Shot Without Trial - Hofgarten
Behind the serene Renaissance lawns of the Hofgarten, the royal Residenz became a Freikorps prison in May 1919, where the 23 year old commander of the Red Army, Rudolf Egelhofer, was beaten and shot without any trial during the bloodiest week in Munich's modern history.
Sobre este lugar
Duke Maximilian I laid out the Hofgarten between 1613 and 1617 as an Italian Renaissance garden, and its centrepiece, the twelve sided Dianatempel of 1615, still crowns the crossing of its gravel paths. Yet in the first days of May 1919 this elegant quarter saw the most brutal chapter of Munich's twentieth century. When government troops and Freikorps units retook the city from the Bavarian Soviet Republic on 1 and 2 May, the palace along the garden's south side was turned into a holding prison and the scene of sham summary hearings. Rudolf Egelhofer, a sailor from Schwabing who at just 23 had commanded the Red Army and served as city commandant, was discovered on 1 May hiding in the flat of a doctor at Maximilianstrasse 22, dragged to the Residenz, severely mistreated and on 3 May 1919 shot dead without trial or judgment. Nobody was ever prosecuted for it. His death was one of hundreds: police records counted 335 civilians among more than 600 dead in the so called White Terror, while government forces lost only 38 men. Three days later a Freikorps patrol murdered 21 Catholic journeymen at Karolinenplatz, a short walk west of here, after mistaking them for revolutionaries. As you stroll beneath the arcades, remember that the quiet of this garden was bought in a week of lawless killing.
Datos clave
- 23 years old — Rudolf Egelhofer, the sailor who commanded the Red Army of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, was 23 when he was shot without trial in the Residenz on 3 May 1919.
- 335 civilians killed — Munich police records counted 335 civilian dead among more than 600 victims of the fighting and reprisals between 30 April and 8 May 1919, against only 38 government soldiers.
- 21 journeymen murdered — On 6 May 1919 a Freikorps patrol beat, stabbed and shot 21 members of the Catholic journeymen's association in the Prinz Georg Palais at Karolinenplatz 5, mistaking them for Spartacists.
📍 Hofgartenstraße, 80539, München