Life
Hierl was born in Parsberg near Neumarkt in the Bavarian Upper Palatinate region, and attended secondary school (Gymnasium) in Burghausen and Regensburg. In 1893 he joined the Bavarian Army as a cadet, from 1895 in the rank of a lieutenant. A captain (Hauptmann) from 1909, he served as a company commander in the Bavarian infantry. In World War I Hierl served as a member of the general staff of the I Royal Bavarian Reserve Corps, part of the German 6th Army fighting on the Western Front, where he achieved the rank of a lieutenant colonel.
Upon the German defeat and the November Revolution of 1918, Hierl became head of a paramilitary Freikorps unit that took part in the January 1919 Spartacist uprising around Augsburg and enforced the rule of the Council of the People's Deputies under Friedrich Ebert.
Hierl played a role in organizing the "Black Reichswehr" paramilitary forces in the early years of the Weimar Republic, until in November 1923 when he quit the service after the failed Beer Hall Putsch by Hitler and General Erich Ludendorff. His role in the revolt has not been conclusively established, nevertheless he had fallen out with Reichswehr Chief Hans von Seeckt over the suppression. In 1925, he joined Ludendorff's far-right Tannenbergbund political society, which Hierl left two years later in conflict with Ludendorff's wife Mathilde.
Read more about this topic: Konstantin Hierl
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