Julius Wulff

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Julius Wulff (born January 12, 1822 in Bochum , † January 26, 1904 in Düsseldorf ) was a German revolutionary and chairman of the Volksklub , a political association of the early workers' movement in Düsseldorf, which was founded at the beginning of the German Revolution .

Life

Wulff had studied law and was a "notary candidate" when he helped found the Volksklub in Düsseldorf in spring 1848, the aim of which was to achieve a republican constitution and social improvements for the dispossessed classes during the March Revolution . In contrast to the Association for Democratic Monarchy , a bourgeois movement competing with the Volksklub, which advocated a democratic form of government with a constitutionally restricted monarch in a unified Germany, the Volksklub wanted to completely end aristocratic rule and the existing conditions of life and property change a “social democracy” more comprehensively. The group initially consisted of around 20 men who had initially joined the “workers' association” founded by 50 journeymen and workers on April 28, 1848. There was internal tension there. They left the workers' association and founded the people's club in May / June 1848 in order to be able to represent more radical positions. Wulff was elected "President" of the People's Club on June 6th, the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath temporarily took over the office of cashier. Other important players in this political association, whose membership soon rose to 900, were Ferdinand Lassalle , who appeared as a charismatic speaker at events of the Volksklub, Louis Kugelmann , Friedrich Schnake, Emil Gottfried Rottmann, Otto Weinhagen (husband of Wulff's sister Caroline) and Paul von Hatzfeldt . A major guest speaker was Karl Marx , who spoke to the Volksklub on June 30th. The People's Club debated current political issues and developed political demands. He petitioned the Prussian National Assembly , which met in May 1848, to enact a habeas corpus file and to repeal the old laws that restricted freedom of speech, press and assembly.

At an event organized by the Volksklub on July 3, 1848, Wulff presented the republican catechism for the German people , written anonymously by Max Cohnheim , the first chapter of which is "about the superfluous princes". He distributed copies of the writing that he had received that day from Emil Annecke in Cologne. At the following event on July 6th, he sold another 150 copies that had been sent to Friedrich Schnake from Berlin for a silver groschen each. Wulff was arrested on July 8, 1848 on the initiative of the chief procurator Karl Schnaase . His apartment was searched and other copies of the script were found. The General Procurator at the Rhenish Court of Appeal in Cologne saw Wulff's activities as an “incitement to highly treasonous undertakings” and charged him on September 11, 1848. Shortly before, Freiligrath had been arrested and locked in the same cell of the Düsseldorf detention center after he had recited his revolutionary poem Die Todten to the Living at a people's club event in the pub in Stübben on August 1st . For this he was accused of the same "crime". Freiligrath's trial, which attracted national attention, took place on October 3, 1848, the trial against Wulff the following day. Both ended with acquittals by the jury and subsequent demonstrations of sympathy by the citizens of Düsseldorf. According to police reports, 15,000 people were on their feet, including Karl Marx.

On October 8, Wulff took part alongside Lassalle and the doctor Peter Joseph Neunzig as a speaker in a major political demonstration in Gerresheim , which the Volksklub had called for "the first major red flag demonstration ". In front of around 5000 participants, he dealt with current events in Poland and Silesia. He demanded the abolition of the slaughter and meal tax and called on the participants to “resist the reaction by force”. His speech culminated in the call for a “red republic”. In particular, the Volksklub supported the demand made by workers who had become unemployed to continue a municipal employment program, which they submitted as a petition to the Düsseldorf City Administration on October 9th. The painter Johann Peter Hasenclever recorded this event in his painting Workers in Front of the Magistrate .

In the further course of the revolution, Wulff and his colleagues advocated a tax boycott that the Prussian National Assembly had called for. The Volksklub was in constant contact with Lorenz Cantador , the commander of the Düsseldorf vigilante group. A commission for building barricades was formed under Catador's leadership, to which Wulff also belonged. When the situation worsened in November 1848, Wulff went underground and did not reappear until May 1849. During the May riots and an uprising that broke out in the neighboring town of Elberfeld , barricade fighting broke out in Düsseldorf on the night of May 9th to 10th, 1849, in which 16 people died, including the painter Ludwig von Milewski . Wulff fled to avoid being arrested again. Together with Sophie von Hatzfeldt , Lassalle's partner, and her son Paul, he went to southern Germany, where he was captured as a militant during the Hecker uprising in Baden and extradited to Prussia. There he was tried in 1850. Anton Bloem , his defense lawyer, could not prevent Wulff from being sentenced to a long prison term in the criminal trial.

In 1865 Wulff emigrated to the United States; the Hamburg steamship Teutonia , which went to New York, had him on his passenger list. There his traces are lost. What is known, however, is that he returned to Düsseldorf in 1898 at the age of 77, where he died in 1904.

A silhouette of Julius Wulff is in a paper cut received from 1848, the now in the collection of the City Museum Dusseldorf is located.

Fonts

  • Germany, a constitutional monarchy or republic? In :! Republic! Three essays from the Deutsche Volkszeitung. Verlag von Heinrich Hoff, Mannheim 1848, p. 3 ( Google Books )
  • The nature of the monarchy and the republic. In :! Republic! Three essays from the Deutsche Volkszeitung. Verlag von Heinrich Hoff, Mannheim 1848, p. 8 ( Google Books )

literature

  • Otto Most: History of the City of Düsseldorf . Second volume: From 1815 until the introduction of the Rhine. Town Code (1856) . Bagel, Düsseldorf 1921, pp. 74, 81.
  • WH Scheller (Ed.): First political trial before the jury. The poet Ferdinand Freiligrath, accused of having incited the citizens to arm themselves against the sovereign power and to overturn the existing constitution with his poem: "The dead to the living". Crimes against Sections 102 and 87 of the Criminal Code. After the assize negotiations that took place in Düsseldorf on October 3, 1848, carried out and communicated by JHK. In addition to an appendix, a brief communication of the political process against the notary candidate Julius Wulff, also because of incitement to overthrow the existing constitution . Schaub'sche Buchhandlung, Düsseldorf 1848. ( Google Books )
  • Indictment of high treason against Julius Wulff . Schaub'sche Buchhandlung, Düsseldorf 1848 ( data sheet in portal dhm.de )
  • Dieter Niemann: The Düsseldorf democratic movement and workers' movement in the revolutionary years 1848/49 . Dissertation . Düsseldorf 1979, pp. 81-83.
  • Dieter Niemann: The revolution of 1848/49 in Düsseldorf. Political parties and citizens' initiatives are born . (= Publications from the Düsseldorf city archive. 3). Düsseldorf 1993, ISBN 3-926490-02-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See address of the people's club to the democratic associations in Germany (Düsseldorf, June 2, 1848). In: newspaper of the workers' association in Cologne. No. 9, June 18, 1848 ( Google Books )
  2. ↑ Bernhard R. Appel: "... no disorder occurred". Robert Schumann and the censorship in Düsseldorf music life around 1850. In: New magazine for music. Issue 6/1988, p. 13.
  3. ^ Stenographic reports on the negotiations of the assembly called upon to agree the Prussian state constitution . First volume. Berlin 1848, p. 637, petition no.6042
  4. ^ WH Scheller (Ed.), P. 52.
  5. ↑ Hanna Gagel: The Düsseldorf School of Painting in the Political Situation of the Vormärz and 1848. In: Wend von Kalnein (ed.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , p. 79.
  6. ↑ Florian Tennstedt: From proletarian to industrial worker. Labor Movement and Social Policy in Germany, 1800 to 1914 . Bund-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983, p. 112.
  7. ↑ Kurt Soiné: Johann sneak Hasenclever. A painter in the pre-March period . Schmidt, Neustadt an der Aisch 1990, p. 172.
  8. ↑ Klaus Türk: Pictures of the work. An iconographic anthology . Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2000, p. 168.
  9. ^ Wilhelm Matull: The freedom one alley. History of the Düsseldorf labor movement . Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn 1980, p. 17.
  10. ↑ Allgemeine Emigration Newspaper , Rudolstadt, No. 29 of July 20, 1865.
  11. ↑ Düsseldorf. History from the origins to the 20th century , Volume 2, Schwann, Düsseldorf 1988, p. 440.
  12. ↑ The chairman of the “People's Club” Julius Wulff (1822–1904) with catechism ( memento from July 18, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ), website in the duesseldorf.de portal
personal data
SURNAME Wulff, Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German revolutionary and chairman of the early labor movement
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1822
PLACE OF BIRTH Bochum
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1904
Place of death Dusseldorf