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Rumors can be deadly - especially in troubled times.

Sometimes a vague assertion is enough to trigger murderous measures.

Which can then sometimes have even worse consequences.

In the last week of April 1919, life in Munich was completely chaotic.

Since the middle of the month, communist revolutionaries and the volunteers of the Bavarian “Red Army” have claimed power over the state capital.

But the barely more than 2000 activists of the second Soviet republic were able to paralyze the life of the almost 600,000 residents of the city, but not control it.

On April 30, 1919, ten hostages were shot by communist troops on this wall in the courtyard of the Luitpold grammar school

Source: Public Domain

Especially since more than 30,000 government troops and voluntary corps were raised around the city, well armed and given the task of putting an end to the “Carnival of Madness” (according to Reichswehr Minister Gustav Noske).

The only question now was how bloody this ending would be.

The fact that a lot of blood flowed was due to rumors and a tenfold murder that they triggered.

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On April 26, 1919, Rudolf Egelhofer, a 23-year-old sailor and meanwhile both city commander of Munich and commander of the local “Red Army”, tracked down one of the main opponents of the Soviet republic: the ethnic-anti-Semitic Thule Society, an amalgamation by opponents of the revolution, had apparently fought the communist regime for up to two weeks with forged stamps for passes and the like.

Title page of a brochure on the hostage murder in Munich in 1919

Source: Public Domain

When "Red Army soldiers" searched the Thule Society's quarters in a wing of the luxury hotel "Vier Jahreszeiten" on Maximilianstrasse, they found their membership card.

Soon afterwards, troops of the "Red Army" arrested six of the persons listed and took them to the Luitpold-Gymnasium on the outskirts of the city center.

One day later, Egelhofer had posters circulated in Munich, on which the Thule Society was described as "dangerous to the public".

By means of forged documents she was responsible for the looting, which in reality supporters of the "Red Army" had committed.

It was a desperate attempt to take the population for the Soviet republic, but in view of the chaos of the previous weeks it was doomed to failure.

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After a seven-hour debate, on the same Sunday, April 27, 1919, the Assembly of Workers 'and Soldiers' Councils elected a new "Action Committee".

The previous committee headed by the communists Eugen Leviné, Max Levien and Willi Budich had resigned due to a lack of support from the councils.

Members of the "Red Army" in Munich in 1919

Source: UIG via Getty Images

The situation in the Soviet Republic worsened.

On April 29, 1919, at a meeting in the city command, Egelhofer suggested that citizens of Munich whom he called the "bourgeoisie" should be rounded up on Theresienwiese and shot if the government troops should begin to march into the city;

the proposal was rejected.

It is quite possible that this rejection led Egelhofer to set an example.

On the morning of April 30, 1919, two arrested soldiers of the government troops were shot in the courtyard of the Luitpold-Gymnasium.

In the afternoon, small troops in three groups took eight of the two dozen or so hostages into the schoolyard and killed them too.

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Whether Egelhofer gave the order or a "Red Army man" named Fritz Seidel could never be clarified.

Certainly rumors contributed to the murders taking place - this was reported by several other hostages who had also been imprisoned in Luitpold Gymnasium, but survived.

Free corps fighters in front of the Munich royal court at Stachus

Source: picture-alliance / dpa

In the city center, hearsay spread from the area around Munich that the government troops had slaughtered dozens of revolutionaries who had been picked up.

In Starnberg, it was said, a 68-year-old man was brought to a tree and shot.

Paramedics who wanted to help wounded rebel fighters were massacred.

A bounty of 30 marks was offered for every captured "Red Army man", and 50 marks for each leading representative of the Soviet republic.

The "whites", as the government troops were called in reference to the anti-Bolsheviks in Russia, had also stolen the milk from farmers and poured it into the Isar to withhold it from pregnant women workers.

Whether any of these rumors were true could never be determined, because allegations and counter-allegations were inextricably linked.

There is much to suggest that it was misinformation.

An armed squad in Munich during the revolutionary turmoil in 1919

Source: picture-alliance / dpa

Everywhere where government troops appeared around Munich on April 28 and 29, 1919, they met with enthusiasm.

Relief at the end of the revolutionary chaos clearly outweighed the residents of the surrounding area and the outskirts of the city.

Just as rumors were almost certainly the trigger for the tenfold murder in Luitpold Gymnasium, so hearsay about the consequences.

The Munich workers 'and soldiers' councils, which a few days earlier had forced the communist leaders of the Soviet republic to resign, immediately after the murder distributed leaflets expressing disgust at the “bestial shooting of the hostages”, but at the same time asserting that the councils had done so Nothing to do.

Josef Hofmiller, grammar school teacher and conservative writer, cynically commented in his diary: “I don't understand.

Hostages are only arrested for the purpose of being shot in an emergency. ”He considered the councils' dismay to be hypocritical.

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Worse, however: On the evening of April 30, 1919, most of the loyal troops around downtown Munich, and above all the volunteer corps, knew about the hostage murder.

Claims that the murdered were still mutilated further fueled emotions.

The nine dead men had their genitals cut off and thrown in the trash, it said.

Free inventions that had consequences.

The Stachus kiosk on Karlsplatz in Munich after the fighting on May 1, 1919 (postcard)

Source: Public Domain

The orderly invasion was only planned for midday on May 2nd, because the National Assembly in Weimar decided that May 1st was to be celebrated as a “World Peace Day”.

But because of the rumors of the hostage murder, parts of the anti-revolutionary troops attacked a day earlier.

They shot anything that came before their guns and sometimes responded to resistance by using grenade launchers.

Hundreds of completely uninvolved perished: the elimination of the Bolshevik Soviet Republic turned into a bloodbath.

The iron turner Johann Lehner was captured by government troops on May 3rd and murdered shortly afterwards

Source: Wikipedia / Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2004-0048 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 de

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This article was first published in 2019.