August Spies Memorial

Son of the city. Emigrated to America in the 19th century, campaigned for workers' rights in the USA and was executed for it. He was later rehabilitated.

Emigrant Makes Headlines in AmericaDuring the course of 1872, August Spies, then 16 years old and the son of a forester from the Hessian village of Friedewald near Hersfeld, boarded an emigrant ship to America—like approximately 115,000 other residents of the German Empire that year. Fifteen years later, he was forced to ascend the scaffold in the new metropolis of Chicago to be "hung by the neck until he died," as ordered by the jury under Judge Gary on October 9, 1886, which found him and seven other defendants responsible for the bombing of Chicago's Haymarket on May 4, 1886.
Source: museum-friedewald.de/museum/august_spies_ein_revolutionaer_aus_friedewald/august_spies___ein_hessischer_auswanderer_geraet_i.html