Posted on 05/20/2021 8:29:40 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
Alexandre Dumas recognized the name of Karl Ludwig Sand, who lost his head on this date in 1820 in Mannheim, Germany, for the murder of the dramatist and humorist August von Kotzebue.
The assassination of von Kotzebue* worried the Prussian monarchy — then headed by Friederich Wilhelm III — and precipitated a series of proclamations, reforms, and internal struggles that finally led to a full-scale rebellion 30 years later.
Sand was a member of a Burschenschaft,** a liberal student fraternity organization which appealed to nationalist Germans seeking a unified German nation-state, and he and others in his group regarded von Kotzebue as a plague on their cause. Von Kotzebue was then Councillor of the Russian Legation, the culmination of over a decade in the Russian civil service, and a spinmeister for the Russian regime. In 1816, while Sand was in college, von Kotzebue was tasked with managing the flow of information into the Prussian state in an effort to increase the monarch’s popularity in Germany.
At the very least, then, von Kotzebue had no love for the Burschenshaft movement from the start, which originated in the university town of Jena, and he did not hold back his criticisms in his weekly literature newpaper Literatische Wochenblatt. He casually disparaged the Burschenschaften, as this stab in the review of a novel in one of the earlier editions evidences....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
OK, I can see his mistake right here.
"Casually disparaging the Burschenschaften" appears to be related to "casually disparaging Islam".
We are thankful for the lessons of those ancients who have taught us NOT to disparage the Burschenschaften
Or at least when you do it, do it seriously, not casually. Then they might go only a little stabby on you, instead of A LOT stabby. 
I once "casually disparaged" a Burschenschaftler. But a mere twenty stitches later, the whole matter was bereinigt, and we later became good friends.
The Berliner Comment (fencing order) is brutal.
Regards,
Particularly the fondness for edged weapons...
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