Tübingen bread riot

Storming of the Schweickhardt'sche Kunstmühle on May 4, 1847 (lithograph by Carl Baumann, 1847)

The Tübingen bread riot was a violent popular uprising in which armed students came to the aid of the millers of the Schweickhardtschen mill , who had been harassed during a famine .

On the evening of May 3, 1847, there was a violent storm on the Schweickhardt'sche Kunstmühle, which had been triggered by a famine and high inflation in Württemberg. The starving population suspected the Schweickhardt brothers of withholding flour or selling it abroad in order to drive up prices.

An academic security corps from the University of Tübingen , made up of around 150 students from the liberal opposition, was armed from the university's arsenals under the leadership of Carl Heinrich Ludwig Hoffmann . The security corps put an end to the unrest by opposing the interests of the poor and protecting the property of the Schweickhardt brothers. Something similar happened in 1831 with the so-called Gôgen uprising. The leaders of the storm were sentenced to several months in prison. The accusation of speculation was subsequently found to be unjustified.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ulrich Köpf: Historical-critical view of history: Ferdinand Christian Baur and his students: 8th Blaubeurer Symposion. Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994, page 97.
2. ↑ Helmut Marcon, Heinrich Strecker and Günter Randecker: 200 years of economics and political science at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen: Life and work of the professors: the economics faculty of the University of Tübingen and its predecessors (1817-2002). Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004, page 212.