1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Palm, Johann Philipp

PALM, JOHANN PHILIPP (1768–1806), German bookseller, a victim of Napoleonic tyranny in Germany, was born at Schorndorf, in Württemberg, on the 17th of November 1768. Having been apprenticed to his uncle, the publisher Johann Jakob Palm (1750–1826), in Erlangen, he married the daughter of the bookseller Stein in Nuremberg, and in course of time became proprietor of his father-in-law’s business. In the spring of 1806 the firm of Stein sent to the bookselling establishment of Stage in Augsburg a pamphlet (presumably written by Philipp Christian Yelin in Ansbach) entitled Deutschland in seiner tiefen Erniedrigung (“Germany in her deep humiliation”), which strongly attacked Napoleon and the behaviour of the French troops in Bavaria. Napoleon, on being apprised of the violent attack made upon his régime and failing to discover the actual author, had Palm arrested and handed over to a military commission at Braunau on the Bavarian-Austrian frontier, with peremptory instructions to try and execute the prisoner within twenty-four hours. Palm was denied the right of defence, and after a mock trial on the 25th of August 1806 he was shot on the following day. A life-size bronze statue was erected to his memory in Braunau in 1866, and on the centenary of his death numerous patriotic meetings were held in Bavaria.

See F. Schultheis, Johann Philipp Palm (Nuremberg, 1860); and J. Rackl, Der nürnberger Buchhändler Johann Philipp Palm (Nuremberg, 1906).