Johann Baptist Sigl

Johann Baptist Sigl (27 March 1839 – 9 January 1902) was a Bavarian journalist, publicist and politician. He was a co-founder of the Bavarian Peasants' League and a member of the Reichstag and the Landtag of Bavaria. He also founded the Catholic-Bavarian newspaper Das Bayerische Vaterland in 1869.

Life and political career Sigl was born on 27 March 1839 in Ascholtshausen, in what is now a part of Mallersdorf-Pfaffenberg in Lower Bavaria. He went to school in Landshut in 1848 In 1862/63 he entered the St. Boniface's Abbey in Munich but left the monastery after four months.

Other enemies of Sigl were liberal politicians such as Chlodwig, Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, who was Prime Minister of Bavaria from 1866 to 1870, as well as the liberal rival newspaper, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten. While Spitzeder was known for bribing newspaper editors to report favorably on her business dealings, Sigl was so convinced that he was the only one who received no money from Spitzeder in return.

The newspaper survived Sigl's death but lost much of its influence and its status as the Peasants' League's official newspaper. It became the newspaper of choice for the right wing of the Bavarian People's Party (BVP) after World War I but fought against Adolf Hitler because they felt he was a threat to Bavaria's independence, leading to the newspaper's prohibition in 1934. Attempts to reintroduce a new Das Bayerische Vaterland in 1962 were short-lived and ended in June 1969.