Carl Heinrich Pfänder

Carl Heinrich Pfänder (born February 15, 1819 in Heilbronn , † March 11, 1876 in London ) was a German portrait painter and revolutionary who was part of the circle of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in London.

Carl Heinrich Pfänder. Around 1870

Life

Pfänder was the third child of the Heilbronn master cabinet maker Jakob Andreas Pfänder (1785–1852) and Johanna Friederike geb. Künzel (1785–1864). Little is known about his school and apprenticeship days. He presumably attended elementary school and completed an apprenticeship as a craftsman before studying painting at the Munich Academy from 1840. However, no paintings that can be clearly assigned to him have survived, and in 1842 he had already left the academy. In 1844 Pfänder may have been temporarily in London for the first time. On April 10, 1845, he married Caroline Louise Ruckwied (1820-1889) from Großbottwar in Kilian's Church in Heilbronn , with whom he went back to London after the marriage. In addition to his political commitment, he worked there as a miniature and decorative painter. The family initially lived in Soho, in the Karl Marx neighborhood, and later moved to Camden Town . The marriage to Caroline had six children: Charles (1846–1902), Caroline (1847–1873), Henry (1849–1850), Emma (1851–1931), Henry William (1852–?) And Henriette (1855–1881) . Carl Pfänder died of tuberculosis in 1876 . On March 18, 1876, Pfänder was buried in the western part of Highgate Cemetery , but the grave can no longer be found (as of 2003). The family later changed their name to Pfander. One of Carl Pfander's descendants is Victoria Beckham , a great-great-granddaughter of Carl's son Charles.

Political commitment

In London in 1845 Pfänder took part in meetings of the German Workers' Education Association and was soon a member of the League of the Righteous , to whose leadership committee he belonged in 1847, when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels joined the league and promoted the transformation into the league of communists . From April 1848 Pfänder headed the London Communist League together with Heinrich Bauer and Johann Georg Eccarius , and in August of the same year he and Bauer also became a trustee of the workers' education association.

When the London communists went to Germany after the outbreak of the revolution of 1848/49 to support the revolution, Pfänder initially stayed in London due to illness. It was not until the summer of 1848 that he came to Heilbronn, where he joined the local vigilante group. When the revolution failed in the summer of 1849, he took part in the battle near Waghäusel on the Baden side , but then withdrew from the troops. He did not play a leading role in the revolutionary processes in Germany. After he was arrested on June 24, 1849, he was released within a day without charge. In the autumn of 1849 he was back in London.

In the future, Pfänder worked closely with Marx and Engels in London. On September 25, 1849, together with Marx and others, he signed the appeal to support the German refugees published in various newspapers. For this purpose Marx, Engels, Pfänder and others also founded the Social Democratic Support Committee. In September 1850 Pfänder, together with Marx and Engels, left the workers' education association, which had fallen out with the Communist League. In the Communist League, Pfänder temporarily had the task of a phrenologist who examined the skull shapes of new members. One of the refugees examined in this way was Wilhelm Liebknecht , whose best man became a pledge in 1854.

When the International Workers 'Association was founded as the First International in 1864 by the German Workers' Education Association , Pfänder was one of its general councilors alongside Marx, Friedrich Leßner , Georg Lochner and Karl Kaub . Pfänder was a member of the IAA General Council from 1864 to 1867 and from 1870 to 1872 and has signed numerous IAA publications. His political engagement ends in 1872 presumably due to illness.

literature

• Hans Müller: A forgotten revolutionary from Heilbronn: Carl Heinrich Pfänder (1819–1876). In: Heilbronnica 4. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2008, ISBN 978-3-940646-01-9 ( Sources and research on the history of the city of Heilbronn. Volume 19) ( Yearbook for Swabian-Franconian History. Volume 36), pp. 265– 322
• Hans Müller: A revolutionary from Heilbronn: Carl Heinrich Pfänder (1819–1876). In: Heilbronn heads III. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 2001, ISBN 3-928990-78-0 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 48), pp. 157–174

Web links

• Short biography in the Heilbronn city archive