On the ninth of March, 1819, Sand left Jena and proceeded to Mannheim, where Kotzebue lived. Two weeks later, on the twenty-third of March, 1819, a young stranger appeared at the Kotzebue residence, and said that he wished to see the councillor in order to hand him personally a letter of introduction. The servant delivered the message, and after a few minutes Kotzebue himself appeared in the hall and invited Sand--for it was he--to come in. Sand handed him the letter; but no sooner had Kotzebue opened it and begun to read it than Sand plunged a long dirk-knife into his breast with the words, “Take this as your reward, traitor to your country!” And he stabbed him again and again with fatal effect. Thereupon he thrust the knife into his own breast, but had strength enough to run out into the hall, where he handed the astounded servant a sealed document containing a well-written justification of his murderous act, and inscribed: “Death Punishment for August von Kotzebue in the name of virtue.” Running out into the street, where a crowd of people assembled, attracted by the screams of the servant, he called out in a loud voice: “Long live my German fatherland!” and kneeling down he forcibly plunged the knife into his breast once more, exclaiming: “Great God, I thank thee for this victory.”
Sand’s wound was serious, but a skilful operation saved his life. On the twentieth of May, 1820, he was executed at Mannheim, after a lengthy trial and a painstaking investigation, in the course of which the German and the Russian police made great efforts to discover accessories to his crime. All these efforts failed, however, and the murder of Kotzebue could be accounted only an individual act of patriotic exaltation. The result of Sand’s self-sacrifice was very different from what he had expected. In fact, Kotzebue’s assassination proved disastrous to the liberal movement throughout Germany; it furnished a welcome pretext for the most repressive measures against the press, against the universities, against the Burschenschaft, against liberty in whatever shape or form it might manifest itself. That long era of political reaction was inaugurated against which the German people rebelled with only partial success in 1848 and 1849, and from which only the ejection of Austria and the reorganization of a new German Empire on a more liberal basis in 1871 gave them permanent relief.