Rhenish Republic - End of The Rhenish Republic

End of The Rhenish Republic

Following the events in Aegidienberg, the separatist cabinet based at the castle in Koblenz split into two camps. Across the province separatist governments were evicted from the Rathausen and in some instances arrested by the French military. Leo Deckers resigned his office on 27 November. On November 28, 1923 Matthes announced that he had dissolved the separatist government. Dorten had already, on 15 November, moved to Bad Ems and there established a provisional government covering the southern part of the Rhineland and the Palatinate and participated actively in the activities of the "Pfälzische Republik" movement, centred on Speyer, which would survived through till 1924. At the end of 1923, Dorten fled to Nice: later he relocated to the USA, where he published his memoirs; Dorten was still in exile when he died in 1963.

Joseph Matthes also made his way to France where he later met up with fellow journalist Kurt Tucholsky. Despite the amnesty set out in the London Agreement of August 1924, Matthes and his wife were prevented from returning to Germany, leading Tuckolsky to publish in 1929 his essay entitled For Joseph Matthes, from which are drawn his observations on conditions in the Rhineland in 1923, cited above.

In the towns, the remaining separatist Burgermeister found themselves voted out of office at the end of 1923 or were, for their activities, before the courts.

Konrad Adenauer, who during the period of the "Koblenz Government" had constantly been at odds with Dorten, presented to the French generals another proposal, for the creation of a west German autonomous federal state (die Bildung eines Autonomen westdeutschen Bundesstaates). Adenauer’s proposal failed to impress either the French or the German government at this time, however.