As of: March 1, 2024, 3:30 p.m
Comments
Press
Split
In memory of China: Surrounded by the eagle of the German Empire and by the flags of the eight Allied forces (USA, England, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia as well as the flags of the Empire of China and the naval flag of the German Empire) The embroidered silk image shows the portrait of the China veteran Josef Stelzpflug.
© Wilfried Nass.
In 1900, colonies of the major European powers existed all over the world.
As resistance to European influence grew in China, violence escalated: in the so-called Boxer Rebellion, Chinese civilians and soldiers rose up against foreign powers.
A man from Peißenberg also found himself in the middle of it all.
Peißenberg
– Mathias Mayr was 22 years old when he decided to go to China.
The son of a miner, he was born in 1878 in Peißenberg, which was then called Unterpeißenberg.
He worked as a postal worker before joining the Bavarian army at the age of 20.
Just two years later, on June 26, 1900, that was no longer enough and he reported for service in the newly founded Fourth East Asian Regiment.
Mathias Mayr was willing to volunteer for military service in China.
He was to spend eight months in the Far East, witnessing a European colonial war and leading bloody battles against the Chinese rural population.
Bloody fights
To understand how someone from Peißenberg came to wage a war more than 12,000 kilometers away: The China of 1900 can hardly be compared with the China of today.
The central government in Beijing had only weak control over the many provinces of the empire, and the technological gap between the ancient Chinese civilization and the West had increased dramatically.
The reigning Empress Cixi resided in Beijing, but her power was limited.
Corruption, technological backwardness and a series of unfavorable contracts with foreign countries kept the country in a state of permanent crisis.
The British, Japanese and Russians had occupied cities and provinces on the edges of China, and in the race for resources and trade markets, Italians, Germans and French were also pushing for more and more influence.
When a series of natural disasters and famines plagued the country, the mood turned violent.
As is so often the case, the blame for the unbearable conditions was blamed on foreigners, who in this case were Christians.
The desperation of the population erupted in bloody massacres: churches were burned down and believers were persecuted, both Chinese and European converts.
Churches were burned down
In the name of justice and harmony, parts of Chinese society rebelled.
Their goal: to push Western influence out of China.
It is the so-called Boxer movement in Europe.
The violence quickly escalated.
European troops retaliated by shooting suspected insurgents in the region, including children.
The angry population turned openly hostile towards the Europeans.
Soldiers stationed in Beijing supported the insurgents, so that Empress Cixi ultimately had little choice but to bow to the Boxers' demands and support the fight against foreign powers.
On June 21, 1900, the Empire of China officially declared war on the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, Russia, and Japan.
Boxers and imperial troops began a siege of the diplomatic quarter in Beijing, where Christians and Europeans from all over the country had found refuge.
My news
Are they still there?
Weilheim reggae legend celebrates 30 years of reading
Huge program: This is how Weilheim celebrates its sister city relationship
“Oberland Werkstätten” gets a new location - in the former headquarters of a fashion chain
Penzberg: Listed linden trees on the town square have been felled - trunks are being stored for now
After the Nockherberg we continue with the “Stammwürze” in Penzberg: Derbleckn with “Ultras”reading
City receives permission: felling of the listed lime trees in Penzberglesen
It was a crazy action on the part of the Empress that can actually only be explained as a loss of reality or an act of desperation on Cixi's part.
China was hardly capable of waging war against just one Western power - fighting the entire Western world at once was suicidal.
Many high-ranking officials in the Empire also saw it that way and therefore withdrew their support to the Empress as the invading troops from Europe approached.
A large international alliance was forged there within a very short space of time.
Europeans, Americans and Japanese agreed to send a joint army to China, free the diplomats in Beijing and break the resistance of the Boxers and the Empress by force of arms.
A total of over 50,000 men were to be sent to the Far East, including 17,000 German and 818 Bavarian soldiers - and Mathias Mayr from Peißenberg.
From today's perspective, it is difficult to assess what prompted Mayr to go far away and fight a war on the other side of the world.
As is often the case, money could have been an important argument.
Simple soldiers like Mathias Mayr received an extra salary of 35 Pfennings per day for risking their health, which meant that at that time in Germany you could afford about an extra pint and a half of beer.
With a total duration of eight months, a soldier like this could definitely afford a proper celebration at the end.
The emperor called for war crimes
Honor may certainly have played a certain role in this: German national pride, which was ubiquitously invoked in those years, was somewhat stimulated by the uprising.
Wilhelm II, Emperor of the German Empire, personally repeatedly railed against the Chinese and demanded, among other things, in his infamous Hun speech: “No pardon will be given;
Prisoners not taken.
Whoever falls into your hands, be in your hands.” The emperor openly called for war crimes and massacres.
A barbarism that would damage Germany's reputation as a cultural nation for decades to come.
The big words were grandiose, but in reality the majority of the German troops arrived too late.
When Mathias Mayer and his regiment reached China in September 1900 after a 54-day voyage, the war had already been decided.
The British, Russians and Japanese had conquered Beijing, freed the trapped Europeans and crushed the resistance of the army and Boxers.
The newly arrived Bavarian troops had no choice but to eliminate the remnants of the rebellion.
They marched to Pao-ting-fu, present-day Baoding in Hebei Province, to perform garrison duty.
Instead of glorious battles, the soldiers had to do police duty, camp in a provincial town and drill in their field camps.
Especially at the beginning of the mission, provisions were scarce, so that Mathias Mayr and his comrades only had to make do with one meal a day, consisting of cured meat and supposedly rock-hard ship's biscuits.
The poor supply situation and the heat of central China weighed on the soldiers' spirits.
Poor supply situation
Even in the city of Baoding, the men found no variety.
Many people fled out of fear of the foreign soldiers, especially noble people and almost all women.
Reports of looting, rape and other crimes swirled throughout the country, frightening the population.
The allied armies waged a war of conquest and, as so often happens, the civilian population suffered.
So the months went by and the Bavarian soldiers, thirsting for fame and loot, could only pass the time with smaller expeditions.
It was not until the spring of 1901 that Mayr's regiment finally received its long-awaited baptism of fire.
During one of these expeditions to the Baoding area, a small detachment was ambushed by the Chinese.
Two Prussians and a Bavarian had been shot.
In Baoding, people reacted immediately: large units of troops were deployed to avenge the fallen.
A battle broke out on the Tschann-Tschönn pass road, near today's Changchengling, Fuping, Hebei.
Located at an altitude of 1200 meters, a mountain ridge separated the two provinces of Hebei and Shanxi.
Even a section of the Great Wall of China, complete with gate, ran at the top of the ridge.
Large units of troops on the move
The Germans and Chinese finally fought a battle within sight of this ancient building on March 8, 1901.
Within a few hours the matter was decided: the Chinese insurgents had little to counter the professionalism, artillery fire and equipment of a European army.
Hundreds of Chinese lost their lives.
The Bavarian troops stormed the hills without losing a single man.
In fact, the soldier who died in an ambush days before would remain the only Bavarian killed in battle during the entire China expedition.
Barely two months later, the combat mission was over.
Empress Cixi had to agree to a peace treaty and pay massive compensation.
Mathias Mayr was able to return to Germany.
As luck would have it, he met another China veteran there.
Josef Stelzpflug was not born in Peißenberg, but after the expedition he married a woman from Peißenberg and subsequently settled there.
The beautiful silk scarf comes from his possession as a souvenir of those wartime times (photo).
Mathias Mayr was also to marry in 1907 and have two children with his wife.
His trace is subsequently lost until it finally reappears in the lists of the First World War.
He fought for his fatherland once again on the battlefields of Flanders until he was taken prisoner by the French and then finally disappeared from the history books.
Wilfried Nass