Leipzig slaughter

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The events during the visit of the Saxon Prince Johann , brother of the Saxon King, to Leipzig on August 12th and 13th, 1845 are referred to as the Leipzig carnage . During this visit there were protests against Johann. After the royal military shot at the demonstrators, the democratic politician Robert Blum led a protest rally and advocated an honorable burial of the dead. The events in August 1845 aroused outrage throughout Germany and laid the foundation for Blum's national reputation.

Leipzig slaughter
The scenery on Roßplatz (above) and the funeral procession to St. John's Church on a contemporary lithograph

prehistory

In the Kingdom of Saxony there had been a reform-oriented policy under the leading minister Bernhard August von Lindenau during the 1930s . However, this met with increasing resistance from the conservatives and was finally replaced in 1843 by Julius Traugott von Könneritz , who took a reactionary line. At this time, the movement of German Catholics that had arisen a few years earlier was also at its peak. This had taken root particularly in Silesia and also in Saxony. Prominent representatives were Johannes Ronge and the democratic politician Robert Blum . Because the movement rejected papal primacy and other Catholic commandments, it was repeatedly persecuted in Saxony. Prince Johann , the brother of King Friedrich August II , was also considered a fanatical Catholic (the Saxon royal house was Catholic, unlike the majority of the Saxon population) and persecutor of dissenters. Prince Johann was also General Commander of the Saxon Communal Guards and, due to the childlessness of his brother, heir to the Saxon throne.

12. August

Prince Johann of Saxony, portrait from 1831

On August 12, 1845, Prince Johann arrived in Leipzig by train from Dresden . In the afternoon he took part in the vigilante exercises, which a crowd commented with whistles. In the evening Johann dined in the Hotel de Prusse on Roßplatz with the city's distinguished citizens. Outside there was a lot of German national and patriotic songs. Tirades were uttered against the Jesuits and stones were thrown at the windows of the hotel, whereupon the commander of the communal guard sent the main guard of the communal guard to intervene. However, a representative of the district administration asked for the royal military , which, unlike the municipal guard, was not responsible for such a case.

The two units reached the scene of the event with a slight difference in time, but the communal guard was sent away by the royal army. The lieutenant colonel of the Saxon royal military is said to have rebuked the vigilante group with the cry: "You are no longer necessary, go back." At this point, Prince Johann left the hotel and ordered the site to be cleared.

The royal military then caused the protesters to retreat to Lerchenallee (Parkweg on the north side of Roßplatz) and erected a barrier between them and them, which, however, was crossed by young people. Thereupon the military turned back to the Lerchenallee, made several tones from hunting horns and shot at the assembled, whereby the fear of some officers, who could not see the entire event, was the decisive factor. The crowd was too far away from the Hotel de Prusse to endanger the people in it.

The gunfire killed eight people and injured four. This excited the crowd and raged in the streets until the first hours of August 13th. Some students even wanted to storm the royal military barracks. Eventually the local guard took control of the city and calmed the situation.

Reactions in Saxony

On August 13th, Prince Johann left the city. Since the population saw in him the culprit for the events, he was followed by a mob, which almost knocked his carriage over. On the same day, students gathered a crowd of two to four thousand people at the shooting range and demanded retaliation. Some time after the beginning of the meeting, Robert Blum , who had been in Dresden the day before and had only recently learned of what had happened, also turned up. He stepped in front of the crowd, calmed them down and made them move to the town hall on the market square . As part of a delegation in the town hall, he demanded the honorable burial of the dead, the replacement of the royal military stationed there and the maintenance of order in the city solely through the municipal guard. He also requested an investigation into what had happened the day before.

Robert Blum, painting by August Hunger, between 1845 and 1848

On the same day the city council sent a message to the king, in which he expressed the opinion that the vigilante groups should have been given command and on August 14th a delegation went to Dresden , where the king expressed his grief over the events brought, but also judged the distrust of his subjects skeptically.

In the days following August 13th, Blum gave further speeches in the rifle house and at the funeral service for the deceased, including the proofreader Gotthelf Heinrich Nordmann from the publisher Heinrich Brockhaus , all of which were fairly moderate and direct criticism of the monarchy avoided if possible. There were also numerous complaint petitions, including one of the politician Karl Biedermann with 1,800 signatures .

After the funeral, which was attended by more than a thousand listeners, the indignation subsided and on August 16, further meetings in the rifle house were banned by the mayor. Citizens' associations and choral societies were also banned throughout Saxony, covered by a resolution of the Bundestag in 1832. In addition, the Extraordinary Commissioner von Langenn appeared and described the actions of the royal troops as legitimate even before the first witnesses had heard. As a result of the investigation ordered by the king in response to the request of the city council, the city civil authorities were assigned partial blame for being too slow. The writers Wilhelm Jordan and Albert Dulk were expelled because of their speeches at the funeral service and especially after the meeting in the shooting range. Blum, who expressed himself moderately at this meeting, was left unmolested. The city council wrote letters to the King and Prince Johann asking for mercy.

In the long term, the August events in Leipzig resulted in the release of Prince Johann from the command of the communal guards in July 1846. The Leipzig Appelation Councilor Karl Heinrich Haase , who was proposed for the presidium of the second chamber , was not entrusted with this post by the king, presumably because he was in favor of summoning the royal military had pronounced.

Reactions in Germany

The events of August 12 quickly became known throughout Germany. Ferdinand Freiligrath dedicated the poem Leipzigs Toten! . As a result of these events, Blum became popular in all German states, but was also criticized by the extreme left for not using the situation for anything further.

literature

  • Ralf Zerback : Robert Blum. A biography. Lehmstedt, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-937146-45-4 , pp. 176-189
  • Veit Valentin : History of the German Revolution. Volume 1, Beltz Quadriga Verlag, Weinheim and Berlin, 1998, ISBN 3-88679-301-X , pp. 222-225
  • Jochen Meyer: Albert Dulk, a forty-eight person. From the life novel of a radical. Marbacher Magazin No. 48, 1988

Footnotes

  1. Quoted from Ralf Zerback: Robert Blum. A biography. P. 179
  2. ^ Veit Valentin: History of the German Revolution. Volume 1, p. 223
  3. Jochen Mayer: Albert Dulk, a forty-eight. Marbacher Magazin No. 48, 1988, pp. 37-42
  4. ^ Veit Valentin: History of the German Revolution. Volume 1, p. 225