Fritz Anneke

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Fritz Anneke

Carl Friedrich Theodor Annecke (born January 3, 1818 in Dortmund , † December 8, 1872 in Chicago , Illinois ) was a German revolutionary, Prussian and American officer. Anneke was a co-founder of the Cologne workers' association and was its first secretary . As commander-in-chief of the artillery of the Palatinate People's Army, Anneke was one of the military commanders of the imperial constitution campaign in the Palatinate and Baden in the summer of 1849.

After emigrating to the United States he supported with his wife Mathilde Franziska Anneke and his brother Emil Anneke , the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln and dedicated to achieving equal rights for African Americans . Fritz and his brother Emil originally had the family name Annecke , but later shortened it to Anneke without the "c".

Life

Youth and military career in Prussia (1818–1846)

Anneke was the son of a Prussian chief mining inspector who had moved from the Mark Brandenburg to Dortmund in Westphalia for professional reasons . The Annecke family originally comes from the village of Schadeleben in Saxony-Anhalt . Two younger brothers, Emil Annecke and Carl Annecke , emigrated to the USA like Fritz after their involvement in the revolution of 1848/1849.

After Fritz Anneke graduated from a cadet institute , the 7th Artillery Regiment of the Prussian Army in Wesel hired him as a lieutenant in 1841 .

Just a year later, Anneke got in touch with the various democratic circles around the editorial team of the Rheinische Zeitung . In 1844 he joined such a group in Westphalia and also led a political reading group in Minden . There he met his future wife, Mathilde Franziska Giesler, divorced in 1840, who later became one of the most famous representatives of the women's movement in the USA . In August 1846, Anneke was dishonorably discharged from the army because of “revolutionary activity”. He had u. a. refused to recognize the compulsory dueling as an officer .

Revolutionary and socialist in Cologne (1847–1849)

On July 3, 1847, Anneke and Mathilde Franziska Giesler married in Cologne . In the same year he joined the League of Communists in Cologne and helped organize the great people's demonstration on March 3, 1848. Through this early involvement in the March Revolution , he made friends with Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels , Ferdinand Lassalle and others.

In April 1848 Anneke was a co-founder of the Cologne workers' association and became its first secretary. As such, he also became a member of the Rhenish District Committee of the Democrats. Other well-known members were Joseph Moll , Karl Schapper , Peter Nothjung , Peter Gerhard Roeser and others. a. Through his work as a secretary, Anneke caught the attention of the authorities and was arrested on July 3, 1848 as an "element dangerous to the state" and charged with high treason. During his and Gottschalk's imprisonment, Karl Marx became temporarily president of the workers' association on October 16, 1848. But after a sensational trial, the jury acquitted Anneke on December 23, 1848.

Anneke was also one of "the electors of the city of Cologne for the election of the members of the second chamber" for the "22nd District". From September 10, 1848, Anneke, together with his wife and Friedrich Beust, published the Neue Kölnische Zeitung for citizens, farmers and soldiers . During his imprisonment, his wife took over all the duties of a publisher of the Neue Kölnische Zeitung for citizens, farmers and soldiers . In the famous blood red printed last edition of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung , Karl Marx recommends his readers to read the Anneke publication. Marx and Engels were rather critical of Anneke, especially after the failed imperial constitution campaign (see below), but were great admirers of his attractive and charismatic wife.

Participation in the Badisch-Palatinate uprising in 1849 during the imperial constitution campaign

In May 1849 Anneke was appointed to the military commission. After the failed assault on the armory in Siegburg (together with Carl Schurz and others) Anneke fled to the revolutionary Palatinate , where he was very welcome as an experienced artillery officer and immediately took over the command of the artillery of the Palatinate People's Army , organized by Daniel Fenner von Fenneberg . Carl Schurz became his adjutant, his wife Mathilde served as orderly rider. Anneke's regiment consisted of about 1200 soldiers. Other well-known socialists who commanded regiments of the Palatinate People's Army were Ludwig Blenker (adjutant was the young Wilhelm Liebknecht ) and August Willich (whose adjutant Friedrich Engels was). While the First Corps of the Prussian Army of Operations under Moritz von Hirschfeld conquered the Palatinate “methodically and carefully” between June 11th and 18th, the Volkswehr troops moved to Baden. There they submitted to the Baden Revolutionary Army , commanded by Ludwik Mierosławski . The inferiority of this army and disputes with Lorenz Brentano's revolutionary government (Anneke and the other people's armed forces commanders, such as Anneke's friend Gustav Struve , were temporarily arrested by Brentano's minister Amand Goegg ) led to several defeats, at the end of which the revolutionaries partly capitulated in the Rastatt fortress , partly transferred to Switzerland. The Annekes managed to escape in time, they found refuge with their Cologne friend and comrade Moses Hess , who was living in Strasbourg at the time . Anneke and his family fled from Strasbourg to the USA. In Zweibrücken Anneke was sentenced to death in absentia in 1850 because of his participation in the uprising the previous year.

Emigrant in the USA (1849–1872): officer, journalist, workers secretary

In 1859 Anneke returned to Switzerland to volunteer with Giuseppe Garibaldi . Since the plan failed, Anneke returned to the USA. In contrast to his wife, his brother Emil and his adjutant Schurz, he could never really gain a foothold there. For some time he was a correspondent for the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung . In 1861 in Zurich he wrote The Second Struggle for Freedom of the United States of America (now freely available online, see below). The book ends with the defeat of the Northern States in the First Battle of the Bull Run and is an ardent appeal for the Northern cause. Consequently, Anneke herself returned to the USA as soon as possible and actively participated in the mobilization in the north by General George B. McClellan . He recruited extensively among the German forty-eight in Wisconsin and then took command of the 34th Wisconsin Infantry Volunteer Regiment . However, like several of his comrades from the Palatinate People's Army (Blenker, Willich, Schurz), he did not succeed in achieving the military rank of general in the US Army . He was only promoted to colonel and later even dishonorable dismissed, this time due to an intrigue of an officer colleague who was later exposed as an informer of the southern states .

In the last years of his life he even became a supporter of Otto von Bismarck , but at the same time kept his political distance from his former companions such as Carl Schurz or Friedrich Hammacher , who built successful careers as politicians and business leaders in the USA and Germany. Such a career was denied himself, several business start-ups failed, and his marriage to Mathilde Anneke fell apart. In the end he lived separately from her in Chicago, where he worked as an editor and workers secretary. At the age of 54, Carl Friedrich Theodor Anneke died there on December 8, 1872 as a result of an accident. After the Great Fire , which a year earlier had devastated large parts of the city, Chicago was littered with unsecured excavation pits, one of which was the undoing of the short-sighted Anneke.

Literary processing

Anneke appears as a literary figure in the historical novel Der Weg in die Freiheit about Carl Schurz by Herbert Kranz . Carlo Schmid has processed the campaign by Anneke and Schurz in the Palatinate described by Kranz into a radio play that is in the archive of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung .

Works

  • A court of honor trial . Otto Wigand, Leipzig 1846. Digitized
  • Call to all officers of real shot and grain . In: Neue Rheinische Zeitung . Organ of democracy . No. 98 of September 9, 1848, p. 3.
  • Detailed news about the Königlich Preuss. Widows pension and catering establishments. From official sources . Krüger in Commission, Dortmund 1848.
  • How it looks now in the Prussian army . Dietz, Mülheim a. Rh. 1848.
  • The United States of America's second struggle for freedom . Sauerländer's Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1861. Digitized

literature

  • The political tendency trial against Gottschalk, Anneke and Esser. Negotiated by the Assisen-Hofe in Cologne on December 21, 22 and 23, 1848. Published according to the files, according to reports from the accused and according to shorthand records of the oral proceedings by MF Anneke. Expedition of the “Neue Kölner Zeitung”, Cologne 1848. Digitized
  • Prosecution files drawn up by the General State Procuratorate of the Palatinate. In addition to the judgment of the Prosecution of k. Court of Appeal of the Palatinate in Zweibrücken on June 29, 1850, in the investigation against Martin Reichard, dismissed notary in Speyer, and 332 consorts, for armed rebellion against armed power, high treason and state treason & c. Zweibrücken 1850. (online in: Collections of the University Library Frankfurt / M. )
  • An unknown letter from Friedrich Anneke from the Cologne prison . In: Bulletin of the International Institute for Social History , Amsterdam. Brill, suffering. Volume 3, 1939, pp. 75-78. ISSN  1873-0841
  • Heinrich Annecke: The peasant family Annecke in Schadeleben and their lineage . In: German Family Archives . tape 13 , 1960, ISSN  0012-1266 , pp. 116–140 (note on Fritz Annecke on page 127).
  • Wilhelm Schulte : Fritz Anneke. Born 1818 Dortmund, d. 1872 Chicago. A life for freedom in Germany and in the USA . Historical association, in commission Ruhfus, Dortmund 1961.
  • Gerhard Becker : Anneke, Fritz . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 10-11.
  • Gerhard Becker: Anneke, Friedrich . In: Biographical Lexicon on German History . Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1970, p. 22.
  • Kristan Kossack: Democratic engagement of Prussian officers in the pre-March period. Conflicts in Prussian garrison towns , in: Mitteilungen des Mindener Geschichtsverein 64 (1992), pp. 131–148.
  • Erhard Kiehnbaum: "If I had become a millionaire by chance, my attitudes and convictions would not have suffered as a result ..." Friedrich Anneke's letters to Friedrich Hammacher 1846-1859 . Friedrich-Engels-Haus, City of Wuppertal 1998, ISBN 3-87707-518-5 (= news from Engels-Haus 11)
  • Klaus Schmidt : Mathilde Franziska and Fritz Anneke - From the pioneering days of democracy and women's movements . Joachim Schmidt von Schwind Verlag, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-932050-14-2
  • Ingo Fiedler: Annecke, Carl Friedrich Theodor . In the biographies of important Dortmund residents . Volume 3, on behalf of the Historical Association for Dortmund and the Grafschaft Mark, published by Hans Bohrmann, Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88474-954-4

Web links

Wikisource: Fritz Anneke  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Annecke, Heinrich: The peasant family Annecke from Schadeleben and their lineage. German Family Archives, Volume 13, 1960. pp. 116–140.
  2. ↑ Newspaper of the workers' association in Cologne, No. 40 of October 22, 1848.
  3. ↑ Neue Rheinische Zeitung . Extra supplement No. 204 from January 25, 1849.
  4. ^ Advertisement in: newspaper of the workers' association in Cologne No. 33 of September 21, 1848.
  5. ↑ representation of fights at Heinz Helmert, Hans Jürgen Usczeck: People's Armed fighting in Europe 1848/49 . Military Publishing House of the GDR, Berlin 1973, pp. 248–266, the “methodical and careful advance” p. 256.
personal data
SURNAME Anneke, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Anneke, Carl Friedrich Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German revolutionary and North American officer
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Dortmund
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1872
Place of death Chicago , Illinois