Mannheim casino tower
The Mannheim Kasinosturm was a violent attack on a Catholic demonstration and gathering on February 23, 1865 in Mannheim . Several participants were injured by violent counter-demonstrators, one by a knife. The event had to be broken off and a larger group of participants fled, pursued by the violent criminals, across the border to Ludwigshafen am Rhein , which was then Bavarian .
prehistory
The German Revolution of 1848/1849 had activated the Catholic Church, which wanted to free itself from its dependence on the state. Catholic self-confidence was stirring everywhere and so-called Pius societies were initiated. This after the then Pope Pius IX. named associations examined the newly granted rights for church and society, implemented them for the benefit of the church and monitored their observance; at the same time it was an awakening of political Catholicism. In Baden there were violent arguments with the government in 1853/54 , at the height of which a judicial investigation was carried out against Archbishop Hermann von Vicari for abuse of office and he was placed under house arrest.
The case culminated in negotiations between the Baden government and the Holy See , which led to the conclusion of a convention in 1859 which gave the Catholic Church - compared to the previous situation - a relatively large degree of freedom in terms of staffing, theological training and the Asset management conceded. This met with fierce opposition from the Liberals, who spoke first in protest meetings and petitions, but eventually more and more influence on the government and the Grand Duke Friedrich I won. The conflict, which had been painstakingly settled, broke out again and expanded into what is known as the Badischer Kulturkampf . On the political side, conservatives represented ideas of a state church and state church sovereignty, while liberal protagonists called for a separation of church and state and a minimization of the church's influence on politics. On the government side, the disputes were mainly brought about by August Lamey (Minister of the Interior until 1866), Julius Jolly (Ministerialrat from 1862 and Lamey's successor as Minister of the Interior from 1866) and Johann Caspar Bluntschli (influential parliamentarian from Heidelberg). By promoting the total separation of church and state, they anticipated the Prussian Kulturkampf, so to speak.
The open struggle began with the school dispute, which was primarily about the ousting of the church and the clergy from the elementary school. Interior Minister Lamey appointed the free-spirited Protestant Karl Knies , one of the fiercest opponents of the Churches Convention of 1859, to be the director of the High School Board , which the Liberals saw as a positive signal and was enthusiastically welcomed. Knies worked out proposals for elementary school reform, which he presented to the public as a basis for discussion and thereby triggered violent reactions, which led to the first climax in the school dispute. The recommendation that the state should be solely responsible for the management and supervision of the elementary school system - which would have abolished the de facto existing ecclesiastical supervisory law - made the Catholic Church a declared opponent of Knies' drafts. With his sharp reaction to the adoption of this school law in 1864, Archbishop Hermann von Vicari triggered such a strong movement within the Catholic population of Baden as it had not been known before. In a special pastoral letter, he declared that the school supervision law was based on a “great error” and a “grave injustice”, which is why he had to refuse recognition. At the same time Vicari urged the Catholics, together with him and the clergy, to use "all legal and Christian means" to maintain the Catholic school supervision and the denominational schools, which are also in question .
The casino movement
The so-called casino movement developed in early 1865 as a direct result of resistance to the Baden School Supervision Act. As early as 1862, on the Aachen Catholic Day, it was recommended that the faithful should join together in fixed communities because of their increasingly distressed situation. These local Catholic associations were called “casinos”, using a buzzword at the time. The Heidelberg businessman and later member of the Reichstag, Jakob Lindau, followed this recommendation and founded a casino in his hometown in the autumn of 1862 as a sociable association of Catholics who came together for discussion and lecture evenings. Such “Catholic casinos” subsequently found widespread use.
procedure
Mannheim
The casino movement reached a dramatic climax on February 23, 1865 in the liberally dominated Mannheim, where serious riots broke out. The liberals had already agitated in the press, with an appeal and a counter-event against the planned Catholic rally. The anti-casino , at which about 2000 opponents of the casino met on February 22nd, chaired by Mayor Ludwig Achenbach , passed an address to Grand Duke Friedrich I. a., a church which, with the syllabus errorum, represents positions that are in irreconcilable contradiction with all the principles of state life, has forfeited the right to lead public education. For these reasons one protests against the planned Catholic assembly to abolish the school law. Due to the tense atmosphere, citing informed circles a few days before the Catholic event, it was not ruled out that the interests of the state might even be asserted “through a piece of the law of the fist” and thus prevent the meeting. Several advertisements in the Mannheimer Anzeiger , especially one that appeared on the day of the event, added to the mood , with the comment that “a game of wild boar meat to chop up” was arriving today. An unfortunate tightening also caused the government order issued at short notice, which prohibited Catholics from using the Mannheim churches for the purpose of the event and led to the casino participants clashing with the counter-demonstrators on the street.
According to Mannheim professor Karl Alois Fickler - neutral eyewitness of the events, co-signer of the petition against the event - the "influx of Catholic men from the Wiesloch and Bruchsal area , the Baden and Hessian Bergstrasse and the Odenwald " had already started on the morning of the previous day . Around noon on February 23, 1865, around 3,000 participants in the Catholic casino gathered at Mannheim Central Station. Most of the non-residents had traveled by train on the day of the rally, which was the most common form of travel for longer distances at the time. According to Fickler and all other witnesses, the government had the entrances to both Mannheim parish churches monitored. Both at the portal of St. Sebastian's Church on the market square and at the Jesuit Church near the Rhine crossing, a guards were posted under a police inspector. The casino participants lined up in rows, and the clergy and the organizer Jakob Lindau took the lead.
Then the train started moving through the city. Fickler stated that because of the previous threats, many of the men were "armed with sticks, but took a completely passive stance." About the same number of counter-demonstrators accompanied the Catholic procession with violent insults, screams, hoots, and rattles and rattles, which they expressly did in a newspaper advertisement had been requested. Even during the march to the Marktkirche there were isolated acts of violence against participants. When the St. Sebastian market church was found occupied by the police, they moved on to the Jesuit church, with "scornful calls to the Catholics," as Fickler wrote. There, too, the state authorities vehemently denied access to the traveling casino. The event management therefore asked the participants to march through the palace gardens to the nearby Rhine bridge in order to cross the Rhine to reach Ludwigshafen, which was then in the Bavarian Rhine Palatinate - i.e. abroad. There they wanted to end the demonstration and dissolve it with dignity. Even at the Jesuit Church there had been tumults which only really continued when it was recognized that the train wanted to leave for neighboring Bavaria. Confusion and panic set in among the participants, and the counter-demonstrators attacked them. Karl Alois Fickler reported: “In the crowd at the bridge houses, the excesses increased to the point of wounds. The pastor of Ilvesheim , Johann Hermann Thommes, a man decorated with medals and crosses (he was a former chaplain in the Danish War in 1849) received a head wound with severe skin damage. In the meantime a cab with Pastor Winterer from Dossenheim and a few other clergymen had driven up. A young clergyman escaped the abuse by fleeing via the steamboat landing routes. "
A report in the non-Catholic Mainzer Abendblatt brought the experiences of a participant who u. a. declared:
“The school youth, factory workers, badly dressed rabble raised the ground, pelted us with droppings and stones, sticks, even hidden hammers came to light ... then a parish administrator, known to me personally as a mild, peaceful character, is pushed forward by a gang, big stones hurl them onto the battered person's back from a short distance. He turns around, pale-faced, blows from a stick hail from him, his hat is torn off, he is crushed. A few steps away from us, the hat of an old clergyman decorated with a medal is knocked off the head, and when the head is bared, a stone the size of a half-fist hits his forehead. A man hits another clergyman's face in the face and smashes his glasses ... "
In the Baden Observer it says:
“The mob tore open the pavement in individual places, threw dung and stones on the Catholics, attacked individual clergy and other people, hit them with stones that were wrapped in sackcloths, threw individuals to the ground and dragged them around in the alleys. A clergyman's clothes were literally torn from his body. "
Continuation in Ludwigshafen
Followed by the counter-demonstrators, the rest of the blown up train - at least 150 people under Lindau's leadership - had reached the Bavarian bank of the Rhine and gathered in the ballroom of the Ludwigshafen inn "Deutsches Haus". The Mannheim violent criminals mostly stayed on the street in front of the restaurant and continued their threats there. Only a few dared to go to the restaurant and continue to heat the mood. Finally the police superintendent appeared and announced that all people were allowed to enjoy asylum on Bavarian soil; everyone can stay in peace and security as long as they want. However, it was not allowed to hold a meeting with speeches, as this would require approval, which can no longer be obtained "ad hoc". Many priests stayed in Ludwigshafen for security reasons and did not return home until the next day. Others went back to Mannheim in the evening, three of them promptly attacked at the town hall and mistreated again.
Effects
Although the meeting could not take place, the aim was beyond all expectations, namely to attract the attention of the general public, not only in Mannheim and Baden, but in the entire German-speaking area and beyond. Almost all German-language newspapers published reports about the incident at the time; a 30-page treatise was later published by the Historisch-Politische Blätter for Catholic Germany , a very renowned magazine that was published in Munich on behalf of the Görres family . One participant - the church computer from Eppelheim - was injured on the back of the head by a knife, many others suffered lacerations, bruises, abrasions and bruises.
In the Mannheimer Journal of February 24, 1865 it says: "Mannheim is no ground for the black cowls and their followers." In the Mannheimer Anzeiger on the same day, a mocking advertisement proclaims: "The wild boar advertised has gone wild and there is nothing left."
The police force in Mannheim had not been reinforced on the day of the demonstration, despite the riots previously announced, with most of the law enforcement officers engaged in locking off the churches. There are no known cases in which the police actively intervened to protect an attacked casino participant; some of the physical injuries even took place under the eyes of the gendarmes. Of the many violent criminals, only two were named and brought to justice. Both were acquitted in the first instance, and on appeal by the public prosecutor's office, at least one of them - a foreign Jewish clerk (clerk's assistant) - received six days in prison. The other - a Mannheim citizen of Christian faith - went unpunished.
The Kingdom of Bavaria made the matter the subject of a diplomatic complaint. On September 13, 1865, Jakob Lindau gave a personal speech at the 17th German Catholic Day in Trier about the events in Mannheim and the Baden school dispute. The address is printed in the official report of the Katholikentag, which also contains the supplementary documentation facts from Baden on the overall development.
The Speyer writer Joseph Eduard Konrad Bischoff dedicated a separate chapter to the “Mannheim Casino Tower” in his novel Die Schwarzen und die Roten , published in 1868 under the pseudonym “Conrad von Bolanden” . It bears the title Mannheimer Mob . In connection with the incident, the swear word "Neckarschleim" was coined with regard to the conditions in Mannheim.
literature
- The casino storm in Mannheim. In: Historical-Political Papers for Catholic Germany. Vol. 61, Görres, Munich 1868, pp. 356-386
- Conrad von Bolanden : The blacks and the reds. Mainz 1868 and Pustet, Regensburg 1873
- Karl Anton Straub: Mannheim Church History. Haas, Mannheim 1957, pp. 91-99
- The Archdiocese of Freiburg 1827–1977. Herder, Freiburg 1977, pp. 167-168
- Ulrich Tjaden: Liberalism in Catholic Baden - history, organization and structure of the National Liberal Party of Baden 1869–1893. Dissertation Freiburg 2000 Online
Web links
- Carl zu Isenburg: The new era in Baden . Book scan from 1866
Individual evidence
- ↑ Allgemeine Zeitung , Augsburg, February 20, 1865
- ↑ Mannheimer Anzeiger 46 / February 23, 1865
- ^ Johann Hermann Thommes in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors , accessed on February 23, 2015.
- ^ Negotiations of the seventeenth general assembly of the Catholic associations in Germany, Verlag der Lintzschen Buchhandlung Trier, 1865, pages 203–210 and 331–337