The execution of Carl Ludwig Sand

In March 1819 the popular German writer August von Kotzebue was executed in Mannheim as a “traitor to the fatherland” by a student of theology, Carl Ludwig Sand (1795-1820). Kotzebue had sharply denounced the Burschenschaften, the new student associations that after the expulsion of the French had come to demand a free and Christian unified German state. 

Sand was a member of the original or "Urburschenschaft" in Jena, of its "engere Verein" (inner circle), and of the secret radical group the "Unbedingten" (Uncompromising Ones). The murder of Kotzebue set in motion an intensification of the repression of liberal tendencies.  Sand himself was executed in Mannheim on the 20th of May, 1820.