Jean Baptista von Schweitzer

Jean Baptista von Schweitzer
Schweitzer in 1863
President of the General German Workers' Association
In office 20 May 1867 – 30 June 1871
Preceded by	August Perl
Succeeded by	Wilhelm Hasenclever
Member of the Reichstag of the North German Confederation
In office 7 September 1867 – 3 March 1871
Personal details
Born	12 July 1833 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Died	28 July 1875(1875-07-28) (aged 42) Giessbach, Switzerland
Political party	General German Workers' Association
Alma mater	Humboldt University of Berlin Heidelberg University
Profession	Politician, playwright, poet

Jean Baptista von Schweitzer (12 July 1833 – 28 July 1875) was a German politician and dramatic poet and playwright.

Life and political career

Schweitzer was born at Frankfurt am Main, of an old aristocratic Catholic family. He studied law in Berlin and Heidelberg, and afterwards practised in his native city. He was, however, generally more interested in politics and literature than law.

Schweitzer was attracted by the social democratic movement, then led in Germany by Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassalle defended him from calls for his expulsion from the movement after he was convicted of a public indency charge for pederasty in 1862. Historian Gustav Mayer in 1909 described the incident as follows:

It was stated there that between nine and ten on the morning of August 4, 1862, the accused was arrested in the Mannheim Palace Park for having there seduced a boy under fourteen years of age into undertaking an indecent act. But since the boy ran away and his age could not therefore be ascertained, the sentence that resulted was not for a crime against morality [Verbrechen gegen die Sittlichkeit], but only for the giving of public offense through the public perpetration of an indecent act [Erregung öffentlichen Ärgernisses durch öffentliche Verübung einer unsittlichen Handlung].

Schweitzer served two weeks in jail in Bruchsal for the offence. Lassalle argued that the "abnormality attributed to Dr. von Schweitzer has nothing whatever to do with his political character."

After Lassalle's death in 1864, Schweitzer on 20 May 1867, became president of the General German Workers' Association (German: Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiter-Verein, ADAV). The ADAV began fracturing soon thereafter, as disputes over whether to cooperate with Otto von Bismarck's government led Wilhelm Liebknecht and others to leave the ADAV in the years after 1864. Liebknecht and August Bebel founded the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (German: Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, SDAP) in 1869.

Schweitzer edited the ADAV's newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat (English: The Social Democrat), which brought him into frequent trouble with the Prussian government.

On 7 September 1867, he was elected as a deputy to the Reichstag of the North German Confederation, with the help of Lassalle.

In an article for Der Sozialdemokrat on 7 October 1868, he coined the term "democratic centralization", now known as democratic centralism, to describe the structure of the ADAV.

On his failure to secure election to the newly formed German Reichstag on 3 March 1871, he resigned the presidency of the ADAV and retired from political life. The ADAV later merged with the SDAP at the Gotha Congress in 1875 to form the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (German: Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, SAPD), the forerunner of the modern-day Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

He died of pneumonia in Giessbach, Switzerland on 28 July 1875.

Conflict with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Immediately following the death of Lassalle, Schweitzer suggested to Liebknecht that Karl Marx should succeed Lassalle as president of the ADAV. In response, Liebknecht proposed to dissolve the office of the presidency and transform it into a board of directors, which would also control Der Sozialdemokrat. Schweitzer disagreed with the proposal regarding control of the paper and asked Marx, Friedrich Engels and Liebknecht to collaborate on the paper.

Marx assented to this proposal until breaking with Schweitzer, after suspecting Schweitzer knew of and supported Lassalle's contact with Otto von Bismarck, then chancellor of the North German Confederation. This split was worsened by Schweitzer's support of Bismarck published in articles in early 1865.

Marx and Engels compiled their criticism in an unpublished 6 February 1865 statement of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), and finally made their split official with a public statement of the IWA justifying their decision, published in the papers Barmer Zeitung and Elberfelder Zeitung on 26 February 1865.

By March 1865, Marx was scathing of Schweitzer, writing in a letter to Engels on 10 March:

The impudence of Mr Schweitzer, who knows perfectly well that all I need to do is publish his own letters, is fantastic. Though what else can the shitty cur do? [...] You must arrange for a few jokes about the fellow to reach [Carl] Siebel, for him to hawk around to the various papers.

The author Hubert Kennedy identifies the latter statement as an instruction to joke about Schweitzer's alleged homosexuality.

Works

Schweitzer composed a number of dramas and comedies, of which several for a while had considerable success. Among them may be mentioned:

• Alcibiades (Frankfurt, 1858)
• Friedrich Barbarossa (Frankfurt, 1858)
• Canossa (Berlin, 1872)
• Die Darwinianer (Frankfurt, 1875)
• Die Eidechse (Frankfurt, 1876)
• Epidemisch (Frankfurt, 1876)

He also wrote one political novel, Lucinde oder Kapital und Arbeit (Frankfurt, 1864).

References

Bibliography

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Schweitzer, Jean Baptista von". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 392.
• Footman, David (1969) [1947]. Ferdinand Lassalle, romantic revolutionary (reprinted ed.). New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-8371-2202-1. OCLC 313069213.
• Kennedy, Hubert (27 November 1995). "Johann Baptist von Schweitzer: The Queer Marx Loved to Hate". Journal of Homosexuality. 29 (2–3): 69–96. doi:10.1300/j082v29n02_03. PMID 8666759.
• Mayer, Gustav (1909). Johann Baptist von Schweitzer und die Sozialdemokratie: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung [Johann Baptist von Schweitzer and social democracy: a contribution to the history of the German labour movement] (in German). Jena: G. Fischer. OCLC 1401561310.
• Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (2010). Volume 42, Letters, 1864-68. Marx/Engels Collected Works. Vol. 42 (Digital ed.). London: Lawrence and Wishart. ISBN 978-1-84327-986-0. OCLC 833581621.

Further reading

• "Lassalle and Schweitzer: The struggle against political adventurers in the workers' movement". International Communist Current. 26 September 2019.