The Schill Monument is located close to the Schillstraße of Braunschweig, Niedersachsen, Germany. The historical monument to the uprising of 1809 against the rule of Napoléon Bonaparte is the tomb of fourteen soldiers executed in Braunschweig, and of the Prussian Major Ferdinand von Schill, whose head is also buried in an urn at the foot of the monument. Ferdinand von Schill and his officers led volunteers to revolt against the Napoleonic occupation in 1809. His force of 1,500 to 2,000 soldiers was defeated in Stralsund on 31 May 1809 by the 6,000-strong troops of the Dutch general Gratien and the Danish general Johann von Ewald. Schill fell during the battle, his head was preserved by the victors in alcohol as a trophy and sent to the King of Westphalen, Napoléon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte. Fourteen of his soldiers were executed in Braunschweig by a French military court as "deserters". Twenty-six years after the death of Ferdinand von Schill, some of Braunschweig's aristocrats led by Baron Friedrich Karl von Vechelde attempted to erect a monument to Ferdinand von Schill. It was to serve as a burial place for the recovered remains of the soldiers executed in Braunschweig and later also for Schill's. On 19 March 1837, the monument, which had been built according to plans of Heinrich Friedrich Uhlmann (a student of Carl Theodor Ottmer's), was inaugurated. It stands at the spot where Schill's officers were shot. On 24 September 1837, Schill's head was buried there in an urn, too. In 1840, the Invalidenhäuschen (invalid's cottage) was built on the site, where a veteran of Schill's campaign was quartered, who was to supervise the memorial and to report to visitors about Schill's deeds. In the following years, commemorative events took place at the monument and the events of Schill's liberation struggle were interpreted from the point of view of the respective zeitgeist and instrumentalized for current political purposes. Thus, for the centenary, a direct line was drawn from Schill to the German French War of 1870/71 and Schill was portrayed as a pioneer of Bismarck's efforts of founding the German Reich. In 1933, the National Socialists commemorated the so-called Ruhr struggle against the French occupation of the Ruhr area in 1923-25 and described it as a continuation of the Schill's struggle for freedom, which would be revived by the SS and SA. During the Second World War, on the adjacent grounds of the Schill Monument, there was an outpost of the Neuengamme concentration camp, the Schillstraße concentration camp (Braunschweig (Bussing NAG) Camp Germany, Find a Grave Cemetery #2677637). The monument was newly consecrated in 1955 and since then also commemorates the fallen German soldiers of the Second World War.