Albert Leo Schlageter

Freikorps (Germany, 1918–1923) Counter-revolutionary forces 1894–1923 ✕ Executed by shooting

Freikorps fighter in the Baltic and Upper Silesia, executed in 1923 for sabotage against the Ruhr occupation and turned into a Nazi “martyr”

Shot by the French in 1923 for sabotaging railways in the occupied Ruhr, he was venerated by the Nazis as a martyr of their movement.

Born to a Catholic farming family in Schönau in Baden, he volunteered in the First World War and became a lieutenant. In 1919 he joined Medem’s Freikorps in the capture of Riga during the Latvian War of Independence, then fought in the German Legion of Bermondt-Avalov’s army. In 1920 he backed the Kapp Putsch and fought the Ruhr uprising, and in Upper Silesia in 1921 led a company of the “Organisation Heinz”, terrorising local residents. He joined the Greater German Workers’ Party, a Nazi front, though his Nazi Party membership is disputed. Sabotaging railways against the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923, he was arrested and shot near Düsseldorf on 26 May. The Nazis made him, with Horst Wessel, one of the chief heroes of their movement.