In Hitler's Munich by Michael Brenner

Author:Michael Brenner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2021-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 25. Book cover for Erich Mühsam, Das Standrecht in Bayern (Martial Law in Bavaria) (1923).

That perpetrators on the right were celebrated as patriots at the same time that perpetrators on the left were regarded as traitors was a double standard already clearly manifested in the trial conducted against Count Arco, Eisner’s murderer, during the tenure of the Social Democratic Hoffmann government. The numerous witnesses for the defense were given the opportunity to abuse the courtroom for political propaganda. Arco’s former teacher and his fellow students, as well as comrades and commanders from his time as a soldier in the First World War, outdid each other in depicting his strength of character and patriotism. The chief witness to the crime, Eisner’s secretary Felix Fechenbach, was not even summoned to testify, since it was feared that he might make a political statement before the court in favor of Eisner and his socialist ideals. By contrast, the well-known surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch, who operated on the severely wounded Arco following the assassination and saved his life, had only words of praise for his patient: “The manly conduct of Count Arco is in accord with his general character traits.” The doctor went on to say: “For me there is no doubt that this man committed this deed out of a conviction that he was thereby doing his Fatherland a service. If only one single person in the Revolution had done his work with such clean hands.”136

Rarely had a prosecuting attorney praised a defendant accused of murder as highly as in the trial against Arco, when the prosecutor explained in his closing argument: “It’s not for me to say: It was true, profound, deeply ingrained love of Fatherland that moved the defendant to his deed, nor is it for me to add: If our youth as a whole were to be animated by such ardent love of Fatherland, then we could hope to look forward with joyful confidence to the future of our Fatherland.”137 The presiding judge saw things much the same way. Although, owing to the clear circumstances of the case, he had to pronounce a death sentence, he refused to strip Arco of his civil rights, “since the conduct of the young, politically immature man did not arise from a lowly disposition, but from the most ardent love of his people and his Fatherland.”138 After he was sentenced, Arco emphasized his patriotism. As the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten reported: “In response to these words of Arco’s, there was an eruption of rapturous applause from all the seats in the overcrowded auditorium, continuing for minutes with repeated calls of bravo and clapping of hands.”139 It was no surprise that, on the following day, the Bavarian government passed a unanimous resolution reducing the sentence to life imprisonment.

Arco became a hero to large sections of the population, and the reporting of the mainstream press, in newspapers like the München-Augsburger Abendzeitung, expressed similar adulation: “It was a positively elevating mood that suffused the widest circles of the population in unison during those days.

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