Gustav Mayer (revolutionary)

Gustav Mayer

Gustav Mayer (born August 22, 1810 in Heilbronn , † August 7, 1852 in St. Louis ) was a pharmacist and revolutionary. He was a brother of the doctor and physicist Robert Mayer and played an important role in Sinsheim during the revolution of 1848/49 . After the revolution was suppressed, he emigrated to the USA, where he probably died of typhus a little later .

Life

He was the second son of the Heilbronn pharmacist Christian Mayer. Like his older brother Fritz, he also embarked on a career in pharmacy. In 1836 he married Amalie Eberbach in Großgartach . Around 1840 he bought the pharmacy in Meßkirch , where he became a citizen of Baden and served on the local council. In 1844 he moved to Sinsheim as a pharmacist . There he soon made a name for himself as a political speaker and agitator and became the spokesman for the rebels during the revolution of 1848. In April 1848 he succeeded in arming the Sinsheim militia, with whose backing he proclaimed the democratic republic on April 24, 1848 from the Sinsheim town hall . Mayer then moved with the gunmen via Heidelberg to Karlsruhe. Because of the suppression of the uprising, he fled to Strasbourg. From April 28, he was wanted on a wanted list, and the Baden state confiscated part of his property. When the revolution flared up again in May 1849, he returned to Sinsheim with a legitimation from Karl Blind and Gustav Struve as civil commissioner , where he carried out a political purge of the officials. In the nearby Odenwald he set up a German-Polish legion with which he fought as an officer against Prussian and Imperial troops. After the revolution was put down again, he turned again to Strasbourg and then emigrated to the USA , where he opened a pharmacy in St. Louis and brought his family to live with him. In the meantime, he was sentenced in absentia to a prison term of several years for high treason . The family did not do well in St. Louis. Mayer's wife Amalie died of typhus in early 1852, Mayer himself died that same year, presumably due to the same illness. The trace of his sons disappears relatively quickly, only the two daughters Emilie and Franziska Anna returned to southern Germany after the death of their parents and from then on lived in their uncle Robert Mayer's house.

literature

• Christine and Holger Friedrich: Unknown things from the last years of the life of the Sinsheim 1848/49 revolutionary Gustav Mayer (1810-1852) in St. Louis (Missouri) . In: Kraichgau 17 , Heimatverein Kraichgau 2002, pp. 257–264.