Hermann Kriege

Rudolf Hermann Kriege (born July 25, 1820 in Lienen , † December 31, 1850 in Bloomingdale Asylum near New York ) was a German fraternity , journalist and revolutionary of the 1848/49 revolution.

Life

Hermann Kriege was the third child of the businessman Jakob Emmanuel Kriege (1785–1871) and his wife Wilhelmine, b. Strüker (1797-1822). He attended the elementary school in Lienen and from November 1, 1833 the Latin school in Lengerich and the high schools in Bielefeld (Easter 1836 to Easter 1837), Lingen (Easter 1837 to Easter 1838) and from November 7, 1838 in Minden . At Easter 1840 he received the school leaving certificate . In the summer semester of 1840, Kriege began to study medicine in Bonn . From the winter semester of 1840/41 he was enrolled for four semesters at Leipzig University . Here, Kriege changes from medicine to philosophy. In Leipzig he got to know Robert Blum , Theodor Fontane , Arnold Ruge and Ludwig Feuerbach and was active in the Leipzig fraternity , which belonged to the Progress movement . From the winter semester of 1842/43, Kriege was at Munich University . Because of his work for the fraternities he was arrested in March 1843 and in the summer of 1843 he was forbidden to continue studying. From October he was a one-year volunteer in a Prussian battalion in Bielefeld. Here he met the socialists of the Rhedaer Kreis Otto Lüning , Rudolf Rempel and Julius Meyer , whom Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described as "true socialists". Kriege wrote for the "Weser-Dampfboot" (1844) and the Westphälische Dampfboot (1845–1848). His journalistic work in conjunction with other activities conducted in the early summer of 1844 to re-arrest and he was established in September 1844 to six months imprisonment sentenced. Further persecution measures forced him to flee to Barmen , Brussels and London in the spring of 1845 . Here he took part in the discussions in the German workers' education association about Wilhelm Weitling's theories. On May 16, 1845, Kriege married his wife Mathilde.

On September 1, 1845, War was in New York and reorganized the local community of the League of the Just , but quickly transferred it to the Social Reform Association, which called for radical land reform. In support of the wars in New York published the weekly People's Tribune . The positions he represented there led Marx and Engels to write their circular against wars . The “People's Tribune” was closed after just one year, although Wilhelm Weitling wrote for this newspaper as well as wars.

In 1847, Kriege largely withdrew from the front line of the Social Reform Association and turned to a new project: He wanted to bring the American Founding Fathers closer to the German workers in the USA: the fathers of our republic. From the summer of 1847 to the beginning of 1848, however, this work (in continuation books) did not go beyond the biographies and excerpts of works by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. The reception of this work was consistently positive, as it represented the war's link between (now moderate) socialist ideas and American ideals of freedom.

After the March Revolution of 1848, wars returned to Germany. In June 1848 he took part in the first congress of democratic associations in Frankfurt and was elected to the five-person central committee, which moved its seat to Berlin that summer . The second democratic congress took place in Berlin in October and wars came under fire from the so-called “red” republicans when he advocated an alliance of progressive citizens and workers. Kriege believed that the proletariat was not yet capable of independent political action. The second democratic congress elected him to the central committee, but Kriege was disappointed, also by the Prussian reaction from October / November 1848. He returned to New York with his wife and daughter in June 1849. In the fall of 1848 he took an editorial position at the "Illinois State Newspaper" in Chicago . Just six months later, he suffered from mental illness. Wars died in a nursing home in Bloomingdale Asylum. He was buried on January 2, 1851 in Green-Wood Cemetery in New York.

family

• Wife Mathilde b. Rafter of Wangenheim (* 1820)
• Daughter Alma Wars * December 13, 1847

Characteristics

Age 23 y.

Size 5 feet 10 inches Bavarian. Measure

Hair brown

Forehead up

Eyebrows blond

Nose long, pointed

Mouth proportioned

Beard -

Face and chin oval

Color healthy

Special characters -

Works

• The fathers of our republic in their life and work. Thomas Paine . Uhl, New York 1848 ( digitized ).
• Heinrich Schlueter and Alfred Wesselmann (editors): Hermann Kriege. Documentation of a change from fraternity and revolutionary to democrat. (1840-1850). Volume II. Criminal files & press . Der Andere Verlag, Osnabrück 2002, ISBN 3-936231-13-3

literature

• Marx-Engels Yearbook 1 . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1978
• Rolf Weber (ed.): Land without a nightingale. German emigrants in America 1777–1886 . The morning, Berlin 1981
• Horst Dippel:  Wars, Hermann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 40 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Walter Schmidt : On the controversy surrounding the New York “People's Tribune” from May to October 1846 . In: Think alternatives. Critical emancipatory social theories as a reflex on the social question in bourgeois society . Edited by the Central Institute for Philosophy, Berlin 1991, pp. 62–71
• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 3: I-L. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0865-0 , pp. 178-180.
• Heinrich Schlueter; Alfred Wesselmann (Ed.): Hermann Kriege. Documentation of a change from fraternity and revolutionary to democrat. (1840-1850). Volume I. Letters . Der Andere Verlag, Osnabrück 2002, ISBN 3-936231-12-5
• Heinrich Schlueter; Alfred Wesselmann (Ed.): Hermann Kriege. Documentation of a change from fraternity and revolutionary to democrat. (1840-1850). Volume II. Criminal files & press . Der Andere Verlag, Osnabrück 2002, ISBN 3-936231-13-3
• Alfred Wesselmann: fraternity member, revolutionary, democrat. Hermann Kriege and the freedom movement 1840-1850 . Der Andere Verlag, Osnabrück 2002, ISBN 3-936231-11-7
• Alfred Wesselmann: An unknown letter to Friedrich Engels . In: Marx-Engels-Yearbook 2004 . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2004, pp. 230–235
• Georg Bühren: The circular. Novel . Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2009 (novel about Hermann Kriege).

Web links

• Theodor Fontane: From twenty to thirty I praise my Leipzig ...
• Hermann Kriege. Vormärzlexikon
• Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Circular against wars
• The People's Tribune. No. 1 dated May 9, 1845

Individual evidence

1. ^ Siblings: Helene Sophie Kriege (* 1817) and Carl (1818–1819).
2. ↑ The diplomat Johannes Kriege , the lawyer Walter Kriege and the journalist Mary Saran also belonged to Hermann Kriege's family .
3. ^ Heinrich Schlueter; Alfred Wesselmann (Ed.): Hermann Kriege. Documentation of a change from fraternity and revolutionary to democrat. (1840-1850). Volume II, p. 831.