Michael Heigl

Michael Heigl (* August 1816 in Beckendorf, today a district of Bad Kötzting ; † January 5, 1857 in Munich ), also known as the robber Heigl , was a Bavarian robber .

left access to the Räuber-Heigl-Höhle on the Kreuzfelsen

The son of a day laborer was a shepherd boy and began training as a locksmith in Furth im Wald . Since he stole coins from an offering box, he had been under police supervision since 1841.

After he was arrested in Kötzting as a traveling trader without a trade license, he fled a Straubing courtroom to the Bavarian Forest in 1843 . In the following years the loner committed his raids in the Kötztinger and Viechtach area and came to Landshut . He also spent several years in what was then Hungary (now Slovakia).

The roude Res (Rote Therese) von Gotzendorf joined him as a companion. The so-called Räuber-Heigl-Höhle on the Kaitersberg below the Kreuzfelsen is mentioned as a frequent place of residence and hiding place . Since Heigl robbed rich peasants and clergy in particular, he enjoyed great sympathy and broad support from the poorer classes of the people.

His cave hideout was discovered through the betrayal of a former companion. He was caught there on June 18, 1853 and sentenced to death by beheading in Straubing in 1854. After a petition for clemency, King Max II converted the death penalty into a life chain sentence .

Because of good conduct, he was transferred after a year, on September 22nd, 1854, from Straubing to Munich to prison in der Au. Because of his exemplary behavior, he was given the post of minder in 1856; Due to the cooperation with the prison staff, he was unpopular with several fellow prisoners. In 1857, a fellow inmate killed him with the ball of an anklet that a cellmate had given him. His skeleton was kept in the anatomy building in Munich, where it was destroyed during a bombing raid in 1944. The murderer and his accomplice were sentenced to death and executed in Munich in April 1857.

Trivia

The legendary robber has become the subject of stories, theater performances and novels. Manfred Böckl published the novel Räuber Heigl in 1990 . The caveman from Kaitersberg . Michaela Karl portrayed him as a social rebel alongside Matthias Klostermayr and Mathias Kneißl in 2003. The first-person narrator in Harald Martenstein's 2007 novel Heimweg claims to be a descendant of Michael Heigl and reports some of the historically guaranteed facts, as well as a legend was not killed, but visited his son in old age. However, it is a belletristic fiction; Martenstein himself does not come from the Heigls family either.

The University of Television and Film (HFF) in Munich produced an approx. 50-minute group exercise film about Heigl's life under the title Der Räuber Heigl in 1977 . The film was shot in black and white and with amateur actors from the region, in and around Kötzting, Grafenwiesen and other places in the Bavarian Forest.

literature

• Karl Steinle: "Michael Heigl, the notorious robber of the 'Bavarian Forest' and his comrades" , General Jury Court Newspaper for Germany and Switzerland, fourth year, Volume V, Nuremberg 1859, p. 151 .
• Josef Sommerfeldt :, "Robber" Heigl, the folk hero of the Bavarian Forest. Bayerischer Waldgau, Haibach 1987 ( Bayerischer Waldgau. Special issue, ZDB -ID 2393983-7 ).
• Michaela Karl : Social rebels in Bavaria. Matthäus Klostermair, Michael Heigl, Mathias Kneißl. Pustet, Regensburg 2003, ISBN 3-7917-1827-4 .
• Harald Martenstein : way home . Bertelsmann, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-570-00953-6 , in particular pp. 61-92 (fiction).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robber Heigl - Horrors of the Bavarian Forest . Website of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved March 25, 2014.
2. ↑ Courier for Lower Bavaria of February 14, 1857 on the jury trial , accessed on August 22, 2018
3. ↑ Münchner Bote from April 19, 1857 , accessed on August 22, 2018
4. ↑ Heimweg , pages 79 and 93
5. ↑ Home , page 221