Wooden panties

Hölzerlips (* 1770 in Rod am Berg , † July 31, 1812 in Heidelberg , civil Georg Philipp Lang ) was a robber from the area around Fulda .

Name and origin

His robber name can be explained as follows: Wood : trades in wood products; Lips is short for Philipp.

The heads of four members of the Holzlipsbande

The wooden panties belonged to the traveling people of the Yeniche . Little is known about his childhood. Without education, he stayed with his father until he found a wife.

Robber life

After a theft in Frankfurt-Berkersheim on 4th / 5th August 1809 he was imprisoned in Bergen with Jakob Heinrich Vielmetter and his son Johannes for vagrancy. Until then, he claimed not to have been guilty of any crime. Hölzerlips and the Vielmetter son were able to escape from custody, while Jakob Vielmetter was extradited to Giessen . Vielmetter was the head of the Wetterau gang with whom Georg Philipp Lang committed five thefts.

In contrast to his testimony in Bergen, the wooden briefs had already committed crimes with the Wetterau gang several times before he was captured; u. a. According to the investigations of the Giessen judge Grolmann:

• the theft of a donkey on the night of July 8th to 9th, 1807 in a mill in Ober-Wöllstadt ,
• the attempted theft of geese and goats in Ilbenstadt in April 1808,
• a church robbery in Höchst in April 1808,
• an attempted street robbery between Wirtheim and Aufenau in April 1808,
• a road robbery in the Büdinger Forest on April 9, 1808, in which the Überrheiner Han-Adam, actually Johann Adam Steininger, also a member of the former Schinderhannes gang, took part,
• the theft of pewter and kitchen utensils in a courtyard near Frankfurt am Main ,
• an attempted theft in Nieder-Eschbach in 1808,
• a break-in and theft in Nieder-Roden on March 15, 1809,
• and the theft in Preungeshein on the night of August 1, 1809.

During his imprisonment, his wife met another man named Heinrich Pfeifer, with whom she left Hölzerlips shortly after he was released or after he escaped from Bergen. He later met another woman. When she and his two children were arrested, he entered into a relationship with a woman named Catharina Weis (also Orthweis) in Heidelberg .

Other criminal offenses of the Holzlips were:

The scene of the attack: Chaussee in front of Hemsbach (today B3)

• The theft "at the new hostel" at Lieblos in the night of September 7th to 8th, 1810. In the process, Holzlips, Johann Adam Wehner and Mathes Österlein (Krämer-Mathes) stole batiste worth 5,722 fl .
• A break-in and theft in Messel on the night of July 3rd to 4th, 1810,
• a road robbery near Dörnigheim on January 25, 1811
• the robbery of a rider between Obernburg am Main and Wertheim ,
• The street robbery at Hainchen near Himbach is undated .
• On the night of May 1, 1811, Hans Jacob Rieter , a merchant from Winterthur , and Rudolf Hanhart from Zurich , who were returning from the Frankfurt trade fair in their stagecoach , were attacked on the Bergstrasse between Laudenbach and Hemsbach . The coachman and the travelers were injured, Jacob Rieter so badly that he died on May 5th in Heidelberg. Philipp Friedrich Schütz , called Mannefriedrich, Hölzerlips, Veit Kämer, Krämer Mathes and Sebastian Lutz were involved in the robbery .

The entire acts of the Odenwald gangs were based on “ delinquency ” and were mostly petty crime.

The attack near Hemsbach, in which a traveler died, contradicted the other crimes and caused a sensation. The Grand Ducal Baden City Director Ludwig Pfister in Heidelberg took this as an opportunity to lead a campaign against traveling people in the Odenwald between Main and Neckar . According to initial investigations, he portrayed Hölzerlips as the leader of the attack. Pfister saw in the events the "armed confrontation between two social classes." He himself used the term "human class."

The robber's end

Depiction of the blood court over the wooden lip gang. By Friedrich Rottmann (1768–1816) Heidelberg 1812

Veit Krämer was arrested on May 4, 1811 with his wife and child near Sickenhofen . The Darmstadt judge Carl Friedrich Brill discovered the true identity of the prisoner, who called himself Valentin Schmitt. Kramer then betrayed his buddies, so that u. a. was able to make a profile of the Hölzerlips, which eventually led to his arrest in Hanau .

After the investigation was completed, the files were presented to the Grand Ducal Badischer Hofgericht in Mannheim on October 15, 1811 , which, according to the then applicable legal provisions, appointed a defense attorney for the defendants and ordered a final interrogation. This was necessary because the death penalty or at least penal sentences were to be expected.

The gang's defender gave u. a. on, "the woodenlips come from Eckardroth , the ancient inn of the robbers and crooks." Together with Veit Krämer, the woodenlips burdened Johann Georg Gottschalk from Ilbenstadt, commonly known as the black boy, heavily after his capture.

The Hessian office of Steinheim delivered the concubine des Hölzerlips, who had been transferred from Hanau there, to Heidelberg. There she initially called herself the “Spitzin”, her 7-year-old hunchbacked boy also gave the name “Spitz”. She and the husband Friedrich, who was also transferred from Hanau, and his wife and their 7-year-old boy all vehemently denied knowing the wooden panties. Only after threatening (and exercising) physical violence did the accused reveal their real names and their acquaintances. During this time, tumultuous scenes occurred again and again because the mutual treatment of the accused was not exactly polite. The son of Katharina Weis attracted attention through particularly vulgar insults against Veit Kramer, to whom he assumed a carnal relationship with his mother. The woman herself, from whom the hiding place of stolen property was extracted, insulted the wooden panties because he had threatened her with death in the event of betrayal. The questioning of the gang and the establishment of the truth dragged on over several weeks. The wisdom in particular denied it until the end.

In the prison, the prisoners attempted to escape, sawed through the bars and attempted to break through the wall, but were discovered.

When the verdict was announced, Holzlips said he would accept the verdict, but vehemently advocated the co-defendant Andreas Petry.

Hölzerlips was executed on July 31, 1812 together with his accomplices Mannefriedrich, Krämer Mathes and Veit Krämer in Heidelberg after a blood court . Andreas Petry and Sebastian Lutz were pardoned on the scaffold to life imprisonment in Mannheim.

Pfister expressly emphasized that he did not see the wooden panties as a “robber captain” but as an occasional “leader in individual robberies”. But when he saw the great success of his "Acts-like story," which he had completed in 1811 and published in 1812, he stylized Georg Philipp Lang as the Odenwald robber captain in his "supplement". So he persuaded him to wear the heavy chains during the execution, so that one could see what an important robber he was. Lang had previously complained that the chains were too heavy. Modern authors see this as an attempt to make the figure of the wooden panty into a counterpart to the Schinderhannes.

Aftermath

A folk band active in Germany in the late 1970s was called HölzerLips . Her long-playing record Jenischer Schall , published in 1978, exclusively contains songs about Hölzerlips and his colleagues. The texts are historically guaranteed and in the Yenish language ; the music is newly composed as there are no sources for it.

Since 2008 the Eichbaum breweries have been selling a “red robber beer”, which, according to the label, is dedicated to the robber Hölzerlips.

literature

• Gerhard Layer: “A real robber doesn't do that”. Schinderhannes and Hölzerlips as legendary figures . In: Harald Siebenmorgen (Hrsg.): Rogue or hero . 1995, p. 191-202 .
• Karl Friedrich Brill: Actual reports of the rabble in the Maingland, the Odenwald and the neighboring countries: especially with regard to the members of the same under investigation in Darmstadt ... with the portraits of eight main robbers . 2 volumes, Darmstadt 1814–1815.
• Michail Krausnick : Profession: Robber. About the terrible Mannefriedrich and the misdeeds of the Hölzerlips gang . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1978 and Beltz & Gelberg Verlag, Weinheim 1990, ISBN 3-407-78089-3 - in another special edition of the edition durchblick, bod, Norderstedt, with an extended appendix, u. a. Songs of Mannefriedrich (The robber reality around 1800 compared to Friedrich Schiller The robbers or The criminal from lost honor )
• Ludwig Pfister, Record-based history of the robber gangs on the two banks of the Main, in the Spessart and in the Oldenwalde together with a collection and interpretation of several words from the Yenish or crooks language. Heidelberg 1812.
• Dieter Preuss, Peter Dietrich: Hölzerlips (report of the poetic life of the vagabonds and highwaymen on the Winter Breath, but especially of the rise of the box grocer Hölzerlips to the Odenwald robber captain) . anrich publishing house, Modautal-Neunkirchen 1978, ISBN 3-920110-46-3
• Dieter Preuss, Peter Dietrich: Wooden briefs. From the poetic life of the Odenwald robber captain. Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg 1986, ISBN 3-473-38848-3
• Dieter Aumann, The brickworks of Babenhausen and the capture of the Hölzerlips gang , ISBN 978-3-00-024895-5

Web links

• Palatinate Museum Heidelberg
• Robbers in the Odenwald and Rhine / Main / Spessart districts

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ludwig Pfister, Record-based history of the robber gangs on the two banks of the Main, in the Spessart and in the Oldenwalde, along with a collection and interpretation of several words from the Yenish or crooks language. Heidelberg 1812, p. 51 f.
2. ↑ Friedrich Ludwig Adolph Grolman: Actual history of the Vogelsberg and Wetterau robber gangs and several criminals associated with them. In addition to personal description of many thieves and robbers scattered throughout the German dialect; With a copper plaque, which shows the faithful portraits of 16 main criminals. Giessen 1813, p. 250.
3. ↑ Karl Friedrich Brill: Actual news of the rabble in the Maingegenden, the Odenwald and the neighboring countries: especially with regard to the members of the same under investigation in Darmstadt ... with the portraits of eight main robbers. 2 volumes, Darmstadt 1814–1815. P. 411.
4. ↑ Grolman, Acting History, pp. 239-241, 249f, 261, pp. 397-416.
5. ↑ Grolman and Pfister contradict one another here.
6. ↑ CF Brill, News from the files, p. 420.
7. ↑ Ludwig Pfister, history of files, p. 84 f, p. 93, p. 96, p. 137 f.
8. ↑ Wolfgang Seidenspinner, Hölzerlips - a robber career. On the crime of the Odenwald Jauner in the early 19th century. In: Harald Siebenmorgen (Ed.), Scoundrel or Hero? Historical robbers and robber gangs, Sigmaringen 1995. pp. 75-81, p. 77
9. ↑ Wolfgang Seidenspinner, Myth of the Counter-Society. Exploring the Jauner subculture. Habil paper 1996. ISBN 3-89325-640-7 . P. 256.
10. ↑ Ludwig Pfister, history based on files, p. 204.
11. ↑ Ludwig Pfister, addendum to the record-based history of the band of robbers on both banks of the Main, in the Spessart and in the Odenwalde, Heidelberg 1812, p. 1.
12. ↑ Ludwig Pfister, addendum, p. 10.
13. ↑ Grolman, Acting History, p. 301.
14. ↑ Pfister, supplement, p. 16ff.
15. ↑ Ludwig Pfister, addendum, p. 32.
16. ↑ Ludwig Pfister, addendum, p. 321.
17. ↑ Etching from the blood court in Heidelberg 1812
18. ↑ Ludwig Pfister, addendum, p. 340.
19. ↑ Ludwig Pfister, Actre-like history, p. 200 f.
20. ↑ Wolfgang Seidenspinner, Hölzerlips - a robber career. On the crime of the Odenwald Jauner in the early 19th century. In: Harald Siebenmorgen (Ed.), Scoundrel or Hero? Historical robbers and robber gangs, Sigmaringen 1995. pp. 75-80.