Franz Josef Heinz, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetFranz Josef Heinz
German politician
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Orbis, Rhineland-Palatinate, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
About Franz Josef Heinz
- Franz Josef Heinz, known as Heinz-Orbis, (25 February 1884 - 9 January 1924) was a Palatine separatist who briefly led the government of the "Autonomous Palatinate" during the French occupation of the Rhineland.
- He was assassinated by German nationalists in 1924. Heinz came from the town of Orbis in Northern Palatinate, later using the town as part of his name.
- He was a farmer and became a leader of the free peasantry and the founder of the Palatine Corps. In the aftermath of World War I, France occupied the Rhineland.
- Along with some other members of the liberal German People's Party (DVP), Heinz saw this as an opportunity to reject the Prussian militarist state.
- In 1920 he became a member of the Palatine district council, arguing for greater autonomy in the area. By 1923 a separatist movement for a Rhenish Republic in the occupied Rhineland territory had developed, encouraged by the French.
- In August 1923 a republic was proclaimed under Josef Friedrich Matthes of the Rhenish Independence League.
- In November Heinz proclaimed the "Government of the Autonomous Palatinate in the Association of the Rhenish Republic", based in Speyer.
- The aim was to create an independent state, adjoining France.
- The new government adopted a currency based on the French franc, which it promised would deal with the problem of the current hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic.With the approval of the Bavarian government, a detachment of the Viking League, enemies of the separatists, under the command of Edgar Julius Jung planned to assassinate Heinz.
- After part of his farm in Orbis was set on fire, Heinz predicted that an attempt would be made to murder him.
- On 9 January 1924 Jung's troop of around twenty nationalists forced their way into the dining room of the Speyer Wittelsbacher Hof hotel and shot Heinz dead.
- In the shoot-out, one of his staff and another hotel guest were also killed, along with two assassins.
- The deaths signalled the end of the independence movement.
- Clashes between nationalists and separatists followed, leading to a number of other deaths, notably in Pirmasens where 12 separatists trapped in a building were burned out and then massacred.A monument was later put up in the Speyer cemetery to the two murderers who died in the shoot-out after the assassination.
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