Xaver Hohenleiter

Franz Xaver Hohenleiter (also known as Schwarze Veri, Schwarzen-Veere, Schwarzer Vere, Schwarze Vere or in Swabian dialect as Schwaaz Vere, Schwarz Vere or Vere; 1788 – 20 July 1819) was a notorious German criminal. As a leader of a band of robbers, he was active between 1817 and 1819 in the border regions of the Kingdom of Württemberg, the Grand Duchy of Baden and the Principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.

Background

The period towards the end of and immediately after the Napoleonic Wars resulted in the uprooting of a large number of people, mostly peasants. Combined with the reorganisation of Southern Germany's political map, the mediatisation of smaller formerly independent territories, which in some cases changed hands several times before being incorporated into larger entities (the Kingdom of Württemberg, the Grand Duchy of Baden, the Kingdom of Bavaria, the Principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and the Principality of Hohenzollern-Hechingen), led to a period of unstable administration of these territories. Furthermore, the year without a summer in 1816 caused famine and an increase in unrest, vagrancy, begging, robbery and the first wave of large scale German emigration to the United States.