Albin Köbis (18 December 1892 – 5 September 1917) was a German sailor executed in 1917 for incitement to rebellion in the

Imperial German Navy The Imperial German Navy or the ''Kaiserliche Marine'' (Imperial Navy) was the navy of the German Empire, which existed between 1871 and 1919. It grew out of the small Prussian Navy (from 1867 the North German Federal Navy), which was mainly for ...

Life

Köbis was born in Reinickendorf which was incorporated into Berlin in 1920. He worked as a mechanic and as a sailor on merchant ships until he enlisted as a volunteer in 1912. In the

he served as a stoker on the

battleship A battleship is a large, heavily naval armour, armored warship with a main battery consisting of large naval gun, guns, designed to serve as a capital ship. From their advent in the late 1880s, battleships were among the largest and most form ...

'' Prinzregent Luitpold''. In the summer of 1917, he became one of the leaders of a movement among sailors in the imperial fleet, whose complaints about food and other conditions soon developed into agitation against the war. He was arrested and condemned to death for incitement to rebellion on 26 August 1917 as a main ringleader along with Max Reichpietsch and three other sailors. The sentences on the other three were commuted to penal servitude, but Köbis and Reichpietsch were executed by firing squad on 5 September 1917. These executions were denounced as naval judicial murders by Marxist politicians and newspapers, and helped trigger the Naval Mutinies of 1918, which led to the

German Revolution of 1918–1919 German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

. This has made Köbis and Reichpietsch heroes of the German socialist movement.

Commemoration

After

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

the name of a street in Berlin-Tiergarten was renamed Köbisstrasse. File:Grabmal Köbis Reichpietsch 2012 092.JPG, Monument for Albin Köbis and Max Reichpietsch, military cemetery Wahner Heide near Cologne File:Stamps of Germany (DDR) 1967, MiNr 1309.jpg, GDR stamp File:Albin Köbis ship, 1952 (5).JPG, MY Albin Köbis served as the presidential yacht of the German Democratic Republic File:Impressionen von der 22. Hansesail 2012 (7764217534).jpg, Gaff-ketch Albin Köbis A television play about the case, ''Marinemeuterei 1917'', was shown on West German television in 1969, directed by Hermann Kugelstadt and starring Dieter Wilken as Köbis and Karl-Heinz von Hassel as Reichpietsch.Marinemeuterei 1917
/ref>

References

* Herwig, Holger H. (1977). Das Elitecorps des Kaisers, Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag * Horn, D. ed. (1967), War, Mutiny and Revolution in the German Navy – The World War I Diary of Seaman Richard Stumpf, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press *Merkl, Tanja (2018)
Köbis und Reichpietsch, renitente, enttäuschte Seeleute oder Rebellen für das Streben nach Frieden und Gerechtigkeit?
58. Historisch -Taktische Tagung der Marine 2018 * Offenstadt, Nicolas (2022). Die „Roten Matrosen“ von 1917. In: Emmanuel Droit und Nicolas Offenstadt (eds.), Das rote Erbe der Front. Der Erste Weltkrieg in der DDR. De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2022, pp. 117-164 * Regulski, Christoph (2014). Lieber für die Ideale erschossen werden als für die sogenannte Ehre fallen – Albin Köbis und Max Reichpietsch und die deutsche Matrosenbewegung 1917, Wiesbaden: Marix-Verlag *Sewell, Sara Ann (2009)
Mourning Comrades: Communist Funerary Rituals in Cologne during the Weimar Republic
German Studies Review 32 (3), 527–548 *Wissenschaftliche Dienste des Deutschen Bundestags (2017)
Rechtskraft von Urteilen der kaiserlichen Militärjustiz. Die Todesurteile gegen Reichpietsch und Köbis im Sommer 1917
Ausarbeitung WD 7-3000 -116/17 {{DEFAULTSORT:Kobis, Albin 1892 births 1917 deaths German sailors Imperial German Navy personnel of World War I German military personnel who were court-martialed German military personnel killed in World War I Executed people from Berlin Military personnel from the Province of Brandenburg 20th-century executions by Germany People executed by the German Empire People executed by Germany by firing squad People executed for mutiny Military personnel executed during World War I

Life

Commemoration

See also

References

Further reading