The local branch of the Reichsbanner Murnau, which belongs to the social democratic workers' movement, applied to the local council in 1926 for a flag in the colors of the republic. The local newspaper reported on the local council meeting: "The request from the Reichsbanner Association, Murnau local group, to purchase a flag in the Reich colors of black, red and gold sparked a lively debate. The majority of speakers spoke out against this request and wanted to avoid politics being brought into the local council meetings. Murnau should stick with the Bavarian flags. The request was rejected by 10 votes to 2." The National Socialists had been brutally disrupting meetings of political opponents since the early 1920s. In 1931, a speech by the chairman of the SPD parliamentary group and editor of the social democratic newspaper Münchener Post, Erhard Auer, was announced in Murnau at the Kirchmeir Inn. A member of the NSDAP gained access to a telegram addressed to the Social Democratic Party in the Weilheim post office. The National Socialists were thus well informed about the planned event in advance. In Murnau, the local rumor was that things were going to get "ugly" days beforehand. On February 2, 1931, the Murnau NSDAP local group and district leader Otto Engelbrecht provoked the Murnau hall battle after Erhard Auer's speech. Numerous people were injured in the brawl between SPD and Reichsbanner members on the one hand and NSDAP and SA members on the other. The damage to the Kirchmeir inn amounted to around 3,000 Reichsmarks. The writer Ödön von Horváth was also present and testified as a witness at the subsequent trial before the Weilheim District Court. With the exception of the postal worker who, as a NSDAP member, revealed the contents of the SPD telegram to the NSDAP Murnau, all defendants, including NSDAP and Reichsbanner members, were acquitted in the trials, first before the Weilheim District Court and then in the appeal before the Munich II Regional Court. The Jewish lawyer Max Hirschberg represents defendants from the SPD and the Reichsbanner. In his memoirs he remembers how he had to defend those involved in the Murnau Hall Battle in Weilheim: "The SA regularly broke into the meetings of the SPD and other democratic parties, equipped with brass knuckles, chair legs and similar weapons of the 'unarmed' organization and tried to break up the meetings by force. When the Reichsbanner defended itself effectively, the Reichsbanner members were charged alone or with the SA members, although they were obviously in self-defense. These breach of the peace trials were usually a terrible test of patience for the defense attorney. For days, 20 or more defendants and then 40 or 50 witnesses were questioned about the same incident, although it is obviously impossible to reconstruct a scuffle, since each individual was naturally defending his comrades and the details of the fight could no longer be objectively determined."