Wilhelm Busse

Memorial stone for Wilhelm Busse in the Heidelberg city forest

Wilhelm Busse (born April 24, 1871 in Detmold ; † June 29, 1921 near Heidelberg ) was Lord Mayor of Herford .

Life

Busse studied law in Heidelberg and Berlin, passed his legal traineeship in 1892 and became a court assessor in 1898. In 1900 he became second mayor, in 1908 first mayor and in 1917 lord mayor of Herford. From 1911 to 1919 he was a member of the provincial parliament of the province of Westphalia for the constituency of Herford, Herford-Stadt and the NLP .

On June 29, 1921, he and the former Mayor of Herford, Leopold Werner, attended a foundation festival of the student union Corps Vandalia Heidelberg . The two did not return from a walk in the woods around Heidelberg. Initiated search measures on the Heiligenberg and on the Königstuhl remained unsuccessful for the time being. It was only two weeks later that the bodies of the missing were found in the Heidelberg city forest on Linsenteich-Auweg. Busse was shot dead in an ambush. Werner probably managed to escape first, he was found dead 80 meters away.

In the meantime, a 24-year-old railway worker Leonhard Siefert from Ziegelhausen had been arrested as an urgent suspect. The act was tried in January 1922 before the Heidelberg jury court, Siefert found guilty and executed in Bruchsal.

Memorial stones in the Heidelberg city forest commemorate the two murdered people.

literature

• The members of Vandalia zu Heidelberg as of September 29, 1935 . [Berlin 1936]
• Friedrich Franz Koenemann: The mayor murder stones , in: Walks through Heidelberg forests , Heidelberg 1990
• Thomas Schnepf: Heidelberger Mordsteine , Hamm am Rhein 2006
• Alfred Bruns (Ed.), Josef Häming (compilation): The Members of the Westphalia Parliament 1826–1978 (= Westphalian source and archive directories, Volume 2). Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, Münster 1978, p. 227.

Web links

• Wilhelm Busse short biography on the Internet portal "Westphalian History"
• Herford's murdered mayor regional thriller over spectacular case of 1921

predecessor	Office	successor
Ludwig Quentin	Lord Mayor of Herford 1908–1921	Dietrich Osmer