Wilhelm Mückenheim

Wilhelm Mückenheim (born April 1, 1887 in Benneckenstein (Harz) , † October 5, 1922 on the Amkenberg near Elend (Harz) ) was a German poacher . He was nicknamed the King of Poachers.

Life

Mückenheim grew up in an environment where poaching was common to improve the supply of families. His father was also a poacher. Mückenheim went hunting illegally at a young age and proved to be an unusually good shooter. Professionally, he worked as a casual worker.

Even before the beginning of the First World War , Mückenheim had served several prison terms for poaching. At the beginning of the war he was also serving an eight-month prison sentence for a hunting offense.

Mückenheim was married to Anna and had several children. During his detention, his wife supported the family by working from home. The family lived in the Quenselschen house in Benneckenstein in the Wildenbach below the Gallenberg .

In April 1915 he fled from a threatened arrest again and lived in hiding in Benneckenstein, where he continued to hunt illegally. On the night of November 24th to 25th, 1915, he was chased after poaching by the forester Großgebauer from Hohegeiß and after a long search he was arrested at night in the attic of his house. Förster Großgebauer received a reward of 120 marks for this. Mückenheim was brought to police custody in the stable of the old town hall on Teichdamm that night. There he was first interrogated, allegedly threatening Großgebauer: "Well, wait, the few years that I get will pass ... and I can shoot!" Then Mückenheim was locked in a custody cell. The next morning he was with the Harzquerbahn the District Court Ilfeld be brought. Mückenheim removed an iron stove from his cell and crawled through the chimney onto the roof, from where he reached the floor via a lower side roof and fled unnoticed. He managed to hide with a friend in Benneckenstein for two weeks until he was caught again. On December 9, 1915, he was transported to the prison of the Ilfeld District Court via the Harz Railway. Shortly after leaving the station he opened despite manacled hands fast the train door and jumped in the dark from the car into a snowbank . He was then wanted on a wanted list.

On February 3, 1916, he was caught again and taken to the remand prison in Nordhausen . On February 9, 1916, he was sentenced to three years and three months in prison by the Nordhausen Regional Court for commercial poaching, theft and resistance.

Even after his release from prison, he continued to poach commercially. What his own family could not use, he sold or it was given away to the needy. Overall, Mückenheim was respected by the population and was nicknamed the king of poachers.

In the spring of 1922, Förster Großgebauer's successor surprised him. When the forester shouted: "Mückenheim, hands up!", Mückenheim is said to have put down on the forester instead, which the forester shot at. Mückenheim was seriously injured by a bullet and taken to hospital. From there he fled after a while and went back to hiding in the Harz forests . He was wanted again on the wanted list.

In 1922, the police assumed that Mückenheim would be there for the fair in Benneckenstein and moved towards his house with a contingent. The warned Mückenheim, however, fled unnoticed back into the mountains on the Gallenberg and observed from there the unsuccessful conversion and search of his house.

In the following weeks he was searched intensively. For fear of discovery, he largely refrained from shooting and thus hunting. Friends left him groceries in certain places. He also got in contact with field workers who looked after him.

Late in the afternoon on October 5, 1922, he and a group of poachers are said to have moved from Bremke along the border to Department 79 up the Amkenberg to Department 78. Walter Lezius, the son of the district forester Lezius and an assistant forester, was waiting for poachers there. The background to their use was a previous incident, in which poachers had shot through the open window of the Wietfeld district forester's room into the forester's room. The auxiliary forest rangers are said to have shouted "Stop - stand still", which caused panic and shots rang out. Mückenheim was hit and is said to have called out to the others "Run and get to safety - it got me - greet my wife!" Other information cites the morning of October 5, 1922 as the time of the shot.

His wife filed a complaint on October 6th that something must have happened to her husband. A search followed. A forest worker from Benneckenstein then led the search almost directly to a place where Wilhelm Mückenheim was found dead under a spruce tree with a rifle in his arms. He was fatally hit in the heart area, but was still 114 meters from the scene of the conflict.

Who fired the fatal shot remained unclear. Auxiliary forester Walter Lezius is said to have said later that his own death was a bullet. In fact, at the age of 26, he died of a gunshot wound in the forester's washhouse in 1927, although it remained open whether this was due to third-party negligence or while cleaning weapons.

Burial and remembrance

A dispute arose between the forestry department and the town of Benneckenstein about who was responsible for the burial. As a result, the widow was asked whether she was ready to accept the body from the forestry department. She agreed on the condition that the transfer would take place in a dignified manner and that the first class burial would take place with the bells ringing at the expense of the chief forester. This agreed. The burial took place accordingly in the Benneckenstein cemetery and was unusually well attended. A granite boulder from the Brocken area, which he frequently used, was placed as a tombstone.

At the point where Wilhelm Mückenheim was found, the district forester Fritz Peter had the Wildererstein set up as a souvenir in the early 1930s , but it was not labeled. The stone, which was later forgotten and overturned, was rebuilt in 1997.

literature

• Manfred Bornemann, Traces of poachers in the Harz Mountains: True incidents from two centuries according to regular table stories and old reports , Piepersche Verlagsanstalt 1991, ISBN 978-3923605057
• Karlheinz Brumme, Elend - Chronicle of a small resin village under the Brocken , 2nd expanded edition 2010, page 185 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karlheinz Brumme, Elend - Chronicle of a small Harz village under the Brocken , 2nd expanded edition 2010, page 190
2. ^ Karlheinz Brumme, Elend - Chronicle of a small Harz village under the Brocken , 2nd expanded edition 2010, page 191
3. ↑ ^{a b} Kurt Reitmann Mückenheim's death in misery - Chronicle of a Harzdörfchen under the Brocken , 2nd expanded edition 2010, page 189
4. ↑ Kurt Reitmann Mückenheim's death in misery - Chronicle of a small Harz village under the Brocken , 2nd expanded edition 2010, page 188