Edgar von Westphalen

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Edgar von Westphalen

Edgar Gerhard Julius Oscar Ludwig von Westphalen (born March 26, 1819 in Trier , † September 30, 1890 in Berlin ) was a German communist politician, brother-in-law and friend of Karl Marx .

Life

family

He was the second son of the royal Prussian government councilor Ludwig von Westphalen (1770-1842) and his second wife Caroline Heubel (1779-1856). The father was friends with Heinrich Marx, which is why the children of both families became friends. Father Ludwig retired on December 3, 1834 in order to devote himself intensively to the intellectual development of his two children and of Karl Marx, son of Heinrich Marx, and thus became his father's mentor. Edgar's sister Johanna (Jenny) von Westphalen (1814–1881) married her childhood friend Karl Marx , son of the Jewish lawyer Heinrich (Heschel) Marx (1777–1838) and Henriette Presburg (1788–1863) in 1843 . The half-brother Ferdinand von Westphalen , who was the Prussian Minister of the Interior in the Manteuffel cabinet in 1850, came from the father's first marriage to Lisette von Veltheim . While the older half-brother Ferdinand followed the conservative line in terms of social policy, the younger Edgar devoted himself to the socialist direction, which was also enthusiastically received by the young Marx at this time.

Political activity

In 1830 he met Karl Marx at the Trier grammar school , who came to his class as a new student. On September 23, 1835 both graduated from high school . Edgar studied in Berlin and became an auscultator in Koblenz and in Trier in 1842.

In Brussels in 1847 he signed a declaration by the Communist Correspondence Committee . After the failure of the March Revolution of 1848, together with his former schoolmate Mathias Joseph Fischer, he buried the documents of the Democratic Association (in preparation for the elections of 1848) and the League of Communists , to which Edgar von Westphalen had already belonged in March 1846, in the Weißhauswald, in order to save Trier citizens from political criminal prosecution. Westphalen described the action in a letter dated June 8, 1870:

"I will no longer bother with socialist and communist improvements, the last thing I delivered in this respect was that, as the treasurer of the Trier reading and democratic riot circles, I paired up all the files, manifestos, well-intentioned proposals, etc. of the London junta." Packed tin boxes, sealed them in the presence of the cigar dealer Fischer and sealed them, when then went for a walk to Weißhäuschen and buried them all there on H. von Haw's Territorio with Fischer ... The success of my well-laid out catche was that of the big one that soon followed Finding out communists and going to court ... which Trier did not figure and, secondly, my good mother stayed out of the affair. "

- quoted from Heinz Monz (1998). The original of the letter is in the State Archives Saxony-Anhalt , Dessau department.

To avoid political persecution, he fled to Texas in 1848 . He left Germany from the port in Bremen on the sailing ship “Reform”. In the USA, Edgar von Westphalen joined the free thinkers and young communists in the Latin Settlement who had just given up their communist settlement of Bettina . For several years in Texas he acted as a liaison to Karl Marx and his political friends in Germany. He traveled back and forth between Texas and Europe several times. His sister Jenny wrote from London to Joseph Weydemeyer (1818–1866) in New York City on October 16, 1851 :

“We have no news of Edgar since he left in April (1851). He left Bremen on board the sailing ship 'Reform', Captain Ammermann, with the intention of going ashore in Galveston and staying in New Braunfels . "

In 1865 Westphalen returned to Europe and lived from mid-May to early November of the same year in the London house of sister Jenny and brother-in-law Karl Marx. Edgar left London on November 5, 1865 and spent most of his last years in Berlin, supported by his half-brother Ferdinand von Westphalen. Occasionally there was also correspondance with Friedrich Engels and Eleanor Marx .

Edgar von Westphalen died on September 30, 1890 at the age of 71 in Berlin and was buried in the Luisenstadt cemetery .

Works

  • From Havelland. Poems . Gensch, Berlin 1883.
  • Armin, the Cheruscan prince . Gensch, Berlin 1883.
  • The Batavian Rebellion . Gensch, Berlin 1883.
  • From Havelland. Poems. 2nd Edition. Gensch, Berlin 1884.

literature

  • Heinz Monz : Karl Marx. Basics of life and work . NCO-Verlag, Trier 1973.
  • Heinrich Gemkow : Karl Marx and Edgar von Westphalen. Student companions in Berlin . In: Contributions to Marx-Engels research . Book 1 and Book 3; Marx-Engels department in the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED , Berlin 1977 and 1978.
  • Heinrich Gemkow: Edgar von Westphalen. The unusual life path of Karl Marx's brother-in-law . In: Yearbook for West German State History . Volume 25, Koblenz 1999, pp. 401-512.
  • Werner Grossert: Werner von Veltheim and Edgar von Westphalen . In: Scientific contributions . Pedagogical Institute, Halle-Kröllwitz 1968, pp. 27–28.
  • Werner Grossert: Edgar von Westphalen, Ottmar von Behr and Eduard Degener . In: Contributions to Marx-Engels research . Issue 19, Marx-Engels-Department in the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED, Berlin 1985, pp. 99-104.
  • Paul Marx: Marx, Edgar von Westphalen, and Texas . In: Southern Studies . Volume 22, 1983.
  • Manfred Kliem : Karl Marx and the Berlin University 1836-1841 In: Contributions to the history of the Humboldt University in Berlin. Vol. 21, Berlin 1988, pp. 46-51.
  • Manfred Schöncke: Karl and Heinrich Marx and their siblings . Cologne 1993, ISBN 3-89144-185-1 .
  • Heinz Monz: The Trier “Democratic Association” ended in the Weißhauswald . In: "The worst point in the province". Democratic revolution 1848/49 in Trier and the surrounding area . Städtisches Museum Simeonstift, Trier 1998, pp. 593–597.
  • Heinrich Gemkow: From the life of a Rhenish family in the 19th century. Archival finds on the von Westphalen and Marx families . In: Yearbook for West German State History. Volume 34, 2008 special edition, pp. 497-524.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich Gemkow: Edgar von Westphalen. The unusual life path of Karl Marx's brother-in-law . In: Yearbook for West German State History . Volume 25, Koblenz 1999, pp. 401-512, here p. 509.
personal data
SURNAME Westphalen, Edgar von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Westphalen, Edgar Gerhard Julius Oscar Ludwig von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German communist, brother-in-law and friend of Karl Marx
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Trier , Rhineland
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1890
Place of death Berlin