Rhenish Republic - Siebengebirge Insurrection

Siebengebirge Insurrection

The Siebengebirge district consists of a series of low wooded hills wedged between the A3 Autobahn and Königswinter, a resort town on the east bank of the Rhine. Back in 1923, the construction of the A3 lay more than a decade in the future, and Bonn, located across the river from Königswinter, could still be described without irony as "a small town in Germany". It was the turn of the village called Aegidienberg to claim a place in history. On the evening of 14 November, a large number of the residents from the various small towns and villages surrounding Bad Honnef met together in an Aegidienberg guest house and resolved to resist openly the wave of looting which, they anticipated, was moving towards the southern side of the Siebengebirge area. The district was experiencing growing food shortages. Despite the weapons ban in force, the group were able to bring together a substantial arsenal, comprising not merely axes, sticks and pitchforks, but also a number of hunting weapons and handguns and other infantry weapons, presumably left over from the war. A mining engineer and former army officer named Hermann Schneider took on leadership of this ad hoc militia.

It was thought that Schneider's Aegidienberg-based force now comprised about 4000 armed men. Using factory sirens and alarm bells, the local troop would be mobilised the minute separatist forces were reported or even merely rumoured to have appeared. Panic was apparent as people rushed around trying to move to safety their cattle and other chattels.

During the afternoon of 15 November, a group of separatists drove two trucks into the Himberg quarter of Aegidienberg: here they were confronted by around 30 armed quarry workers. Peter Staffel, an 18-year-old blacksmith, was shot dead when he forced the trucks to stop and tried to persuade the occupants to turn back. The quarry workers thereupon showered bullets on the separatists who turned and fled along the little Schmelz valley As they fled down the twisting road, back towards Bad Honnef they encountered the local militia, well dug in and waiting for them: Schneider's men seized the trucks and then routed the separatist gang.

That evening the repulsed separatists met up at the Gasthof Jagdhaus, down the Schmelz valley, and called up reinforcements. They planned a more substantial attack for the next day, in order to make an example of Aegidienberg. Accordingly, on 16 November, some 80 armed separatists found a gap in Schneider's defences at a hamlet called Hövel: here they seized five villagers as hostages, tied them up, and placed them in the line of fire between themselves and the now-gathering militiamen. One of the hostages, Theodor Weinz, was shot in the stomach, dying soon afterwards as a result of his injuries.

Meanwhile, more local defenders hurried to the fray and set about the invaders. 14 of the separatists were killed: these were later buried in a mass grave back in Aegidienberg, without the benefit of any identifying inscription. According to contemporaries the dead men had come originally from the Kevelaer and Krefeld areas, between the Ruhr and the Dutch border.

In order to prevent further fighting, the French installed in Aegidienberg a force of French-Moroccan soldiers for the next few weeks, while military police arrived to conduct an on-the-spot investigation. The investigation concluded that in total around 120 people had been killed in connection with the events of those November days. More precise information on the deaths and other events of the Aegidienberg "insurrection" may survive within the archives of the French gendarmes. Theodor Weinz, the separatists' hostage who had been fatally shot at Hövel, is buried in the Aegidienberg cemetery, near to its main entrance: the primary school has been named after him. Peter Staffel, the young man who had probably been the first fatality of the Siebengebirge insurrection, is buried in the cemetery at the nearby village of Eudenbach (now incorporated within the administrative ambit of Königswinter).