Assassination of Eisner
Arco-Valley may have decided to assassinate Eisner to prove himself "worthy" after being rejected for membership in the Thule Society, an ultra-nationalist, völkisch, and neo-pagan occultist group, because he was of Jewish descent.
On 21 February 1919, on a Munich street, Arco-Valley, acting alone, gunned down Eisner. Eisner's bodyguards immediately shot Arco, critically injuring him. Arco was in danger of suffocating due to bleeding from a shot in the neck but his life was saved by the famous surgeon Professor Ferdinand Sauerbruch, who was in Munich at that time; Sauerbruch was himself arrested after refusing to release Arco-Valey into the custody of the authorities and narrowly escaped execution.
The killing of Eisner made Arco-Valley a hero to the far right. His fellow students at the University publicly proclaimed him such. However, his action triggered retaliation by socialists, communists, and anarchists throughout Munich, during which a number of people were killed, including Prince Gustav of Thurn and Taxis. After internal fighting broke out within the government, the Bavarian Soviet Republic was established. Arco-Valley inspired the young Joseph Goebbels, who was in Munich at the time.
Hitler later wrote in Mein Kampf that "Eisner's death only hastened developments and led finally to the Soviet dictatorship, or to put it more correctly, to a passing rule of Jews, as had been the original aim of the instigators of the whole revolution". At that time, Hitler himself was probably not openly opposed to the revolution or to the Bavarian Soviet Republic, since he was elected twice by his fellow soldiers to be the liaison of his battalion. There is even newsreel footage and a photo that have been said to show him as a mourner wearing a black armband at Eisner's funeral, although the identification is disputed. Hitler apparently became an open adherent of the counterrevolution only after the defeat of the Soviet Republic by the Reich troops and the Freikorps, when he was included in a three-man commission investigating those of his fellow soldiers who had supported the revolution.
Arco-Valley was tried for murder in January 1920. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. The Public Prosecutor said of him, "If the whole German youth were imbued with such a glowing enthusiasm, we could face the future with confidence." The surgeon who had operated on Arco-Valley, Sauerbruch, also praised him:
For me there is no doubt that this man committed this deed out of a conviction that he was thereby doing his Fatherland a service. If only one single person in the Revolution had done this work with such clean hands.
Judge Georg Neithardt was also sympathetic:
Of course, there could be no question of a deprivation of civil rights, because the actions of the young politically immature man did not arise from base sentiments, but from ardent love for his people and fatherland, and were the result of the indignation against Eisner that prevailed in wide circles of the population."
After his sentencing, Arco-Valley made anti-communist and nationalistic statements to the court. In response, the entire courtroom broke into applause lasting for minutes. The following day, the Bavarian government, under Justice Minister and German Democratic Party politician, Ernst Müller-Meiningen, passed a unanimous resolution commuting Arco's sentence to life imprisonment, to be spent in fortress confinement. He served his sentence at Landsberg Prison in cell 70. In 1924 he was evicted from his cell to make way for Adolf Hitler. He was released in 1925, and was on probation until 1927, when he was pardoned.
