The Hanged Prussian

[porphyry]

On April 3 of 1918, Robert Prager, an American citizen of German origin, denied work as a coal miner in Maryville, Illinois because the other miners thought he looked like a spy, spoke out at a socialist meeting against Woodrow Wilson. The next day he was kidnapped by a mob from his house at 208 Vandalia Avenue in Collinsville, wrapped in an American Flag, made to kiss it, and to run up and down the street waving two hand-held flags. He was taken into protective custody by the police. The next day there was a demosntration against him in front of the City Hall in Collinsville, and the mayor ordered all the saloons closed to calm things down. Hundreds of people who had never heard of him in this way came to learn of him and hate him at once. That evening a mob of between 300 and 400 people broke into the city hall, and marched Prager out to Mauer Heights on the St. Louis Road and hung him from a tree.

This act caused a sensation and was widely reported. Here are some contemporary newspaper reports:

http://web.viu.ca/davies/H324War/Prager.lynching.1918.htm

I had never heard of this incident, but ran across it by accident looking around the web for Ponsonby's book on WWI propaganda. The strange thing is that the street we just moved onto is known as the Mauer Heights neighborhood. So he was hung on the corner one block from where I am sitting to type this. I would say that the tree was long ago cut down.

Comments

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Apart from its horrific content, the other shocking thing is that I actually knew something you didn't!

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Though, mind you, at the start of Wilson's Red Scare there was something real to fear. Did you know that German Imperial agents actually carried out terrorist acts to sabotage American arms production destined for the Western Allies before America's declaration of war? And that they did recruit agents from among the locals to execute these attacks, including American Irish IRA sympathizers, and pro-German German-Americans? So it was not objectionable that Wilson took actions to prevent enemy infiltration -- in fact, such was his Constitutional duty as President.

What was more than a little crazy -- and oppressive -- was the way in which Wilson defined the "enemy" (anyone who opposed the war for whatever reason), the unconstitutional and successful attempts at prosecuting mere "sedition," and (most directly relevant to the lynching of Prager) the deputization of thousands of unqualified people to search out treason, and the tolerance of private illegal acts against persons suspected of treason.

If Prager really HAD been a German spy, the last thing that the US Government should have wanted would have been to lynch him, as spies often have useful information. Of course, Prager wasn't.

Wilson may have been prejudiced in favor of lynchings in the first place, given his political sympathies regarding the Ku Klux Klan, and the importance of the Southern Democracy in the national party of the time. That's also part of the context.