Temporary volunteer association
Temporary volunteer associations were auxiliary troops made up of untrained and experienced volunteers to secure the young Weimar Republic .
history
At the beginning of 1919 the German Reich lacked effective means of power . The German army had been disbanded. The Reichswehr Minister Gustav Noske was tasked with setting up a new army. Since there was no longer any conscription and they would not be allowed by the expected peace treaties, Noske had to take provisional measures to restore a functioning armed power and to ward off internal and external threats to the republic. The so-called temporary volunteers, who were to be drafted for only three months at a time, were supposed to make it possible. The Reich government especially called on the students to register for a temporary volunteer association. According to Noske, they should act as “moral corset bars” in the units. The students who had returned from World War I - often young officers - were reluctant; because they wanted to continue and finish their studies. Nevertheless, many volunteered at the local troops. They had little sympathy for the new republic. For them it was about the preservation of the state itself.
Württemberg
At the request of the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen , the Technical University of Stuttgart and the Agricultural University of Hohenheim , Paul Hahn , Eberhard Wildermuth and Otto Keinert set up security companies and student battalions in 1919/21. They were used in Stuttgart to defend Spartakist combat groups “in countless shock patrols, during alarms and barricades, until the election for the German National Assembly (January 19, 1919) and for the election for the State Constituent Assembly on January 12, 1919 , making the requirements more constitutional Reorganization were secured ”. Later there were further deployments in riots in Esslingen am Neckar and Stuttgart and in April 1919 in the liberation of Augsburg and Munich from council communism . The Stuttgart student company was deployed in the uprisings in Upper Silesia . It was not until the end of 1920 that the danger of civil war was averted.
Leipzig
When General Georg Maercker liberated Leipzig from the Spartakists in May 1919 , he called on the students to maintain order. Thereupon they founded the "Zeitfreiwilligenregiment Leipzig". There were around 4,000 men in four battalions , each with four companies . The core of the regiment was formed by the fighting connections united in the local arsenal . The volunteers wore the linden leaf, the symbol of Leipzig , on the collar of their uniform . They were used successfully in March 1920 against 15,000 Spartakists who wanted to seize power in Leipzig on the occasion of the Kapp Putsch .
Hall
Volunteers gained great importance in the pacification of Halle (Saale) in 1919/20 - before the March fighting in central Germany .
background
Even before the First World War, the city had received the designation "Red Heart of Central Germany". After the war it was the stronghold of the Spartakusbund . The unrestricted rule of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council was based militarily on the "Security Guard" which had been set up by the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany ; However, it consisted “essentially of unclean elements and did not do justice to its task as an orderly force”. From January 1919, Halle's citizens suffered severely from radical left-wing terror, especially since a heavily armed sailor company with no discipline had arrived. Two large protest rallies by the bourgeoisie collapsed in the rifle and machine gun fire of the rioters. The general strike called by the “Action Committee of the Workers of Central Germany” on February 23, 1919 was aimed only at the overthrow of Scheidemann's cabinet . It brought all traffic in central Germany to a standstill. Water, gas and electricity were very limited. At the university's chemical institute, students had to work from midnight to 3 a.m. to complete their internship. The food and coal supplies stalled. On February 25th, the citizenry responded with a counter strike. No doctor offered help, savings banks, banks, pharmacies and some of the shops were closed. No baker or butcher was still active, especially since there was no supply of flour or meat. The rescuers could do nothing against vandalism, arson and anarchy. The members of Infantry Regiment 36 and Artillery Regiment 75 could not be relied on. Members of the Spartakist security forces, such as the Air Force Replacement Division 14, took part in the looting. Parts of the already poorly equipped vigilante groups were disarmed, others disbanded and disappeared from the public eye. Help came on March 1, 1919 from General Maercker and the 1st Landesjägerkorps. The Halle Central Station was occupied and sealed off. The troops took up quarters in the main post office. The opposite Hotel Stadt Hamburg (1838–1945) became the headquarters. The Spartakists had seized the city theater 250 m away . In the green spaces between the hotel and the theater there was fighting for days and nights. The hatred of broadest strata of the people against the power of order - the dictatorship of the "Noskegarde" - increased from day to day. The result was bitter and loss-making street fights in the soft landscape of the city between patrols of the Landesjäger and snipers or armed looters. Landesjäger were surrounded, disarmed and mistreated, machine guns, steel helmets and carbines were smashed, the harnessed horses were harnessed and taken away. The civilian lieutenant colonel v. Klüber was knocked down, thrown into the hall, shot at and driven back by women and young people on the bank until he drowned. With the greatest sympathy of the population, seven Landesjäger were buried on March 7, 1919 in the Gertraudenfriedhof (Halle) .
Student help
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On the second day after arriving in Halle, the Jägerkorps approached the student associations in Halle . With the help of Eggert Reeder , it asked her for support. The members of the six corps in the Halle Seniors' Convent reported quickly and without exception. It was followed by members of the ring of arms and free corporations. The proportion of non-incorporated students remained very low. The garrison command appointed shipowners as leaders of the now established 3rd patrol company of the Freikorps Halle. It consisted of three hundred. Housed in the artillery barracks, they initially had to fight mainly with lice. Since many war officers had become active in all connections, a powerful force soon emerged. A direct combat mission was no longer necessary. The theater with the Spartacists had been stormed and occupied with the help of a mortar . The prison, the Red Ox, had to be secured . The systematic cordoning off and searching of city blocks was tedious and dangerous, but much more successful than expected. 200 looters were arrested, large quantities of weapons were confiscated and a lot of looted goods were seized in the main station.
thanks
As early as 1921, the city of Halle erected a memorial for the volunteers on the Gertraudenfriedhof . Not destroyed after 1945, but only freed from its “militaristic” mark, it still stands today.
Goettingen
The company in Göttingen was of more provincial importance . It consisted of three trains :
- Bremensia , Saxonia , Hannovera
- Brunsviga , Hercynia, Hildeso-Guestphalia , Teutonia
- Lunaburgia, VDSt , Mathematical Association
In the town hall of Heiligenstadt the volunteers had to guard machine guns, which (by chance) had arrived on the day of the Kapp Putsch. They freed District Administrator Fritz from Christians , took 80 prisoners and captured 500 infantry rifles and some machine guns. The Göttingen volunteers included Werner Kyrieleis , Rudolf Diederichs , Hans Adler and Herbert Nöhring .
review
Hans Karl Müller and especially Wilhelm Kohlhaas report on the volunteers . The Academic Armed Forces, along with other forces, contributed a “modest part” to saving the state.
“But they are entitled to this, although in the Weimar Republic, to their fate, there was so much lack of efforts to understand state-preserving services ... The student armed forces never asked for a reward ... For the volunteers of the student armed forces Working against Germans is always a dura necessitas , a reluctantly accepted duty without a thirst for battle and a thirst for adventure, from which one turned back to study with relief. "
See also
literature
- Aribert Schwenke: Volunteer associations and Halle SC during the unrest in 1919-21 . Once and Now, Yearbook of the Association for Corporate Student History Research, Vol. 31 (1986), pp. 47-72.
- according to Robert Paschke : Zeitfreiwilligenverband , in: Friedhelm Golücke : student dictionary . Student und Hochschule from A to Z , 5th, completely revised and expanded edition in four volumes, published on behalf of the Association for German Student History and the Institute for German Student History. Essen 2018, ISBN 978-3-939413-68-4 , Vol. 4, pp. 560f.
- Horst-Ulrich Textor: Freiberger Corps students on duty as temporary volunteers 1919–1924 . Once and Now, Vol. 65 (2020), pp. 169-200.
Individual evidence
- ^ Rainer Assmann and Ernst-Ulrich Vollmer: The Tübingen Student Corps 1919 . Once and Now, Yearbook of the Association for Corps Student History Research, Vol. 36 (1991), pp. 121–128
- ^ The revolution of 1918/19 in Württemberg
- ^ A b Wilhelm Kohlhaas: The student battalions of the Württemberg universities as pillars of the regulatory power in the years 1919/21 . Einst und Jetzt, Vol. 11 (1966), pp. 45-62. GoogleBooks
- ↑ Württemberg / Baden 1918-33 (Geography Baden-Württemberg)
- ^ Leipzig students in temporary volunteer associations
- ^ The occupation of Leipzig by the Maercker Volunteer State Hunters Corps and the formation of the Leipzig Voluntary Regiment in May 1919
- ^ Otto Friedeberg: Memories of the Leipzig temporary volunteer regiment (1919/1920) . Einst und Jetzt, Vol. 11 (1966), pp. 63-66.
- ^ Message from Ralf Jacob , head of the Halle city archive.
- ^ Herbert Kater: Temporary volunteer student battalion in Göttingen 1920 . Einst und Jetzt, Vol. 32 (1987), pp. 111-129
- ↑ Müller on the Freikorps (VfcG)