Wikipedia
Johannes Bückler (c.1778 – 21 November 1803), nicknamed Schinderhannes, was a German outlaw who orchestrated one of the most famous crime sprees in German history. He was born at Miehlen, the son of Johann and Anna Maria Bückler. He began an apprenticeship to a tanner but turned to petty theft. At 16 he was arrested for stealing some of the skins, but he escaped detention. He then turned to break-ins and armed robbery on both sides of the Rhine, which was the border between France and the Holy Roman Empire.
The legend of Schinderhannes truly emerged from his escape from a prison tower in Simmern, a market town in the Hunsrück region of the Rhineland. At the time, the west bank of the Rhine was under French occupation, and the peasantry was happy to celebrate anyone who was able to flout the law. At the end of 1798, Bückler had a rap sheet that included thefts of at least 40 cattle heads and horses. He was arrested by French Gendarmerie forces and brought to a judge, where he confessed some of his crimes. Imprisoned in a wooden tower in Simmern that most believed to be impenetrable, he utilized a kitchen knife smuggled in by a sympathetic guard and cut a hole in a small window to escape. The prison escape became widely reported, exciting the public and making the Schinderhannes a folk hero.
The legend of Schinderhannes grew with every new escapade.
After things began to get too dangerous for him, Schinderhannes fled across the Rhine and enlisted in the Austrian Army under the assumed name of Jakob Schweikart. He was recognized, however, by a former associate, handed over to the French authorities and imprisoned in a tower of the medieval defensive wall of Mainz (the so-called " Holzturm"). After his mistress, Juliana Blasius, was threatened with being charged as an accomplice, Schinderhannes testified against his fellow gangsters. Nineteen of his associates were sentenced to death. Despite his cooperation, Schinderhannes was sentenced to death as well. On 21 November 1803 he was guillotined before the gates of Mainz. More than 40,000 spectators witnessed his execution. He remains Germany's most famous outlaw. His legend still attracts a great deal of tourism to the region wherein his gang operated.
Schinderhannes bartelsi is an anomalocarid known from one specimen from the lower Devonian Hunsrück Slates. Its discovery was astonishing because previously, anomalocaridids were known only from exceptionally well-preserved fossil beds ( Lagerstätten) from the Cambrian, 100 million years earlier.
Anomalocaridids, such as Anomalocaris, were organisms thought to be distantly related to the arthropods. These creatures looked quite unlike any organism living today—they had segmented exoskeletons, with lateral lobes used for swimming, typically large compound eyes, often set on stalks, and most strikingly, a pair of large, claw-like great appendages that resembled headless shrimp. These appendages are thought to have passed food to the animal's mouth, which resembled a ring of sliced pineapple.
Schinderhannes may refer to:
- Schinderhannes, nickname of Johannes Bückler (c.1778–1803)
- Schinderhannes (play), is a 1927 play by Carl Zuckmayer
- The Prince of Rogues, 1928 German film based on the play
- Schinderhannes bartelsi, an anomalocaridid named after Schinderhannes
- Schinderhannes (band), a Bavarian rock band
Schinderhannes is a 1927 play by the German writer Carl Zuckmayer. It was first performed on 13 October 1927 at the Lessing Theater in Berlin starring Eugen Klöpfer and Käthe Dorsch. The play portrays the adventures of the 18th century German criminal Schinderhannes, often compared to Robin Hood, whose gang operated around the Hunsrück mountains in the Rhineland.