Joseph Weydemeyer

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Joseph Weydemeyer

Joseph Arnold Wilhelm Weydemeyer (born February 2, 1818 in Münster , Prussia , † August 26, 1866 in St. Louis , USA ) was a military man in Prussia and the USA, journalist , newspaper editor , politician and Marxist revolutionary .

Life and work

Beginnings in Prussia, military and resignation (1818–1845)

Joseph Weydemeyer was born in Münster in 1818 as the son of Caspar Anton Theodor Weydemeyer, a Prussian government official.After attending the Prussian War Academy in Berlin , he was a lieutenant in the Prussian artillery from 1839 to 1845 in the 1st Westphalian Field Artillery Regiment No. 7 . He is influenced by the political currents of the Westphalian "True Socialists". At the age of 24, in Minden in 1842, he came into contact with the texts of the " Rheinische Zeitung ", on which Karl Marx worked. As a result, he came into contact with employees of the newspaper, and in 1845 he resigned from the military .

First contacts with Marx and Engels, journalistic work and March Revolution (1845–1851)

Weydemeyer writes articles for the “true socialism” -oriented monthly magazine Das Westphälische Dampfboot of his brother-in-law Otto Lüning , for which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels also write articles. In 1846 he became a member of the “ Communist Correspondence Committee ” in Brussels, where he met Marx and Engels for the first time. The article "Bruno Bauer und seine Apologet" from the "Westphälische Dampfboot", which he wrote there with the collaboration of Marx, is part of the " MEGA " (Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe) edition of the book " Die deutsche Ideologie ", which as early work by Marx and Engels applies.

A deeper relationship developed with Marx and Engels, and they kept in touch again and again by letter. Marx later wrote about him that he was a "friend who died too early".

Weydemeyer began to found organizations similar to the "Communist Correspondence Committee", during the March Revolution of 1848/49 he organized workers' associations in Westphalia , and from 1849 to 1851 the international communist union in Frankfurt, which he joined in 1847, under the significant influence of Marx and Engels . From July 1848 until the ban in 1850, he and Lüning were the responsible editor of the “Neue Deutsche Zeitung”, which was the official organ of the left-wing members of the German National Assembly . He also worked for the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" published by Karl Marx . Political-economic review. Hamburg 1850 "

Emigration to the USA, continuation of revolutionary activities, civil war and early death (1851–1866)

First edition of the magazine Die Revolution , 1852.

In the course of the unsuccessful course of the March Revolution, Weydemeyer emigrated first to Switzerland in 1851, and a short time later to New York, like many other so-called Forty-Eighters . There he publishes the monthly magazine “Die Revolution. A magazine in informal notebooks ”, which was first published in May 1852 with Karl Marx's book“ The eighteenth Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte ”. From 1851 to 1854 he corresponded with Adolf Cluss , and from 1857 to 1864 correspondence with Hermann Meyer (1821–1875).

In 1859, Marx again contacted Weydemeyer, who in 1860 gave up his work as a surveyor and moved to Chicago, in order to receive the daily newspaper “The Voice of the People” at the invitation of the local workers 'association, which took over the management of the reorganizing “General American Workers' Union” edit. At Weydemeyer's request, Marx supported this and asked people from his environment (for example Ferdinand Lassalle ) to work on Weydemeyer's paper, this request was followed by August Becker , among others . Despite these efforts, the magazine had to cease operations after two months. Weydemeyer played an important role at the conference of representatives of the German workers' associations in Chicago in May 1860. On March 1, 1858, he was naturalized in the United States.

Weydemeyer's letter to Marx shows that he used Marx's article for political orientation. In his writing, Weydemeyer dealt with the economic crises in Europe and the USA, wages, the " eight-hour working day " and the right to vote for blacks. 

During the American Civil War (1861-1865) Weydemeyer was on the side of the Union Army military commander of the district of St. Louis. From 1864 he was again active in politics and journalism. In October 1864 Weydemeyer resumed written contact with Marx and Engels, he explained to Engels in several letters in detail the civil war, the most important battles and most important generals, the training, armament and tactics of both sides.

Most recently, he held the post of senior tax officer in the St. Louis city government. Weydemeyer died of cholera at the age of 48 .

Honors

  • A warship in the American fleet was named "Joseph Weydemeyer" in the summer of 1944.
  • On August 9, 1963, "Weydemeyerstraße" was named after him in Berlin.
  • In Chemnitz OT Rabenstein a street was named after him.
  • Joseph Weydemeyer Society for USA Research, Berlin

literature

  • Karl Obermann : Joseph Weydemeyer. Pioneer of American Socialism . International Publishers, New York 1947. Digitized
  • W. Pospelowa: Joseph Weydemeyer . In: Marx and Engels and the first proletarian revolutionaries . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1965, pp. 261-297.
  • Karl Obermann: Joseph Weydemeyer. A picture of life, 1818–1866 . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1968.
  • Karl Obermann: Weydemeyer, Joseph . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 480-482.
  • Contemporaries of Marx and Engels. Selected letters from the years 1844 to 1852 . Edited and annotated by Kurt Koszyk and Karl Obermann. Van Gorcum & Comp, Assen / Amsterdam 1975 (= sources and studies on the history of the German and Austrian labor movement. New series. Ed. Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam Volume VI.) Contains 83 letters from and to Joseph Weydemeyer
  • David R. Roediger: Joseph Weydemeyer. Articles on the eight hours movement . Greenleaf Press, 1978.
  • Karl Obermann: Weydemeyer in America: News on the biography of Joseph Weydemeyer (1854–60) . In: International Review of Social History (1980), Vol. 25, pp. 176-208.
  • Norbert Diekmann: Joseph Weydemeyer, a leader of the American labor movement, was born in Munster . In: Contributions to Westphalian family research , Vol. 41 (1983), pp. 364-367. Digitized
  • Philip S. Foner / David R. Roediger: The eight hour movement. Article by Joseph Weydemeyers in the "Western Post" (St. Louis) . In: Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 7 , Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1984, pp. 321-344. Digitized
  • Daniel Nagel: From Republican Germans to German-American Republicans. A contribution to the identity change of the German forty-eight in the United States 1850–1861. Röhrig Universitätsverlag, St. Ingbert 2012, ISBN 978-3-86110-504-6 .

Web links

Commons : Joseph Weydemeyer  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Excerpt from correspondence with Marx and Engels (English)

Document directory

  1. ↑ a b c Weydemeyerstrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  2. ↑ a b c d e International Institute for Social History (IISH)
  3. ↑ a b Obermann, Joseph Weydemeyer. New International, Vol.14 No.1, January 1948, pp. 26-27
  4. ↑ a b Otto Lüning in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
  5. ↑ Information on the “German Ideology” in the context of the Marx-Engels Complete Edition (MEGA) ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bbaw.de
  6. ↑ a b Karl Marx, Foreword to "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte"
  7. ^ MIA: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of People
  8. ^ Reprint Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1955 (announced: "Correspondenz. From Southern Germany").
  9. ↑ a b Marx Engels Complete Edition MEGA. Third Department, Correspondence, Volume 10, p. 612 ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.iisg.nl
  10. ↑ Marx Engels Complete Edition MEGA. Third Department, Correspondence, Volume 11, Page 677 ( Memento of the original from October 2, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 469 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bbaw.de
  11. ^ Name: Arnold Joseph Weydemeyer; Birth: 1817 - Prussia; Civil: Mar 1, 1858; Arrival: 1851; Residence: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa
  12. ↑ Marx Engels Complete Edition MEGA. Third Department, Correspondence, Volume 10, Page 614 ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.iisg.nl
  13. ↑ Marx Engels Complete Edition MEGA. Third Department, Correspondence, Volume 13, Page 650 ( Memento of the original dated October 2, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 228 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bbaw.de
  14. ↑ Obituary
  15. ↑ Figure dust jacket Karl Obermann: Joseph Weydemeyer, 1947, p. 7.
personal data
SURNAME Weydemeyer, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weydemeyer, Joseph Arnold Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Military in Prussia and the USA, journalist, newspaper editor and Marxist revolutionary
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Munster , Prussia
DATE OF DEATH August 26, 1866
Place of death St. Louis , USA