Albin Köbis was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 sailor executed in 1917 for Marxist agitation in the Imperial German Navy. He enlisted as a volunteer in 1912 and served on the battleship

Battleship

A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...

 Prinzregent Luitpold

SMS Prinzregent Luitpold

SMS Prinzregent Luitpold "SMS" stands for "Seiner Majestät Schiff" was the fifth and final vessel of the of battleships of the German Imperial Navy. Prinzregent Luitpolds keel was laid in October 1910 at the Germaniawerft dockyard in Kiel...

. 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 on 26 August 1917 as a "main ringleader" along with Max Reichpietsch

Max Reichpietsch

Max Reichpietsch was a German sailor executed in 1917 for socialist agitation in the German Navy. He joined the navy as a volunteer in 1912 and served on the battleship Friedrich der Grosse...

 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 collapse of the German Empire

German Empire

The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

. This has made Köbis and Reichpietsch heroes of the German socialist movement ever since. After World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 the name of an East Berlin

East Berlin

East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945. The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a part strongly associated with West Germany but a free city...

 street near the East German Navy headquarters was renamed Köbisstrasse.

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.

See also

• The German November Revolution
  German Revolution
  The German Revolution was the politically-driven civil conflict in Germany at the end of World War I, which resulted in the replacement of Germany's imperial government with a republic...
  
  
• Soldat fusillé pour l'exemple