The march of the Reichswehr and Free Corps into Munich on May 1-2, 1919, sounded the death knell for the short-lived Soviet Republic. Members of the Red Army put up resistance in different areas of the city, but this was quickly broken. Inflamed by often exaggerated or fabricated stories about the ‘Red Terror’, especially about the executions in the Luitpoldgymnasium secondary school, the military acted with great brutality, especially in the working-class districts. Prisoners were mistreated and executed without judgment. Egelhofer, Commander of the Red Army, was beaten to death while imprisoned. Gustav Landauer was murdered by soldiers at Stadelheim Prison. The attackers often shot those they found suspicious, also based on mere denunciation. For example, members of the Lützow Free Corps arrested twelve workers from Perlach, brought them to the Hofbräukeller on May 5, 1919, and promptly shot them based on the denunciation of the Protestant pastor Robert Hell.
The murders did not even stop at POWs: 53 Russian POWs fell victim to attackers in Gräfeling; although some of the POWs had belonged to the Red Army, they had not taken part in the fighting. Unarmed, they were picked up by troops from Württemberg in Pasing.
The horrific murder of 21 Catholic journeymen by the Bavarian Free Corps on May 6, 1919, is still especially remembered today. Contemporaries considered this event ‘especially tragic’ because the journeymen were incorrectly confused as Spartacists by their murderers. In this case, as in all other cases, none of those who participated in the murders were held responsible.
This event forced the General Command to intervene, but the excessive killing by the soldiers could only be reined in with great difficulty. It had already decreed on May 5, 1919, that those arrested could only be tried in court and had to be handed over to the nearest police station. This order was now reiterated. Soldiers were only allowed to use their weapons in the event of “escape attempts” that, however, could be easily contrived. Officially, 557 people, mostly innocent civilians, fell victim to the occupation. The actual number is unknown even today; estimates put the number at over 1,000 victims. The city was put under martial law for fear of renewed unrest since large swaths of the working class were embittered that it was a social democratic government that had called upon the troops for help which then rampaged through the city. It wasn’t until December 1, 1919, that martial law was lifted and replaced with a civil state of emergency until that too was lifted in September 1921.
State of Emergency and Military Dictatorship
Those who held power in Munich were de facto not the elected state government, which didn’t return to Munich until August 1919, but the military and police, supported by citizens’ militias. To opponents of the revolution, the Munich Soviet Republic represented the logical consequence of the rebellious development since 1918, and they wanted to preclude such events once and for all. Directed against the moderate social democracy, the prevailing political ideology in these circles was both anti-republican and extremely anti-socialist.
At the same time, it bore xenophobic and often antisemitic traits, since the opinion that the revolution had been brought to Bavaria from ‘foreign elements’ was widespread. The word ‘foreign’ was frequently used synonymously for ‘Jewish’. This was the fertile ground upon which the Bavarian ‘cell of order’ sprung up, in which radical right-wing and ethnic-chauvinist attitudes rapidly gained influence. In the police apparatus, Chief of Police Ernst Pöhner now set the tone; he was supported by Wilhelm Frick, the new head of the Political Department. Both cooperated closely with the Criminal Investigation Department in the Commandant’s Office; Christian Roth acted as head of the ‘legal section’ there, and Ernst Röhm as chief of staff. Pöhner proceeded to rigorously expel those who did not come from Munich, and he had suspicious persons taken into ’protective custody’.
Summary and ‘People’s Courts’ – Prison and ‘Festungshaft’ (imprisonment with easier prison conditions, where prisoners retained their full civil rights)
The prisons quickly overfilled with supporters of the soviet government and suspects. The courts, filled with conservative and monarchist judges and officers, worked at full speed. Under Eisner, special courts were introduced for serious and political offenses in the form of ‘People’s Courts’ that were intended to ensure order during the chaotic transition. Its verdicts took effect immediately. It was filled with two professional judges and three lay judges, who were appointed by mutual agreement with the military authorities. In addition to the military summary courts, the People’s Courts now served to sentence the soviet activists. By February 1920, it had conducted trials of over 5,000 people. 65 people were sentenced to penal servitude, 1,737 received prison sentences, and 407 activists were sentenced to Festungshaft, a form of imprisonment with easier prison conditions, where prisoners retained their full civil rights (Beyer, p.151). Irrespective of national and international protests, a summary court sentenced Eugen Leviné, the most important leader of the communist Soviet Republic, to death on June 4, 1919, even though it could not be proven that he was responsible for the murders at Luitpoldgymnasium secondary school. He was executed in Stadelheim Prison the following day.
Offenders in the Weimar Republic, who were politically motivated, such as the Eisner murderer Arco and later even Adolf Hitler, often enjoyed the privilege of serving their sentences in the easier conditions of Festungshaft where prisoners retained their full civil rights, which was considered more ‘honorable’. The convicted soviet activists did not encounter such conditions; they were often treated like normal criminals. The conditions at Niederschönenfeld Prison and the general behavior of the Bavarian justice system were repeatedly the subject of complaints by those affected, including primarily communist, social-democratic, and liberal politicians and journalists.
The most persistent critic of the justice system, the pacifist and mathematics professor Emil J. Gumbel from Munich, published first in 1921, then again in 1922 in extended form, his research which meticulously recorded the number of murders and the subsequent police measures and their judicial expiation. The list, which was by no means complete, was shocking: 354 political murders by the right: total expiation of 90 years, 2 months confinement, 730 M financial penalty, and 1 lifelong imprisonment – compared to 22 murders by the left: total expiation of 10 executions by firing squad, 248 years, 9 months confinement, 3 lifelong sentences to penal servitude. Gumbel’s research was checked at the initiative of the temporary republican Reich Justice Minister Gustav Radbruch and largely confirmed. However, Radbruch’s successor prevented its planned publication.
