Karl Höchberg

Karl Höchberg (born September 8, 1853 in Frankfurt am Main ; † June 21, 1885 in Zurich ) was a financier of early social democracy, editor of theoretical journals, author and ethical socialist. Pseudonyms : Ludwig Richter and RF Seyferth .

Karl Höchberg

Life

Karl Höchberg came from a wealthy Jewish family. The father of the same name was the main lottery collector. The mother died early. The father was a democrat and scholars of all kinds frequented his villa on Bockenheimer Landstrasse . During the Prussian occupation of the Free City of Frankfurt , the villa was the headquarters of the Prussian general Edwin von Manteuffel . So that his sons did not have to serve in the Prussian army, he gave them Swiss citizenship .

He attended high school in Darmstadt and lived there with the democrat Ludwig Büchner . After his father died, he studied philosophy in Heidelberg and Zurich . But he also devoted himself to sociology . He became a vegetarian for ethical reasons.

After meeting August Geib , he joined the SDAP in 1876 . With his inherited fortune, he was an important financier of the early social democracy. Even when he was not yet of legal age, he anonymously donated substantial amounts to the party. According to Wilhelm Blos , he donated several hundred thousand marks in total. He was referred to as the “gold uncle of the party”.

He made a considerable part of his fortune available to receive the party's own cooperative printing works and the magazine Der Sozialdemokrat . In particular, he gave the money for the theoretical journals Die Zukunft (1877–1878), the political science treatises and, between 1879 and 1881, the yearbook for social science and social policy . He was also the editor of these periodicals. He published the yearbook under the pseudonym Dr. Ludwig Richter out. The future was forbidden at the beginning of the Socialist Law , although it stayed out of current political debates.

In the editorial for the first issue of the future , he represented a socialism that differed in its ethical component from the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . It said that science has no measure of value. Therefore, every party that has a clear goal has its own moral system. Social democracy regards the fair distribution of goods as a prerequisite for the most even distribution of human happiness. He spoke out in favor of a pragmatically oriented "socialism". Against criticism from the liberal side of Manchester, for example, this had to prove that the social democratic goals could be achieved. It must be shown what the future state will look like and how it can be reached. He warned against utopianism. At Höchbergs Socialistik later tied Carl August Schramm on. The magazine itself was a forum for authors from all currents of the social democratic movement. Given the background and views of the editor, Marx and Engels were full of suspicion towards Höchberg. As August Bebel judges, they falsely accused him of using his resources out of cunning calculations with the aim of driving the party astray. It was only when Bebel traveled to London with Eduard Bernstein in 1880 that he was able to dispel the mistrust of the "two elders".

The circular letter from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels suggests that Karl Höchberg was one of the authors of the anonymously published article Reviews of the Socialist Movement in Germany . Eduard Bernstein denies this directly by naming Karl Flesch as the actual author.

He was also of considerable importance as a mentor to younger Social Democrats. In 1878 Eduard Bernstein gave up his previous position in an insurance company and became Höchberg's private secretary. After he had offered Karl Kautsky the position of a research assistant for his yearbook for social science and social policy, the latter broke off his studies to work for Höchberg.

In the course of the Socialist Law, he was briefly expelled from Berlin in 1880. For health reasons, he then lived in Switzerland. He died of a lung disease.

Works

• State economic treatises . Edited by RF Seyferth Leipzig 1879–1881.

literature

• “Patriotic journeymen.” Brief biographies of the deceased socialists of the 19th century. Stuttgart 1901, p. 52.
• Karl Höchberg . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism. Deceased personalities . Vol. 1. JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, pp. 135-136.
• Eberhard Hackethal: Höchberg, Karl . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 210-211
• Armin Klein: Karl Höchberg - an almost forgotten theorist of democratic socialism . In: Helmut Esters; Hans Pelger; Alexandra Schlingensiepen (ed.): Trade unionists in the resistance . Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn 1983, p. 177 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernest Hamburger: Jews in Public Life in Germany Tübingen, 1968 p. 130
2. ↑ Eduard Bernstein: From the years of my exile. Berlin, 1918 pp. 50-52
3. ^ Wilhelm Blos: Memories of a Social Democrat. Vol. 1 Munich, 1914 online version
4. ^ Walter Euchner : History of ideas of socialism in Germany I. in. History of social ideas in Germany: Socialism - Catholic social doctrine - Protestant social ethics: a manual. Wiesbaden, 2005 p. 147
5. ↑ August Bebel: From my life. Part 2. Stuttgart, 1911 p. 313 online version
6. ↑ circular letter ( Marx-Engels works . Vol. 19, pp 150-166 and Vol. 34, pp 394-408). ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2010 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. 
7. ↑ Eduard Bernstein. Correspondence with Friedrich Engels. Edited by Helmut Hirsch , Asse 1970, p. XXIII.
8. ↑ Bernd Heidenreich: Political Theories of the 19th Century: Conservatism, Liberalism. Berlin, 2002 p. 510
9. ↑ Klaus von Beyme Political Theories in the Age of Ideologies: 1789–1945 Wiesbaden, 2006 p. 791
10. ↑ Karl Höchberg's pseudonym.
11. ↑ Issue 1 to 9, Leipzig 1879 with marginalia by Karl Marx. See Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, Department IV, Vol. 32, Berlin 1999, p. 1261.

Web links

• Short biography