery and could not take up the duel. On June 15, around 3 p.m., a Baden grenade caused a fire in a warehouse in the Ludwigshafen port area, which quickly spread to all buildings in the port. In the further course of the day the ship bridge caught fire. The gunfire continued all night from June 15th to June 16th with a few interruptions. After an early morning break, the cannonade resumed from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on June 16. The Prussians fired at the houses on the Mannheimer Ufer with glowing bullets to drive away the gunmen there, but could still do nothing against the heavy artillery from Baden, which was directed by the Swiss artillery officer Arnold Steck and Otto von Corvin-Wiersbitzki .

The cannonade continued on June 17th, and neither side could achieve particular success. On June 18, the Prussians replaced their troops in Ludwigshafen with fresh units, although the arrival of units of the West Franconian corps of the Bavarian army had already been announced for June 19. During this detachment, the Baden artillery forced the fire. On June 18, around 10 p.m., the Baden troops tried to cross over to Ludwigshafen by barge, but the attempt was broken off due to the Prussian defensive fire. On June 19, the guns fell silent on both sides of the Rhine. Between June 15 and 18, an estimated 1,000 shells were fired from Mannheim at Ludwigshafen.

Arrival of Bavaria

The West Franconian corps of the Bavarian Army under Lieutenant General Karl Theodor von Thurn und Taxis crossed the border to the Rhine Palatinate with 9,500 men on June 18, after having crossed the Rhine at Oppenheim on June 16 . The advance to the south took place via Worms and Frankenthal . On June 19, at 11 p.m., the Bavarian troops moved into the destroyed Ludwigshafen with a jäger battalion and two squadrons of cavalry and an artillery battery. It was the intention to support the attack of Lieutenant General Eduard von Peucker's army corps on Mannheim.

Consequences of the battle

On the one hand, the Prussians could not complete the crossing of the Rhine at Mannheim and , on the other hand, the Palatinate army under Franz Sznayde could no longer unite with the Baden army at Mannheim. The Palatinate army crossed the Rhine bridge near Knielingen on June 18 . The Prussians followed on June 20 at Germersheim .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ commanded the Volkswehr Regiment in Ludwigshafen; s. Corvin p. 265. Türr was Hungarian and formerly a sergeant in the Austrian army (see Corvin p. 246)
  2. ↑ for the cannonade
  3. ↑ s. Staroste p. 183; without sacrifice on the ship's bridge
  4. ↑ s. Staroste supplement No. 18; P. 286
  5. ↑ s. Staroste p. 216
  6. ↑ s. Staroste pp. 182-183
  7. ↑ s. Walter, p. 393
  8. ^ Arnold Steck from Bern was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Prussian court martial on August 7, 1849, but was later able to escape from the Bruchsal prison; before the court, Corvin alleged that Steck was not involved in the cannonade at all
  9. ↑ s. Staroste p. 203
  10. ^ Josef Rübsam:  Taxis (Thurn and Taxis), Karl Theodor Prince von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 37, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1894, p. 507 f.
  11. ↑ s. Staroste p. 196
  12. ↑ s. Staroste p. 189
  13. ↑ s. Staroste p. 206

Coordinates: 49 ° 28 ′ 59 ″  N , 8 ° 26 ′ 52 ″  E