Mechterstädt murders

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The memorial stone in Thal
The memorial stone near Mechterstädt
Memorial plaque in Marburg

The shooting of 15 previously arrested workers on the road from Mechterstädt to Gotha in Thuringia by members of the Marburg student corps on March 25, 1920 is described as the “Mechterstädt Morde” (also Mechterstädt massacre ) . The incident and the subsequent acquittals of the perpetrators attracted a great deal of public attention and were controversial in journalism and politics. Representatives of the political left and democratic center condemned the student's act as cowardly murder and viewed it as symptomatic of the reactionary, anti-republican, violent hostility against socialist tendencies of large parts of the student body, while conservative and "national" circles the procedure in context the defense of revolutionary uprisings and the restoration of state order approved.

prehistory

Formation of the Marburg student corps

After Reichswehr Minister Gustav Noske asked the Reichswehr to set up additional temporary volunteer associations on September 11, 1919, the 11th Reichswehr Brigade stationed in Kassel reported on September 24th about its plan to recruit volunteers specifically at universities and technical colleges. Many of the students at the time had served in World War I , often as officers. The advertising was aimed primarily at corporates who played the leading role in the student body of the University of Marburg . In the spring of the same year, liaison students were provided with weapons by the local Reich Defense Unit, as a communist attack on Marburg was supposed to be expected.

After the start of the Kapp Putsch on March 13, 1920, the Marburg student corps ( StuKoMa for short ) was mobilized. About 1,800 men made themselves available and formed two battalions with a total of ten companies . The company division was based on the corporations to which the students belonged. Non-incorporated students made up a third of the members, but democratic and left-wing students, as well as members of the national conservative Jewish student association "Hassia", were turned away. Thereupon the law student Ernst Lemmer , member of the German Democratic Party (DDP) and lieutenant of the reserve, who had protested against the close cooperation between the university and the Reichswehr with the corporations and unsuccessfully demanded the arming of the workers in order to ward off the coup, organized together other students loyal to the republic (including Gustav Heinemann , Wilhelm Röpke and Viktor Agartz ) set up a “people's company” with 80 members from supporters of the Weimar coalition and members of the “Hassia”. It was attached to the second battalion of the StuKoMa as the 9th company and led by the theology professor Heinrich Hermelink .

A former naval officer, the frigate captain ret. , Was appointed commander of the first battalion with the 1st to 6th companies . D. Bogislav von Selchow , elected; his adjutant was Otmar von Verschuer . Other well-known members were Karl August Eckhardt , Heinrich Wilhelm Kranz and Paul Hinkler .

After some Marburg corporations, coordinated by Selchows, backed the Berlin putschists with a leaflet at the beginning of the Kapp Putsch, von Selchow contacted the putschists and was commissioned by them on March 16, until March 21 Occupy Hessen . This did not happen, however, because von Selchow initially wanted to wait for the coup to succeed in Berlin, which collapsed on March 17th as a result of a general strike . The Marburger senior Convent had been in danger of connecting homes demanded by workers a cast of Marburg.

Use in Thuringia

In Thuringia , where the leadership of the Reichswehr associations stationed there had joined the Kapp Putsch and declared a state of emergency , the labor movement , which was predominantly dominated by the USPD and KPD , combined more far-reaching, in some cases revolutionary political goals with the general strike against the putschists. In many places there were armed clashes between the workers' armed forces on the one hand and the Reichswehr and bourgeois resident groups on the other. The strikes and fighting continued even after the end of the putsch and increased locally, especially in the region around Gotha and Eisenach , to civil war-like battles with numerous fatalities. The Reich government decided to have the workers' uprisings put down forcibly by the Reichswehr. In the course of this action there were numerous "civil" or arbitrary shootings of workers.

On March 19, the local commandant of the Reichswehr posted a notice in Marburg that there was an uprising in Thuringia and that “armed gangs […] were robbing and plundering” were marching through the country. The “Rumschöttel Brigade”, which consisted of parts of the Reichswehr Brigade 11 and the Marburg student corps, was commissioned with the “restoration of peace and order”.

On the following day, the first battalion of the student corps was sent to Thuringia; the second battalion under the command of Captain a. D. von Buttlar followed on March 26th. In his farewell speech, the rector of the university, Wilhelm Busch , compared the spirit of the troops with that of the outbreak of war in August 1914.

The murders

On March 18, 1920, the gendarmerie sergeant Heß from the town of Thal in the Gotha district reported to the district office that two meetings had called for the formation of a “red guard”. The following day, about 150-200 workers, divided into groups, combed the villages of Kälberfeld , Schönau , Kahlenberg , Sättelstädt and Sondra to obtain weapons and forced the surrender of firearms under threat of violence. In addition, there were also food thefts and looting of private properties.

Von Selchow, whose troops had reached the nearby towns of Sättelstädt and Mechterstädt on the advance from Eisenach to Gotha, received news of this and dispatched 60 men from 1st and 2nd companies on March 24th under the command of Lieutenant Rudolf Baldus ( Corps Guestfalia ) on four trucks to Thal with the order to suppress the uprising there and to arrest the ringleaders. The gendarme Heß, who had been informed by telephone beforehand, and the Thaler Schultheiss Schein gave the student troop a list of 40 suspects who were considered “confidants of the workers” and were arrested, although most of them were not politically active. 25 of them were released; the remaining fifteen - including four of the six councilors of Thal - were arrested on suspicion of being the leaders of the planned "red" uprising. In addition, weapons caches were dug up.

The prisoners were fifteen men between the ages of 18 and 54: Paul Döll (* 1895), Alex Hartmann (* 1899), Karl Hornschuh (* 1890), Otto Pass (* 1890), Alfred Rößiger (* 1878) , Rudolf Rosenstock (* 1893), Albert Schröder (* 1889), Karl Schröder (* 1900), Otto Soldan (* 1895), Gustav Soldan (* 1901), Reinhold Steinberg (* 1865), Gustav Wedel (* 1885) and like three brothers Karl (* 1883), Ernst (* 1888) and Fritz (* 1899) Füldner. They were brought to Sättelstädt on a cart on the evening of March 24th and locked up in the syringe house there overnight. In the later trial, von Selchow testified that the student corps had to protect the arrested from an angry crowd of residents and Reichswehr soldiers. He had received the order from the leadership of the Rumschöttel Brigade to take the prisoners with him on the march on Gotha the next day so that they could be brought to justice there.

The next morning between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m., the arrested people set out on foot from Sättelstädt to Gotha in thick morning fog. They were threatened with immediate shooting if they tried to escape. The guards consisted of twenty soldiers from the 1st and 2nd Company under the command of Lieutenant Heinrich Goebel. The group moved about a kilometer behind the bulk of the force. The prisoners walked in rows of two and were escorted by guards on all four sides. Karl Hornschuh, who was considered particularly dangerous, marched with three guards individually at the end of the column.

On the way, the guards shot all fifteen prisoners. The first to be shot shortly after 7:30 a.m. at the old train station behind Sättelstädt Hornschuh, shortly afterwards two others. After the group had reached Mechterstädt, they temporarily took over ten other prisoners from the 6th Company stationed there, but they were escorted in a separate group a little further ahead. About half an hour later, the remaining twelve prisoners were shot. The bodies of those shot were left on the roadside.

After arriving in Gotha, Goebel wrote a report according to which first Hornschuh and shortly afterwards two other prisoners tried to escape in a thick fog bank and were shot in the process. About one kilometer east of Mechterstädt, the remaining twelve prisoners attempted to escape together and some were shot immediately, some after a short pursuit.

Becoming aware of the fact

After the bodies of the shot dead, most of them terribly disfigured, were found by local residents, workers riots broke out in the nearby town of Ruhla . As a result, two companies of the second battalion of the Marburg student corps, including the “People's Company”, were relocated to Eisenach and occupied Ruhla on March 27th. They succeeded in restoring calm without bloodshed or arrests, among other things by assuring Hermelink that the National Assembly  meeting in Weimar would be informed of the incident and that a thorough investigation would follow. Hermelink, for his part, wrote a report to his superiors in which he expressed his horror that the student corps was alleged to have murdered defenseless prisoners.

Before the troops marched back to Eisenach, Ernst Lemmer reported sick and went to Thal to investigate, which reinforced his suspicion of a crime. An attempt to inform Reich Commissioner Albert Grzesinski by telegram of the “mass murder in Bad Thal” failed due to military censorship. Lemmer then reported sick again and drove to Berlin, where he contacted members of the National Assembly. After Lemmer and Walther Schücking (DDP) visited the newly appointed Reichswehr Minister Otto Geßler (DDP), he demanded a strict investigation and prohibited further deployments of the Marburg student corps. The MP Ludwig Haas (DDP) gave a (still imprecise) report on the events at the session of the National Assembly on March 29; On April 27, a parliamentary inquiry by the Gotha USPD deputy Wilhelm Bock followed about the workers who were “murdered in the most cruel way”. The incident caused a sensation across the country. Outraged statements were made in the Republican press. The University of Marburg and the organized student body, on the other hand, stood behind the students, who “in the hour of need, followed the call of the government with self-sacrificing devotion”.

Marburg student trial

The investigation carried out by the Reichswehr provided sufficient evidence to bring charges against members of the transport command on April 28th for illegal use of weapons in connection with manslaughter . The hearing took place from June 15 to 18, 1920 in the great hall of the Marburg Regional Court before a court martial of the 22nd Division of the Reichswehr. 14 students of the security team, nine corps students and five fraternity members were accused : the law students Heinrich Goebel ( fraternity Germania ), Paul Heerhaber ( Corps Teutonia ), Hermann Krauts ( Corps Rhenania Freiburg ), Alfred Voss ( Corps Hasso-Nassovia ); the medical students Heinrich Engelbrecht (Corps Hasso-Nassovia), Frank Jahn (Corps Hasso-Nassovia), Heinrich Schüler (Burschenschaft Germania), Alwin Springer ( Burschenschaft Alemannia ), Kurt Blum (Burschenschaft Alemannia), Ernst Nedelmann (Corps Teutonia), Oskar Koch (Corps Hasso-Nassovia), Julius Völker (Corps Hasso-Nassovia), Lorenz Lange (Corps Hasso-Nassovia) and the philology student Friedrich von Uffel (Germania fraternity). You were defended by Walter Luetgebrune , a prominent lawyer in numerous cases against right-wing extremists. At Luetgebrune's request, the only member of the court martial from the squad, a private , was replaced by an officer before the start of the trial .

The taking of evidence was made difficult by the fact that there were no surviving eyewitnesses other than the perpetrators themselves. Lemmer and Hermelink as witnesses to the crime could only refer to unconfirmed statements by third parties. The defendants unanimously asserted that those shot were all killed trying to escape. According to their account, a prisoner is said to have tried to escape first, whereupon he was shot. 500 meters further, two other prisoners were shot "on the run". After the group had crossed the village of Mechterstädt, two more shootings were carried out, shortly afterwards the next two. The squad leader had the group stop to warn the remaining prisoners; they then also fled and were shot.

What speaks against this representation is that, according to the results of the autopsy, 13 of the 15 people were hit by numerous bullets in the head and upper body, sometimes from close range from the front. The defense tried, however, with medical and ballistic reports to prove that the injuries could also have been caused by the pursuit of refugees. The witness Oskar Wagner, a professional sergeant in the Reichswehr who was assigned to the Marburg student battalion as a baggage sergeant, testified that on the morning of March 25th he was with his field kitchen about 200 meters from the prisoner transport. After hearing the gunshots with which the first three prisoners were shot in the fog, he went to the rear and watched the prisoners being mistreated with kicks and rifle butts. In addition, the medical student Höhnemann told him that they had tried to beat the prisoners off the street in order to simulate an attempt to escape. The defense tried to portray Wagner as personally implausible. Other witnesses also confirmed the mistreatment of the prisoners; In addition, statements by the accompanying students were reproduced that the prisoners had been deliberately shot. Bogislaw von Selchow, who was questioned as an exonerating witness, denied that there had been an execution order, but emphasized that the use of the weapon had been entirely in his favor. In the closing argument, the prosecutor joined the account of the defendants. They would have shot, but without the intention to shoot. That all prisoners were killed was a "cruel coincidence". The escaping prisoners all fell in one place when turning into a dirt road. It has not been proven that the prisoners have been mistreated. From a legal point of view, the prosecution was limited to the question of whether the defendants had exhausted all other possibilities of prosecution before the fire opened, and requested that the three guards, Hornschuhs, Engelbrecht, Krauts and Jahn, be sentenced to two years in prison for manslaughter, taking into account mitigating circumstances, and the other defendants acquitted for lack of evidence. The defense described the behavior of the troops as "exemplary"; there could be no question of the illegal use of weapons. After a brief consultation, the court acquitted all of the defendants for lack of evidence.

This judgment earned the court charges of political bias and was widely viewed as an overt judicial scandal. Workers, Republicans and the political left assumed that workers were being murdered out of political hatred.

The appeal hearing before the jury court in Kassel also ended in December 1920 with acquittals.

aftermath

As a result of the incident, the image of Marburg as a student idyll got deep cracks. Friedrich Facius saw the judgments as one of the greatest scandals of the judiciary during the Weimar period, Wilhelm Röpke, then a student in Marburg, spoke of the "tragedy of Mechterstädt". Carl von Ossietzky took the murders as an opportunity to warn against a " Balkanization " of Germany.

A student's testimony before the court martial: “Our anatomy needs corpses” was denounced by Klabund and Tucholsky .

The Prussian minister of education Konrad Haenisch (SPD) spoke in an article for the Berlin 8 o'clock evening paper of the "cowardly assassination of the Marburg boys", which resulted in such outraged reactions from the student side that he finally had to take back "these turns" publicly .

A memorial plaque, the text of which accused the “Marburg students”, was changed during the Nazi era to the effect that the victims died “in the bloody turmoil of the post-war period”. In the 1960s, the GDR regime made March 25 a day of remembrance with a prescribed ceremony.

Various Marburg associations (gymnastics associations, Christian associations) refused to relativize the murders in a "Marburg Declaration" in 1996.

The fact that the Marburg student historian Holger Zinn ( Landsmannschaft Chattia ) wrote in 2006 in an anthology supported by the university about the University of Marburg in the Weimar period that the workers died “under dubious circumstances” was sharply criticized by Marburg professors Theo Schiller wrote In a review: "How and why the murder of these unarmed workers, which has been evident since 1920, can be questioned and cloaked remains inexplicable." Zinn's contribution led to a small inquiry from Thomas Spies (SPD) in the Hessian state parliament . In his answer, the then Hessian Science Minister Udo Corts (CDU) regretted Zinn's trivialization and emphasized that the Vice President of the University Herbert Claas had clearly distanced himself from the press.

Commemoration

To commemorate the event, memorial stones were erected in Thal and on the B 7 between Mechterstädt and Teutleben .

On March 25, 2010, a memorial event took place at the cemetery in Thal with representatives of the community, bereaved families and a delegation from the city of Marburg .

On April 2, 2019, a memorial plaque was unveiled at the Old University in Marburg as part of a commemorative event by the Philipps University, the university town of Marburg and the General Student Committee (AStA) of the Philipps University.

literature

  • Dietrich Heither, Adelheid Schulze: The murders of Mechterstädt 1920. On the history of right-wing extremist violence in Germany , Berlin 2015. ISBN 978-3-86331-261-9 .
  • Helmut Seier: Radicalization and Reform as a Problem of the University of Marburg 1918–1933. in: Walter Heinemeyer, Thomas Klein, Hellmut Seier (eds.): Academia Marburgensis. Contributions to the history of the Philipps University of Marburg. Volume 1, Marburg 1977, ISBN 3-7708-0583-6 , pp. 303-352.
  • Helmut Poppelbaum, Wolfgang Brüning, Winold Vogt, Philipp Schütz: The events of Mechterstädt in their contemporary context . In: then and now . 38: 155-200 (1993).
  • Peter Krüger , Anne Christine Nagel (Ed.): Mechterstädt - 25.3.1920. Scandal and crisis in the early phase of the Weimar Republic. (Studies on the history of the Weimar Republic, 3). Lit Verlag , Münster 1997, ISBN 3-8258-3061-6 .
  • Bruno W. Reimann: The murders near Mechterstädt. March 25, 1920. In: Thuringia. Sheets on regional studies. ZDB ID 1316491-0 , unpag.
  • Bruno W. Reimann: No end to the trauma in sight. Mechterstädt and the University of Marburg. In: Gothaer Museumsheft 1999. ISSN  0863-2421 , pp. 86-97.
  • Bruno W. Reimann: The end of the trauma? Mechterstädt and the University of Marburg. In: Forum Wissenschaft . 16 (1999) 1, pp. 40-43.
  • Bruno W. Reimann: The massacre in Mechterstädt 1920. Exhibition catalog. Historical exhibition, in cooperation with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Thuringia. Weimar 2015, ISBN 978-3-945294-14-7
  • Bruno W. Reimann: Right against left. Mechterstädt as a symbol. Weimar: Eckhaus Verlag 2017, ISBN 3-945294-20-7
  • James J. Weingartner: Massacre at Mechterstädt - The case of the Marburg Student Corps 1920. In: The Historian. 37: 598-618 (1975).

Contemporary reception

Movies

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James J. Weingartner: Massacre at Mechterstädt. The Case of the "Marburg Student Corps", 1920. In: The Historian 37 (1975), pp. 600-601
  2. ^ Siegfried Weichlein : Students and Politics in Marburg. The political culture of a university town 1918–1920. In: Peter Krüger, Anne C. Nagel (Eds.): Mechterstädt - 25.3.1920. Scandal and crisis in the early phase of the Weimar Republic. Lit Verlag, 1997, p. 30.
  3. ^ Siegfried Weichlein: Students and Politics in Marburg. The political culture of a university town 1918–1920. In: Peter Krüger, Anne C. Nagel (Eds.): Mechterstädt - 25.3.1920. Scandal and crisis in the early phase of the Weimar Republic. Lit Verlag, 1997, p. 37.
  4. ↑ James J. Weingartner: Massacre at Mechterstädt. The Case of the "Marburg Student Corps ", 1920. In: The Historian 37 (1975), pp. 602-604
  5. ^ Siegfried Weichlein: Students and Politics in Marburg. The political culture of a university town 1918–1920. In: Peter Krüger, Anne C. Nagel (Eds.): Mechterstädt - 25.3.1920. Scandal and crisis in the early phase of the Weimar Republic. Lit Verlag, 1997, p. 40 f.
  6. ^ Martin Niemann: Karl August Eckhardt. In: Matthias Schmoeckel (ed.): The lawyers at the University of Bonn in the “Third Reich”. (Legal historical writings, Volume 18). Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2004, p. 169 .
  7. ↑ Hans-Christian Harten, Uwe Neirich, Matthias Schwerendt: Racial hygiene as an educational ideology of the Third Reich. Bio-bibliographical manual. Berlin 2006, p. 297 .
  8. ^ Siegfried Weichlein: Students and Politics in Marburg. The political culture of a university town 1918–1920. In: Peter Krüger, Anne C. Nagel (Eds.): Mechterstädt - 25.3.1920. Scandal and crisis in the early phase of the Weimar Republic. Lit Verlag, 1997, p. 38 f.
  9. ↑ Quoted from Michael Lemling: The "Student Corps Marburg" and the "Tragedy of Mechterstädt". In: Peter Krüger, Anne C. Nagel (Eds.): Mechterstädt - 25.3.1920. Scandal or crisis in the early phase of the Weimar Republic. Lit, Münster 1997, p. 60; see. also Siegfried Weichlein: Students and Politics in Marburg. The political culture of a university town 1918–1920. In: Peter Krüger, Anne C. Nagel (Eds.): Mechterstädt - 25.3.1920. Scandal and crisis in the early phase of the Weimar Republic. Lit Verlag, 1997, p. 39.
  10. ^ Memorial to those who fell in March. on: mechterstaedt.de
  11. ↑ James J. Weingartner: Massacre at Mechterstädt. The Case of the "Marburg Student Corps ", 1920. In: The Historian 37 (1975), pp. 605-606
  12. ^ Hans Peter Bleuel, Ernst Klinnert: German students on the way to the Third Reich. Ideologies - programs - actions. 1918-1935. Gütersloh 1967, p. 74.
  13. ↑ James J. Weingartner: Massacre at Mechterstädt. The Case of the "Marburg Student Corps ", 1920. In: The Historian 37 (1975), pp. 606-607
  14. ↑ James J. Weingartner: Massacre at Mechterstädt. The Case of the "Marburg Student Corps ", 1920. In: The Historian 37 (1975), pp. 607-609
  15. ^ Minutes of the National Assembly. 157th meeting of March 29, 1920, pp. 4977f.
  16. ↑ a b Minutes of the National Assembly. 172nd meeting of April 27, 1920, pp. 5487f.
  17. ↑ According to Michael Lemling: The “Marburg Student Corps” and the “Tragedy of Mechterstädt”. In: Peter Krüger, Anne Christine Nagel (Eds.): Mechterstädt - 25.3.1920. Scandal and crisis in the early phase of the Weimar Republic. Münster 1997, p. 63.
  18. ^ Hans Peter Bleuel, Ernst Klinnert: German students on the way to the Third Reich. Ideologies - programs - actions. 1918-1935. Gütersloh 1967, p. 74f.
  19. ↑ Joachim Bergmann, Dietrich Grille, Herbert Hömig: The domestic political development of Thuringia from 1918 to 1932. Europaforum-Verlag, 2001, p. 125.
  20. ^ The Marburg acquittal. In: Vossische Zeitung (Sunday edition) of June 20, 1920, p. 4
  21. ↑ James J. Weingartner: Massacre at Mechterstädt. The Case of the "Marburg Student Corps", 1920. In: The Historian 37 (1975), pp. 609-614
  22. ^ Thomas Nipperdey : The German student body in the first years of the Weimar Republic. In: Wilhelm Zilius, Adolf Grimme (Hrsg.): Cultural administration of the twenties. Stuttgart 1961. [1]
  23. ↑ Against the Balkanization of Germany. In: Berliner Volks-Zeitung. September 14, 1920.
  24. ↑ Song of the Time Volunteers .
  25. ^ Kaspar Hauser: Marburg offspring. In: freedom . June 23, 1920.
  26. ^ Hans Peter Bleuel, Ernst Klinnert: German students on the way to the Third Reich. Ideologies - programs - actions. 1918-1935. Gütersloh 1967, p. 75ff.
  27. ^ Mechterstädt murders move Marburg to this day. In: Marburger Neue Zeitung. March 28, 2004, according to the website of the Geschichtswerkstatt Marburg e. V.
  28. ↑ Marburg Declaration. dated April 29, 1996. Retrieved February 27, 2019.
  29. ↑ Harald Lönnecker: Sources and research on the history of corporations in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic. Koblenz 2005, p. 8. (PDF; 211 kB)
  30. ^ A student in Marburg. Notes on student life in Marburg in the twenties of the 20th century. In: Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies (Hrsg.): The Philipps University of Marburg between the Empire and National Socialism. (Hessian research on historical regional and folklore 45). Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-925333-45-2 , p. 246.
  31. ^ Gesa Coordes: Marburg scientists argue about the murders of Mechterstädt. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. March 29, 2006.
  32. ^ Theo Schiller: The university in the Weimar period. ( Memento from November 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Marburger UniJournal. No. 29, May 2007, p. 33 (PDF, 215 kB)
  33. ↑ Printed matter 16/5453 (PDF; 66 kB)
  34. ↑ Peter Rossbach: The view of the bereaved. In: Thüringische Landeszeitung. Local website Eisenach, March 24, 2010.
  35. ↑ www.marburg.de/mechterstaedt

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