Freikorps officer who ordered the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in January 1919 and joined the Kapp Putsch
As staff officer of the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division, the largest Freikorps unit, he had Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht interrogated after their capture in January 1919 and ordered them killed, later boasting “I had them executed”. A leading figure in the Kapp Putsch of 1920, he went to Austria to help organise the right-wing Heimwehr and was deported. In Nazi Germany he faded from public life, only loosely tied to the party. In a 1962 interview and his memoirs he claimed Noske and Ebert had approved the killings, which was never confirmed. Never punished, he died in Düsseldorf in 1970.