The plaques originally hung in the infantry barracks on Alexanderstrasse. The left and right plaques commemorating the 1866 Austrian-Prussian War and the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War were unveiled there on 22 March 1878.¹ The central plaque commemorates former soldiers of the regiment who served in the colonial troops of the German Empire in China and South West Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. It is not clear when it was made.

The plaques were placed in the courtyard at an unknown time. They were probably installed here after the Second World War when the castle was rebuilt. However, no documents have been found to support this.

The plaques represent a military memorial typical of the period around 1900. It associated death in uniform with heroism in the service of national unity and imperial greatness. This calls for a differentiated assessment in the light of current historical knowledge.

It is often ignored that the armies of the federal states continued to exist nominally after the foundation of the German Empire in 1871. Like Bavaria and Württemberg, the Grand Duchy of Hesse maintained its own troops. In practice, though, these had been fully integrated into the Prussian army since 1867. On paper, however, the Hessian armed forces symbolised the Grand Duke's claim to his role as a former sovereign federal prince until the end of the Empire in 1918. The most prestigious regiment was the so-called Life Guards Regiment, for whose fallen members the memorial plaques were donated.

The tradition of the regiment is said to date back to the early 17th century, when Landgrave Ludwig V of Hesse-Darmstadt raised an infantry company. From today's point of view, however, this tradition is questionable. Since then, the army has been reorganised several times. The reference to Ludwig V must therefore be regarded as an “invented tradition”. It obviously served to demonstrate the former independence of the Grand Duchy of Hesse.

The tradition of the Life Guards was also maintained later. The war memorial on the adjacent Friedensplatz, dating from 1928, is dedicated to the memory of the Life Guards who fell in the First World War. Even during the Second World War, the fiction was maintained that regiments raised in Hesse could trace their lineage back to the Life Guards. For this reason, the memorial was expanded after 1945 to include information about the Second World War. There is no doubt that the successor regiments of the Life Guards were involved in war crimes during the Second World War. For many years after the war, there was a traditional association called the “Kameradschaft der Leibgardisten”.

The two older plaques commemorate some 230 fallen soldiers from the wars of 1866 and 1870-1871, arranged according to the battles in which they died, the units in which they served and their military rank.

These wars, together with the German-Danish War, formed the so-called wars of unification that led to the foundation of the German Empire in 1871. The background to this was the long-standing and unresolved question of whether Germany was to be united under the leadership of Prussia or Austria. Prussia's military superiority decided the conflict in its favour. However, Hesse had long been a partisan of Austria.

The German-Danish War took place in 1864. In this conflict, Prussia and Austria jointly occupied Schleswig and Holstein. The question of the future of the two duchies triggered the Austro-Prussian War. Austria wanted the future of the two Elbe duchies to be decided by the Assembly of the Deutscher Bund in June 1866. Prussia saw this as a breach of an earlier agreement. War now broke out between the former allies.

Austria's allies in this conflict included the Grand Duchy of Hesse. The Hessian soldiers were part of the 8th Federal Army Corps, which comprised troops from several southern German states. It was commanded by Prince Alexander of Hesse.²

At the Battle of Königgrätz on 3 July 1866, Prussia crushed the Austrian army. With the war decided, the 8th Corps halted its advance at Fulda. It was only on the return march that there were skirmishes with Prussian troops at Frohnhofen and Aschaffenburg, and later at Tauberbischofsheim. The Federal Army Corps was soundly defeated in all these battles. By this time, Prussia had occupied the Rhine-Main region without a fight, including the city of Frankfurt and the undefended residence of Darmstadt.³

At the end of July 1866, an armistice was signed between Prussia and Austria, resulting in the dissolution of the Deutscher Bund. All German territories north of the Main Line joined the newly formed Norddeutschen Bund in 1867. The remaining southern German states were forced into military defence alliances with Prussia. With the Upper Hessian province, parts of the Grand Duchy of Hesse also became members of the Norddeutscher Bund. These territories were only spared annexation by Prussia due to the good relations between the Darmstadt dynasty and the Russian tsarist family.

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 was the result of a deliberate provocation by Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck. In response to an alleged insult, France declared war on Prussia on 15 July 1870. Due to existing treaties, the southern German states had to enter the conflict on the side of Prussia.

The Prussian-German troops won the Battle of Sedan on 1 September 1870. The French Emperor Napoleon III was taken prisoner of war. A republic was proclaimed in France, while German armies occupied the north of the country. On 18 January 1871, Prussian King Wilhelm I was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The previously independent southern German states had recently joined the newly formed state – Austria was not among them. The Empire was based on the idea that the German princes had formed an 'eternal union'. There was no question of popular sovereignty. Most of the federal princes were personally present at the proclamation. However, Grand Duke Ludwig III of Hesse was absent.

From mid-August 1870, Hessian troops took part in combat operations in the Metz region. In the battles of Vionville/Mars la Tour and Gravelotte/St. Privat in August 1870, a total of 425 Hessian soldiers died and over 1200 were wounded. However, only about 230 names are listed on the plaques in the castle courtyard. The plaques list other battles with Hessian participation at Orléans, Beaugency and Vannes between December 1870 and January 1871.

The Hessian soldiers initially remained in northern France as an occupying force. They returned home in June 1871. When they marched into Darmstadt, they were celebrated with a parade on the parade ground.⁴

What is remarkable about the memorial plaques is that the 'campaigns of 1866 and 1870/71' are mentioned in the same breath as a matter of course, even though in 1866 Hesse was one of the opponents of Prussia and lost the war. The headline on the plaque gives the impression that the Life Guards Regiment always fought on the 'right' side and won. The unveiling ceremony also spoke this language. The plaque was first presented in 1878, in the presence of the Grand Duke, during the celebrations of the 81st birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm I. The aim was apparently to make people forget the complicated relationship between the Grand Duchy and the new nation state.

The central plaque commemorates three fallen soldiers who took part in two overseas military campaigns of the German Empire and originally belonged to the Hessian Life Guards Regiment. Two died during a punitive military expedition by several European powers in China in 1900/1901 in response to unrest known as the Boxer Rebellion. Another died during the persecution of the Herero and Nama in the German colony of South West Africa. It is not known why the Hessian Army donated a memorial to former members. However, the plaque was probably also intended to allow Hesse to share, at least indirectly, in the supposed glory of the Empire's victorious campaigns – 'with God for Emperor and Empire', as the plaque reads. From a purely military point of view, the battles were successful. At the same time, both colonial wars were associated with plunder and atrocities on the part of the Europeans.

German colonial policy was never free of criticism. Representatives of the Social Democratic Party and the Centre Party in particular deplored the exploitation of and violence against indigenous peoples. This apparently did not prevent the jingoistic commemoration of colonial soldiers, as the plaques in the castle courtyard show.

The so-called Boxer Rebellion began as a social protest movement of the rural population in the hinterland of the Chinese province of Shandong. The movement was loosely organised and held together mainly by its rejection of foreign influences, which were blamed for the crises in Chinese society at the time. From the mid-19th century, China was forced to open up through unfavourable trade agreements. As a result, foreign merchants and Christian missionaries gained influence in the country. The nucleus of the emerging protest movement was in traditional martial arts groups, hence the name Boxers.⁵

Tensions escalated in the summer of 1900: after the Boxers laid siege to the legation quarter in Beijing, a false report of a massacre of foreigners was circulated in European newspapers. An alliance of eight European countries with colonial interests in China mobilised troops to intervene. Violent clashes broke out between the Boxer movement and the foreign troops, with the regular Chinese army joining the side of the insurgents. The East Asian Expeditionary Corps, made up of volunteers from the navy and army, was sent from Germany. When Kaiser Wilhelm II bade farewell to the expeditionary corps in July 1900, he gave an infamous speech known as the “Hun Speech”. With the words “No pardons will be granted, no prisoners will be taken”, he gave the soldiers carte blanche to use excessive force. By the time they arrived in China, however, both the Boxer movement and the regular Chinese army had been defeated, so their role was limited to occupation. Towns and villages were plundered and destroyed in various punitive expeditions. Many civilians were tortured or executed because they were suspected of belonging to the Boxer movement.

The conflict officially ended in September 1901 with the signing of the so-called Boxer Protocol. It represented the climax of China's economic exploitation with the extensive withdrawal of its sovereign rights by European powers.⁶

The foundations of the German colonies in Africa were laid in 1884 and 1885, when the private possessions of individual merchants came under the protection of the German Empire. Later, these territories were brought directly under the administration of the Reich.⁷ German South West Africa (now Namibia) developed into a settlement colony. As more and more German colonists moved in and took over land, social tensions with the indigenous Herero people grew. This escalated into a Herero uprising in which more than 100 Germans were killed. The locals took control of much of central Namibia, bringing the German colonial power to the brink of defeat. Berlin reacted harshly. The aim of the Schutztruppe was to destroy the political and social structures of the Herero. The commander-in-chief of the German soldiers, Lothar von Trotha, favoured a strategy of terror. The decisive battle at Waterberg took place in August 1904, in which the Schutztruppe was victorious. The surviving Herero, including women and children, were driven into the desert by German soldiers. As the colonial troops also occupied all known water points in the region, thousands of Herero died of thirst. Trotha also gave the order to shoot any Herero who tried to flee the desert. This massacre is considered an early example of systematic genocide by the Germans.

After the Battle of Waterberg, the Nama also began an uprising, fearing that they would suffer the same fate as the Herero. The Nama waged a guerrilla war against the settlers. The German troops responded with a war of extermination. The Germans set up concentration camps where many Nama were forced to work in appalling conditions. The plaque mentions the 'Battle of Keidorus', which was part of this phase of the war. The war officially lasted until March 1907, but Nama and Herero were interned until 1908. Many of them died. The oppression of the two peoples continued after the war.

About the authors

Marco Zivkovic M.A. works on the project ‘Darmstädter und Darmstadt im Ersten Weltkrieg’ at the section of Modern and Contemporary History, Institute of History at the Department of Social and Historical Sciences.

Professor Dr Jens Ivo Engels is Head of the section of Modern and Contemporary History at the Institute of History, Department of Social and Historical Sciences.