Hechinger watering can processes
The Hechinger Gießkännchen- or Gießkännle-Trials is a wave of lawsuits that began in Hechingen in 1889 for a trivial reason, then expanded to Frankfurt , Stuttgart and Heilbronn and thus wrote a piece of Prussian judicial history .
prehistory
On April 8, 1850, the Principality of Hohenzollern-Hechingen fell to the Kingdom of Prussia . The development of the Prussian judicial and administrative structures that has taken place since then met with broad rejection from the local Swabian population. When it came to a legal dispute in 1889 because a clerk of the District Court Hechingen from an article in the carnival appearing Hechinger fools newspaper felt disparaged personally, the relationship between the local judicial officials and the population continued to deteriorate.
Beginning and course
On a summer day in 1889, the district judge Carl Degenhard Menzen was walking with his wife across the Hechingen market square and saw some children playing on the street - among them the son of the court pharmacist Obermiller - spraying water with a small watering can. Menzen, worried about his wife's expensive dress, called out to the children several times to stop doing it. When these showed no reaction, the district judge became furious and reported the incident to the town hall , which was just a few steps away . Thereupon the court pharmacist received a police warning , which in turn excited him so much that he covered the Prussian district judge with swear words. Thus the offense of insulting the officials was fulfilled. In their endeavor to behave correctly within the new, legal and political circumstances, the local police initiated an investigation, in the course of which 15 witnesses were summoned to court.
A short time later, the court pharmacist Obermiller published an advertisement in several local newspapers under the title: "The watering can: Officials and plebs ", in which he made the unfortunate attempt to put the other party in the wrong. This advertisement was picked up by several South German newspapers and commented on the regional aversion to everything Prussian. Now the matter escalated completely, because from then on the judiciary no longer investigated for insulting officials, but for " despising state institutions ". House searches were ordered, and after these revealed that some Hechingen citizens were in correspondence with the press, and the letters found also contained statements that defamed Prussian officials, the authorities cracked down on with the utmost severity: after further house searches in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Heilbronn and Ebingen , a letter and telegram block was imposed on five citizens of Hechingen and four newspapers (including the " Frankfurter Zeitung "). In the course of the investigation, 65 citizens of Hechingen had to testify under oath . A total of 19 court proceedings, some of them lasting several years, were conducted at various locations.
The End
The hilarious children's game with a watering can full of water ended for some private individuals, including the pharmacist Obermiller, and several newspaper editors, with fines and, above all, with high, self-borne legal costs . But the matter also had retrospective consequences for the other side, namely in the form that officials were transferred who had disregarded the proportionality of the funds too much. For the district judge Menzen, the watering can trials had no consequences, as he had not initiated any legal proceedings himself.
In addition to some lawyers, the local goldsmiths in particular benefited from the Hechingen events , because in Hechingen and the surrounding area, since the events described above, the local population wore small silver pendants in the form of a watering can as a sign of resistance against the Prussian authorities.
literature
- Anton Bumiller: The Hechinger Gießkännle process. In: Zoller Heimat, supplement to the Hohenzollerische Blätter for Zollerische Heimat- und Volkskunde, No. 2, 1st year.
- Journal for the History of the Upper Rhine, Volume 146, Page 574, Landesarchiv zu Karlsruhe, G. Braun Verlag, Karlsruhe, 1998.