Battle on June 14, 1849
A pictorial representation of June 14, 1849
Even more than the barricade, the battle of June 14, 1849 became a myth. The lithograph Der Kampf der Tapferen Turner u. Freischäärer bei Kirchheimbolanden den 14. Juny 1849, published by Paul Stumpf in Mainz around 1880, contributed to this in particular. Stumpf, who was present in Kirchheimbolanden as a private soldier, made a significant contribution to the memory of the castle garden battle.
The fact that Turner and Freischäärer were mentioned alongside each other shows their close connection in Rheinhessen. The German Gymnastics Association, founded in April 1848, saw itself as a political organization from the very beginning. The aim was to be active for the unity of the German people, to raise the sense of brotherhood and the physical and spiritual strength of the German people. Ludwig Bamberger and Franz Zitz, in 1849 the two “civil commissioners” of the Rhine-Hessian Freischaren in Kirchheimbolanden [Standort 46] played a leading role in the Mainz gymnastics scene. Gymnasts” were therefore also very strongly represented within the Rheinhessen Freischaren.
The “Battle […] at Kirchheimboland”, depicted three decades later, paints the events of 14 June 1849 in the castle garden in a manner that is both brutal and heroic to the point of scandalization: In the foreground of the picture, the dead and dying, an unarmed man in bourgeois clothing in a heroic pose, the Prussian troops marching and deploying closely opposite, gun smoke in the air. The scene is characterized by abandonment and willingness to sacrifice. The polarity of good and evil dominates and virtually demands that we take sides with the victims.
Eyewitness accounts of June 14, 1849
The most direct insight into the “Battle […] at Kirchheimboland” can be gained from eyewitness accounts. However, there are two main things to consider: are the records written from the perspective of irregulars or Prussian troops? And to what extent do subjective colorations distort the picture?
The records of Martin Fuchs II, a private soldier from Kirchheimbolanden near Orbis, lead directly into the events in the castle garden on June 14, 1849:
I was barely 19 years old, born on October 28, 1830, when I joined the irregulars. […]
We had to fight against the 4th Prussian Division, which, coming from Alzey, made its way to Kirchheim via Morschheim and Orbis. The Rheinhessen had also arrived […] and had reinforced us. We carried our scythes and were very poorly equipped and organized against the Prussians. They had needle guns and also carried small cannons. […] We knew the Prussians’ plan. They wanted to surround us and take us prisoner, but this only happened partially. The Prussian bulk of the division was to attack Kirchheim from Morschheim, but only when the bypass maneuver was complete. They had therefore sent a fusilier company via the village of Orbis and the Leithof (heath) to bypass Kirchheim on the left. Here they had the forest as protection. Another company was sent to our right flank via Heuberger Mühle and Bischheim.
It was on June 14, 1849, when the Prussians opened artillery fire against Kirchheim. Nearly the entire revolutionary ranks turned back and prepared for a hasty retreat. White flags flew from every house in the town as the Prussians entered. The Kirchheimers even threatened to attack us in the rear if we did not withdraw immediately! However, the enemy had beaten them to it.
A small group of about 45 men now formed from our ranks and bravely put up an energetic resistance to the Prussians. We were ashamed to give way to the hated invaders, who had deployed their entire division against us. We were led by two men from Mainz: Ludwig Bamberger and Franz Zitz. Both were intrepid daredevils!
At first we sought shelter behind the Kirchheim cemetery; driven from there by the artillery, we found a second covered position in the castle garden. One group occupied the front wall, another built a barricade at the Bischheim gate, the others were inside the garden. The Prussian soldiers came from all sides and pressed us together in the middle of the castle garden. All were wounded, about 16 men were captured and 15 lay dead in the square, one of whom had been shot after he had already surrendered. The others escaped, including myself. The prisoners were maltreated and led away tied to the cavalry horses.
While the battle was raging, I had managed to get away in time.
A letter sent by a member of the Prussian division to his parents on June 19, 1849 describes what was happening on the other side:
We are in a bad situation because we have to march 4 miles almost every day and now we are in enemy territory. June 14th was the first meeting at Kirchhainburlanden. In this town were the Free Guards who received us.
The little town was still about 2000 paces ahead of us when the first company on the left wing was ordered, a platoon from the 3rd to cover the artillery, the others at a brisk pace in front. Not long afterwards the bombardment started, the shells and cartridges whizzed in the air and the small arms fire was incessant.
But that, dear parents, you can believe, in such a state one feels neither hunger nor thirst, neither baggage nor blisters on the feet. The attack lasted an hour, by which time we had the town in our possession, most of the dead from the Free Guards were lying in the castle garden, and those who were still caught had to stand against the wall and were shot.
None of our men remained, not even one wounded.
The author of a third record reproduced here is Ludwig Bamberger, one of the two Free Guards commanders from Rheinhessen. According to his book “Erlebnisse aus der Pfälzischen Erhebung im Mai und Juni 1849” (Experiences from the Palatinate Uprising in May and June 1849), which was published in the same year, he only became aware of the castle garden battle afterwards. Nevertheless, his report on June 14 in Kirchheimbolanden is of great value.
The number of Prussians approaching amounted to at least 3000 men. We had no cavalry or artillery at all. The moment had therefore arrived […] to order the retreat. Zitz and I therefore issued written orders to all individual company commanders to retreat from the mountains to Dürkheim an der Haardt and from there to Neustadt. Shortly afterwards we went back to the assembly point and made sure that the orders had been carried out. There were no more people there, the companies had withdrawn, and the Prussian artillery was firing down the road we were on. A barricade that had been improvised a short time before had been abandoned, and the crew was already outside the town. It seemed impossible to walk any longer, so I had a wagon hitched up, Zitz joined me and we drove off along the road to Rockenhausen. When we were about a hundred paces out, the last cannon shot was fired and the Prussians moved in from the Kaiserstraße. Only later did we learn that a small number of our party had remained behind in the castle garden. Whether it was because they did not hear the bugle signal, which was repeated several times, or because they misunderstood it, or because they did not want to leave at all, the rifle company, to which they belonged, left without discovering where the missing men were. The advancing Prussians found them in the castle garden and a fight broke out there. Rumor later had it that seventeen riflemen had been killed.
So much for Bamberger. His report reflects a completely different starting point and interests than the other two records. Fuchs and the unnamed Prussian soldier recorded their notes for the internal family tradition, Fuchs as a private who experienced the castle garden events from “inside”, the Prussian soldier from “outside”. Bamberger, on the other hand, was completely different. His “memoirs” were intended as a vindication and at the same time as testimony in an anticipated trial, which was then held against him in absentia in 1851. In his book, he blamed others for the failure of the “Palatinate Uprising”, above all the military inadequacy of the Palatinate irregulars.
June 14, 1849 in newspaper reports
How the events in Kirchheimbolanden on June 14, 1849 were also registered outside the Palatinate is documented by a series of reports in the German press. This began with the entry of the Rheinhessen Free Guards into Kirchheimbolanden in mid-May 1849.
This was reported in the bourgeois-democratic-liberal “Kölnische Zeitung”, one of the major national German newspapers, in a note taken from the “Mainzer Zeitung” on May 16, 1849:
The “Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung”, published in Leipzig, whose motto Truth and Justice, Freedom and Law indicates its liberal character, also reported from the Palatinate on June 16. The very first line marks the location of the reporter:
In military terms, everything was already decided in the Palatinate on June 14, 1849. In Saxony, Prussian and Saxon troops had already achieved this on May 9, 1849. Here, too, the uprising ended with the flight of the Provisional Government.
June 14, 1849 in two poems
The fact that the castle garden battle was also addressed lyrically was in keeping with the literary taste of the time: writing is no longer a game of beautiful spirits, no longer an innocent amusement, but the spirit of the times seizes the writer’s hand and writes in the book of life with the iron pen of history.
In the spirit of Ludolf Wienbarg’s (1802-72) “Aesthetic Campaigns” published in 1834, a spokesman for the “Young Germans” who saw literature as “political opinion-forming”, the Mainz writer Kathinka Zitz-Halein (1801-77), married to the Freischarenkommandeur Franz Zitz, dedicated herself to the baptism of blood in the garden at Kirchheim-Bolanden. Her expansive poem was addressed to the “Women of Mainz”, relatives of the dead of June 14, 1849. Bravery and duty, fatherland and freedom determine the flow of thought.
Poem 1:
Once in late times history will report
Of Kirchheim=Boland’s garden and of the thirty heroes,
Who shut themselves in it, and tussled with the foe,
And there in the fight for freedom baptized the earth with blood,
To boldly cover the retreat of their brothers in arms
They stayed behind and fought without fear
Full of courage determined to die, with enemies everywhere,
Who outnumbered them a thousandfold.
They held out in battle for three long, long hours,
Then seventeen men fell from wounds received.
History has never seen such valiant fighting,
They fought like lions, they died like heroes.
This was the bloody baptism of the German mother earth,
So that the imperial constitution would become fully valid.
It was a noble struggle, a sacred fairy tale –
The blood witnesses for German freedom perished.
For German freedom! – woe! – It was nipped in the bud,
But it was not defeated, it was crushed by the enemy.
The victory was not won through courage and bravery,
Superiority alone decided the fraternal dispute.
But that’s why the freedom we boldly fought for,
The proud maiden of the gods did not die with them.
She lies now only in slumber and in the course of time,
She’ll wake up one day stronger and more beautiful.
Christ also died, he lay in the grave,
But after three days he rose to life.
Therefore do not lose heart, lift up your eyes,
The sun shines again, as often as the night passes.
But those who died a heroic death in Kirchheim’s garden,
Have earned sacred rights to your thanks,
Their memory will be eternally dear to you
Set them, women of Mainz, a headstone.
And on the stone, the cold one, let it be written large,
How brave and how courageous the seventeen have been
How they to gain freedom’s highest good
Sacrificed their lives, spilled their holy blood.
Then in distant days, when we are no longer alive,
The father will still tell his son about you;
The monument you erected will then tell the whole country
How Mainz women have always honored the greatness.
Poem 2:
In a quiet place,
To the green, cool forest,
There sleeps a good fellow,
He won’t wake up so soon!
He sleeps in his weapons,
In his free soldier’s dress,
His chest and forehead are gaping
His death wounds wide.
He sleeps by an oak tree
Warm in its roots,
The tree holds the corpse
Like a son in its arms.
His sword, his brave blade,
Is stuck on his grave,
That Ephen encircles it,
And evergreen covers it,
And young wild roses
And forest forget-me-nots,
That speaks for the nameless
For a tear speaks!
A silent prayer to him!
And undisturbed asylum,
Who for the sake of freedom
Stabbed and fell.