Sendlinger Murder Christmas
The Sendlinger Murder Christmas , also known as Sendlinger Blutweihnacht or Sendlinger Bauernschlacht , was a warlike conflict on the night of December 25, 1705 in Sendling near Munich , in which Bavarian rebels were led by troops of the Imperial Army under the command of the Habsburg Emperor Joseph I.were defeated and completely wiped out. The troops killed some of the insurgents who had already surrendered and laid down their arms. Thanks to good sources, the number of those killed on the Bavarian side can be estimated at around 1,100 today; on the part of the Imperial Army there were around 40 deaths. The battle was preceded by an attempt by the insurgents to take the city of Munich.
prehistory
Exile of the Bavarian Elector
With the start of the War of the Spanish Succession , Bavaria left the Great Hague Alliance of the Netherlands, Great Britain and most of the territories of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in a sensational diplomatic campaign . In the conflict that was to be fought between Paris and Vienna over the Spanish crown, Bavaria would stand with France. The decision brought the country back into the previous alliance, which had existed until the 1670s; Elector Max Emanuel , however, had moved from France to the Archduchy of Austria himself after he came to power in 1678 , because he - married to an Austrian - had hoped for a rise in political status, as could be expected from the Imperial House in Vienna. The reward would in considering the Bavarian commitment Turkish war in a kingship may lie. The change of alliance in 1702 came after this prehistory as a political scandal against the territories of the empire and as a breach of the alliance that Max Emanuel himself had entered into.
The War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1712) was ultimately supposed to result in an acceptable defensive success for France, but it ended prematurely for the Bavarian troops with the Battle of Höchstädt , in which French and Bavarian troops were defeated by the Allies. For France the battle meant a turning point, for the smaller partner Bavaria the military end. Max Emanuel was given an imperial ban and went to Brussels under French protection, where he had already resided in the 1690s as governor of the Spanish Netherlands .
The reign of the Wittelsbachers temporarily went into the hands of the Bavarian Electress Therese Kunigunde before the regiment of the Roman-German Emperor moved into Munich and brought the city and the territories under his Austrian power .
First uprisings
The conditions that Emperor Leopold I granted the Bavarian Electress in the Treaty of Ilbesheim at the beginning of the power vacuum were generous. Among other things, Munich remained under their immediate rule. With this policy Leopold I wanted to avoid time-consuming battles with the garrisons in the Bavarian cities. In the spring of 1705, however, Leopold I died, and his son and successor Joseph I had the Bavarian Oberland and the royal seat of Munich occupied. He also drastically increased taxes and quartered troops. In the autumn of 1705 a compulsory eviction was ordered throughout the electorate. The soldiers of the imperial administrations were extremely brutal when it came to recruiting and collecting supplies, which particularly affected the rural population.
As a consequence, there were first uprisings and acts of violence by the men affected by the forced eviction in the Upper Palatinate , Lower Bavaria and the area around Tölz , which already coined the slogan for the following revolts: "Liaba bairisch steam [die], als Kaiserlich verdeam [ spoil] ”. At the beginning of October eighteen recruits who were to be taken to the army were freed on the open road near Neunburg vorm Wald . Despite the intervention of the imperial troops, the uprisings in Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate - in the so-called Unterland - spread quickly.
First successes of the uprising and the Braunau parliament
With the spread of the revolts, officers, nobles , civil servants and craftsmen increasingly took over the leadership of the rebels and gave the revolutionary efforts the goal of taking over the rent offices of Bavaria. First Burghausen was besieged, which surrendered to the rebels on December 16, 1705, as was Braunau shortly afterwards . These two cities thus became the military and political centers of the insurrectionary movement. This is where the first democratic structure of modern Europe emerged, the so-called Gmein der Bürger und Bauern or the “ Braunau Parliament ”.
After these two defeats, the imperial occupiers tried to enter into armistice negotiations with the rebels, who sent a delegation to Munich under Baron Franz Bernhard von Prielmayr . Meanwhile the rebels conquered the town of Schärding and, under the leadership of Matthias Kraus, the town of Kelheim . The negotiations meanwhile held in Anzing near Munich resulted in a ten-day armistice.
Munich conspiracy
The rebels, especially Matthias Egidius Fuchs and Georg Sebastian Plinganser , used the period of the armistice to work out a plan for how the imperial occupying power could be expelled from Munich. The imperial soldiers were to be bound by riots in northern Bavaria. The insurgents then wanted to bypass them in the southeast and march in a star march on Munich. At the same time, the former Munich vigilante group was supposed to support the revolutionaries within the city wall. It was decided not to abide by the truce and to start the action as soon as possible.
The Munich conspirators, led by Johann Jäger , immediately began preparations, while Fuchs mobilized the rebels in the Oberland . On December 19, 1705, in the Tölzer Patent , Fuchs called on all Oberlanders to arm themselves and to assemble in Schäftlarn Monastery by December 22 .
In this Tölz patent it was claimed that the electoral princes who were still living in Munich were to be kidnapped to Austria, which Fuchs tried to prove by means of a forged letter. He also claimed that the Elector Max Emanuel would support the uprising and join the rebels as soon as possible. The main purpose of the Tölz patent was to address patriotic feelings and to dispel any concerns about legitimacy . Where this appeal to the love of one's homeland and allegiance to subordinates was insufficient to mobilize the people, one helped with pressure and coercion. Johann Christoph Kyrein , Mayor of Tölz, threatened his citizens with the withdrawal of their civil rights if they refused to take part in the uprising; Peasants across the country were faced with the difficult choice of either having their sons and servants go with the insurgent troops or having their farms reduced to rubble.
On December 21, 1705, a total of 2,769 infantry and about 300 horsemen with completely inadequate equipment and armament arrived at Schäftlarn monastery . Final preparations were also under way in Munich; Missile signals were supposed to show the rebels outside the city walls that the Munich was ready. But now there were serious problems: The liaison between Oberland and Unterland, Anzingen postmaster Franz Kaspar Hierner , did not appear at the agreed meeting in Munich, and the connection to the Unterland was thus broken. In addition, the leader of the Munich rebels, Jäger, who was already being monitored in Munich by the imperial administration, had to go to the Oberländer. In addition, some cities and municipalities that had already pledged support for the uprisings revoked them for fear of reprisals.
March on Munich
On Christmas Eve around noon, the rebels began their march on Munich. In Solln they received the next bad news: The Munich allies would no longer be able to carry out the planned actions as discussed. The imperial occupiers had reinforced the troops and soldiers were patrolling the city. Wishes to withdraw were suppressed by force, the rebels should continue to march on Munich. Around midnight, the entourage of the Oberlanders reached Sendling , where the command took up a position in the local inn, while the common people camped out in the open on an icy winter night. Meanwhile the Unterländer stood with about 16,000 men at Zorneding near Ebersberg , where they were prevented from marching on by imperial troops. The imperial occupiers, allegedly through the betrayal of the Starnberg nurse Johann Joseph Öttlinger , had long been aware of the planned action of the rebels.
Attack and massacre of the insurgents
The Oberlanders divided their entourage into three groups: Light and unarmed people were to stay in Sendling, while the other two groups were posted in front of Angertor and the Red Tower . The Munich allies were supposed to open the city gates at 1 a.m. on December 25, but this did not happen. Nevertheless, under the leadership of Johann Georg Aberle, the Red Tower was conquered almost without a fight; the occupiers retreated to the Isartor , which was behind it, which is more fortified and easier to defend , and where the rebels then failed. As a result, they were even pushed back behind the Red Tower, where they barricaded themselves. At dawn the rebels from the east, from the side facing away from the city, were attacked and wiped out by imperial troops.
Some insurgents managed to make their way to Sendling, where they again entrenched themselves. Shortly afterwards the imperial troops also took up positions here. The rebellious Oberlanders surrendered and laid down their arms. The imperial officers only seemingly granted pardon and had the disarmed rebels slaughtered on the spot .
Some of the last survivors fled to the cemetery of the old parish church in Sendling in the hope that the imperial troops would respect the consecrated district at least on Christmas Day and not kill them there. But here, too, the occupiers showed no mercy and killed everyone; the church was more or less completely destroyed and Sendling was plundered . The legendary " Schmied von Kochel " is said to have fallen as one of the last defenders . Only a few insurgents managed to escape.
Contrary to popular belief, the massacre at Sendling was not wrought by Austrian soldiers themselves, but by a Würzburg infantry regiment from the contingent of the Frankish imperial circle of the imperial army . Hungarian hussars were also involved. Without pardon, they especially killed refugees.
The excess of violence of this massacre, which was unusual for the time of the Cabinet Wars, has historical precursors, e. B. in the brutal suppression of the peasant revolts of the 16th century. Precisely because the imperial troop leaders were not confronted with 'equal' opponents, but insubordinate rebels, any consideration and inhibitions could be dropped. The sheer hatred with which the aristocratic officers acted against the rebels also resulted from the realization that with their democratic approach they had created an extremely dangerous counter-model to the absolutist state.
The terror that the Duke of Marlborough's Streifcorps exercised after the Battle of Schellenberg near Donauwörth on July 2, 1704 in large parts of the western Electorate of Bavaria, by laying "around 400 villages with 7565 homes" in rubble, can be seen as a direct model Ashes laid.
Collapse of the Bavarian popular uprising
After this massacre, the imperial soldiers collected the approximately 500 wounded who were still alive and brought them to Munich, where they were held captive in front of the Jesuit College, today's Old Academy next to the Michaelskirche . On the orders of the administration, no one was allowed to look after the wounded for three days in order to nip further ideas of revolution in the bud.
On the evening of December 25, the Unterland rebels had received news of the Oberland defeat in their headquarters in Steinhöring . Since the plan of a forceps operation had thus failed, the withdrawal against Braunau was initiated immediately.
In the meantime the imperial administration in Munich had carried out some investigations into the origin of the uprising. As a result of these studies was on 28 December by the imperial governor general General of Kriechbaum a general amnesty proclaimed for easy uprising participants, at the same time they sought intensively for remaining fugitive ringleaders and imposed heavy fines on undertakings involved manors and market towns. A commission of inquiry began to interrogate the prisoners, whose statements led to a wide wave of arrests. Shortly thereafter, the first judgments were announced and carried out: The lieutenants Johann Clanze and Johann Georg Aberle and the Munich citizens Johann Georg Kidler and Sebastian Senser were beheaded on January 29, 1706 on Munich's Schrannenplatz (now Marienplatz ), the latter two were also quartered. The same happened to the innkeeper Johann Jäger on March 17th. Ignaz Haid and Hauptmann Mayer remained in custody until the Elector's return in 1715. The officers involved have been dismissed and a large number of people have been fined. A few revolutionaries managed to escape: Hierner, Hallmayr, Schöttl and Engelhart as well as the care judges Dänkel, Alram , Schmid and Eder were able to escape, War Commissioner Fuchs, Lieutenant Houis and Captain Gauthier even managed to make their way to Brussels to the elector.
At the same time, the imperial administration in Munich began to put down the uprising once and for all. On January 1, 1706, General Wachtmeister von Kriechbaum began another advance towards Vilshofen via Neumarkt and Eggenfelden . On January 8th, near Aidenbach, he met a peasant army of about 4,000 men, which was completely crushed with high losses and an estimated 2,000 dead. With the defeat of Aidenbach, the resistance of the revolutionaries was finally broken. On January 13th, Schärding, on the 16th of Cham , on the 17th of Braunau was handed over to the imperial family and on January 18th, 1706, Burghausen surrendered as the last town that was still in the hands of the Landesdefension. The popular uprising, the climax and turning point of which was the Battle of Sendling, was crushed.
The imperial administration subsequently chose a more moderate course, the forced recruitment was discontinued and the tax claims were reduced, so that Bavaria was able to recover at least to a modest extent in the nine years that followed under imperial rule.
aftermath
Events after the Sendlinger Murder Christmas
After the last military conflict between the insurgents and the imperial troops, the Bavarian resistance collapsed completely. Within just three weeks, a total of almost 10,000 victims were recorded on the Bavarian side.
The contemporary reception of the uprising was ambivalent. It is said that Max Emanuel, who was informed of the events in Brussels, did not have the slightest sympathy for the farmers who protested in front of Munich for his return. If the reports are correct, he shared the Austrian view that any comparable uprising had to be nipped in the bud. Both his and Austria's exercise of power must not allow any tolerance against peasant revolts at this point . Max Emanuel assessed the uprising of Hungarian nobles in his favor differently in 1707, which was also suppressed. A class clause applied here: a nobility revolt had a political dimension, a peasant revolt, on the other hand, questioned the class structure of society and thus the ruling position of the nobility and princes and was therefore an unacceptable revolt.
Austria strengthened its position through the measure of violence - a rupture in the Austrian-Bavarian relations was the long-term consequence, carried by a feeling on the part of the population that was building its own culture of remembrance.
With the peace treaties of Utrecht , Rastatt and Baden , the course was set for the period after the War of the Spanish Succession. Max Emanuel returned to Munich in 1715, his political status being reset to the situation before the war. The people of Munich gave him a triumphant reception, Bavaria celebrated the return to the old conditions.
In the course of the development that led to the development of Bavarian patriotism in the second half of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries , the uprising of 1705 also increased its value. The feelings of Bavarian separatism and loyalty to the ruling house, which were growing in the population , were used from above to maintain and emphasize an allegedly always existing connection between the people and the rulers. The Bavarian uprising with the Sendlinger Murder Christmas offered events with symbolic power that could serve to transfigure this connection.
Commemoration and today's impact
It is estimated that one to two hundred of the corpses of the insurgents killed on the Sendling Christmas Murder Christmas were buried in the old Sendling cemetery and up to 800 in the old southern cemetery , the former plague cemetery (outside the city gates, on the way to Sendling). Today both cemeteries have memorials to the victims of the Bavarian uprising.
The classicistic monument on the old Sendlinger Friedhof dates from 1830. For the southern cemetery, dialect researcher Johann Andreas Schmeller first suggested in 1818 that a memorial be erected in memory of the Sendlinger Murder Christmas. There, near the southern wall of the cemetery, there was a large, neglected burial mound without a tomb, under which, according to tradition, more than 500 victims of the peasant battle were to be buried. A first draft for the monument by Franz Schwanthaler the Elder was revised by the royal court architect Friedrich von Gärtner . King Ludwig I donated a 234 kg cannon that was reworked into a sixteen-cornered well tub. On November 1, 1831, the monument was ceremoniously unveiled with great sympathy from the population.
Opposite the old church of St. Margaret on the other side of Lindwurmstrasse is a memorial to the legendary blacksmith von Kochel, who, according to legend, was the last of the rebels to fall. The monument with fountain was initiated in 1904 by the archivist Ernst von Destouches , and the foundation stone was laid in 1905 at the 200th anniversary ceremony in the presence of Prince Regent Luitpold . The sculpture was designed by Carl Ebbinghaus , the architecture by Carl Sattler . The completed monument was inaugurated in 1911.
Another memorial for the blacksmith von Kochel stands on the village square of Kochel am See . It is a larger than life cast iron statue on a rock foundation. The memorial was created by Anton Kaindl and inaugurated on May 27, 1900. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary, the Oberland monument was unveiled on August 20, 1905 in Waakirchen .
To this day, commemorative events for the Murder Christmas of Sendling take place every year in December at various locations (including in Munich-Sendling, Bad Tölz, Kochel and Waakirchen). In 2005, on the three hundredth anniversary of the Murder Christmas, a large number of events in many places related to the uprising commemorated the events, including the 14th Braunau Contemporary History Days this year.
literature
- Hubert Dorn : The battle of Sendling 1705. Chronology of a Bavarian tragedy . Buchendorfer, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-934036-94-5 .
- Marktgemeinde Kopfing (ed.): "G'wunna has only unsoans at the moment!" The Bavarian people's uprising 1705/1706 in the War of the Spanish Succession. From the Innviertel to Tölz, to the Sendlinger Murder Christmas and to the Battle of Aidenbach . Moserbauer, Ried im Innkreis 2005, ISBN 3-902121-68-8 .
- August Kühn : The Bavarian uprising 1705. Sendlinger Murder Christmas . Meister and Schlott, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-9803606-3-6 .
- Hans Ferdinand Maßmann : The heroic death of the Bavarian defenders near Sendlingen [sic] , 1 hour from Munich, on Christmas Eve of 1705 . Munich 1831; 2nd edition under the title The heroic death of the Bavarian defenders or the battle of Sendlingen on Christmas Eve of 1705 , George Jaquet, Augsburg 1852 (as a collection of material on the events still important).
- Christian Probst : Better to die Bavarian. The Bavarian popular uprising in 1705 and 1706 . Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-7991-5970-3 .
- Relation over the Münchnerische Metten, so the rebellious peasants intended to sing to the imperialists on December 25th. 1705. The Bavarian Rebel Ringleader First Execution, Wages and Warning 1706 (reprint). In: Ludwig Hollweck (ed.): The Sendlinger Murder Christmas anno 1705 (= old Munich rarities , volume 4). Unverhau, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-920530-49-7 .
- Christian Strasser: The uprising in the Bavarian Oberland in 1705 - a crime of majesty or a heroic deed? An investigation into the criminal proceedings against the leaders of the unsuccessful survey in the “Murder Christmas of Sendling” (= Augsburger Schriften zur Rechtsgeschichte , Volume 3). Lit, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8623-9 ( dissertation University of Augsburg 2005, 330 pages).
- Henric L. Wuermeling : 1705, Der Bayerische Volksaufstand [Revised and expanded new edition of: Volksaufstand. The history of the revolution of 1705 and the Sendlinger Murder Christmas ], Langen-Müller, Munich / Vienna 1995 (first edition 1980), ISBN 3-7844-2085-0 .
- Josef Johannes Schmid : Memory between myth and history - on the 300th anniversary of Christmas in Sendling . in: Konrad Amann et al. (Ed.): Bavaria and Europe. Festschrift for Peter Claus Hartmann on the occasion of his 65th birthday . Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2005, ISBN 3-631-53540-6 , pp. 113-129.
- Stephan Deutinger: The "Braunau Parliament" in the Bavarian peasant uprising 1705/06. In: Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte, vol. 81, 2018, pp. 47–70.
- Wilhelm v. Gumppenberg: The farmers from the district court district of Miesbach who fell in the Sendlingerschlacht on Christmas Day 1705 . In: Upper Bavarian Archive for Fatherland History (Historischen Verein von Oberbayern, ed.), Volume 4, Munich 1843, pp. 136–142 ( online ).
Web links
- Braunau Contemporary History Days Detailed description of the course of the Oberland peasant uprising, in (excerpt): History of the city of Braunau am Inn by Konrad Meindl, Canon in Reichersberg. Braunau, 1882. Printed and published by Joseph Stampfl & Comp.
- List of actors in the Bavarian uprising in 1705 and 1706
- 1705 - The Bavarian People's Uprising Part 1 - BR 1705 The Bavarian People's Uprising BR report on the People's Uprising Part 1
- 1705 - The Bavarian People's Uprising 2 + 3 - BR 1705 The Bavarian People's Uprising BR report on the People's Uprising Part 2 & 3
Individual evidence
- ↑ At that time there was a Franconian district regiment, which mainly consisted of Würzburg soldiers: Franconian district infantry regiment Franz Anton von Dalberg , cf. List of regiments of the Frankish Reichskreis
- ↑ Marcus Junkelmann, Campaign and Battle of Höchstädt, in. Johannes Erichsen and Katharina Heinemann (eds.), The Battle of Höchstädt - The Battle of Blenheim, Ostfildern 2004, ISBN 3-7995-0214-9 , pp. 55-67, here p. 61
