were a nationalist, initially paramilitary group operating within Austria during the 1920s and 1930s; they were similar in methods, organisation, and ideology to Germany's Freikorps.
Katrin Himmler speculates that it was frustration at this and envy of his brother that led Heinrich to join the extreme right-wing Freikorps in 1919.
During the War of the Bavarian Succession, he joined the volunteer corps as a Captain, fought with distinction against the Austrians and was soon promoted to Major.
Hundhammer's studies were interrupted in the summer of 1918 by World War I, in which he served briefly on the Western Front before enlisting in the Freikorps and taking part in the battle for Munich against the Bavarian Soviet Republic in April 1919.
On 5 May 1919 twelve workers (most of them members of the Social Democratic Party, SPD) were arrested and killed by members of Freikorps Lützow in Perlach near Munich, based on a tip from a local cleric saying they were communists.
Soon after, on 3 May 1919, remaining loyal elements of the German army (called the "White Guards of Capitalism" by the communists), with a force of 9,000, and Freikorps (such as the Freikorps Epp and the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt) with a force of about 30,000 men, entered Munich and defeated the communists after bitter street fighting in which over 1,000 supporters of the government were killed.
After the Third Silesian Uprising, several labour battalions were created from former Freikorps units under the command of Major Fedor von Bock, comprising about 2,000 service members and further 18,000 reservists, concentrated around the garrison town of Küstrin in Brandenburg.
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League—who were instrumental in the 'Spartacist uprising' in Berlin in January 1919—had only recently been abducted, tortured and killed by Freikorps soldiers (Rosa was battered to death with rifle butts and thrown into a nearby river while Karl was shot in the back of the head then deposited as an unknown body in a nearby mortuary), in that same month of 1919.
On 28 February 1920 Noske, following orders of the Interalliierte Militärkontrollkommission which controlled Germany's compliance with the Treaty, dissolved the Freikorps Marinebrigaden "Ehrhardt" and "Loewenfeld".
In spite of its absurdist amusements, this singular issue was a work of impassioned radical opinion, published only a few weeks after the communist revolt in Berlin had been quashed by Gustav Noske's Free Corps, and Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg murdered.
In 1969-70, Kranzbühler represented the former Freikorps lieutenant Hermann Souchon when he sued the Süddeutscher Rundfunk, after a documentary had been broadcast identifying Souchon as Rosa Luxemburg's murderer.
As many of the demoralised German soldiers were being withdrawn from Latvia, a Freikorps unit called the Iron Division (Eiserne Division) was formed and deployed in Riga and used to delay the Red advance.
According to Vanguard of Nazism by Robert G. L. Waite and Male Fantasies of Klaus Theweleit, some of the psychological and social aspects of the Stormtrooper experience found their way into the Weimar republic paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps, which were largely made up of WWI veterans.
On 29 February 1920, Defence Minister Noske ordered the disbandment of two of the most powerful Freikorps, the Marinebrigade Loewenfeld and the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt.