Thomas Paine

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Thomas Paine , around 1806, painting by John Wesley Jarvis

Thomas Paine , born as Thomas Pain , (born January 29, 1736 July / February 9,  1737 greg. In Thetford , England , Kingdom of Great Britain , † June 8, 1809 in New York , United States ) was an influential political intellectual and one the Founding Fathers of the United States in the Age of Enlightenment .

Life

Youth up to emigration

Paine grew up in Thetford in the county of Norfolk in the simplest of circumstances in a Quaker family . Until 1750 he attended the local elementary school for five years. At the age of 13 he left school and learned the craft of a corset maker from his father. He practiced this profession for twelve years. In 1762 he entered the customs service, from which he was dismissed in 1765. In London he made his way as a private teacher and self-taught he acquired a comprehensive knowledge of philosophy, mathematics and astronomy. In 1768 he was reinstated in the customs service in Lewes ( Sussex ). He and his second wife ran a tobacco and junk shop there as a part-time job. He joined a debating club and launched a petition The Situation of Customs Officials for better pay for his colleagues. In 1773 he went back to London to represent the customs officers; in the process he met Benjamin Franklin . In 1774 he was released from the customs service again, his property in Lewes was auctioned and his marriage broke up. With a letter of recommendation from Franklin, he emigrated to America at the end of 1774.

Paine in North America

In December 1774 he arrived in Philadelphia . There he changed his last name from Pain to Paine . He was co-editor of the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser , in which he published, among other things, on March 8, 1775 a treatise against slavery (African Slavery In America) . Here he showed himself for the first time as a scout . Paine took up the struggle against inhumanity that he continued throughout his life and called for the release of blacks ; but he immediately thought of the economic consequences. His essay was the first of his work to have immediate practical consequences: after the essay was published , on April 14, 1775, America's first society for the abolition of slavery was founded in Philadelphia. Thomas Paine was one of the founding members. Abraham Lincoln , who abolished slavery in the United States, referred to Paine's thoughts. Paine was part of the Founding Fathers minority who were never slave owners.

Paine wrote a pamphlet called " Common Sense " in which he stated that the only solution to the problems with Britain was a republic and independence.

In April 1775 there was a first military clash with British troops at Lexington . Nevertheless, in the conflict with Great Britain , the Continental Congress of the Colonies still sought reconciliation with the mother country. In October 1775 Paine published a short article A serious thought (dt. A solemn thought ), in which he first spoke of the independence. In January 1776 his work was published Common Sense (dt. Common sense ). Free from any emotional ties to England, Paine argued that it was America's task to achieve independence and introduce a new, democratic system of government based on the principles of human rights. Common Sense had unprecedented success; more than half a million copies have been sold and distributed in a country with a population of around three million. Scripture was read out to those not familiar with reading. The Jefferson Declaration of Independence , which was signed on July 4, 1776, was decisively influenced by Common Sense . Paine was the first to suggest that the new nation be named "United States of America".

After a series of military defeats Paine witnessed with the force, morale for the Continental Army under Washington's command was plagued. Paine published a set of 13 fonts (for each colony a) under the title The American Crisis (dt .: The American crisis ), which should give the Americans during the long struggle inspiration. The first crisis paper appeared in December 1776 and began with the immortal line: “These are the times that try men's souls”, in German: “These are the times that tempt people's souls”. “In this crisis, the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shirk their service to the fatherland; but only those who persevere now deserve the love and thanks of man and woman ”.

The first crisis paper was so encouraging that Washington had it read to all of its troops. This paper is said to have had the effect that the troops were re-motivated and did not quit their service, but instead achieved a first victory at Trenton in December 1776 , which made the survival of the aspirations for independence possible. Whenever things got tight in the following years, a new crisis appeared that made a significant contribution to overcoming the crisis. The last crisis appeared on the day of the armistice with Great Britain, April 19, 1783.

England

After the war ended and the United States was established, Paine withdrew from politics and focused on trying to construct an iron bridge of a previously unknown span. This project took him to France and England in 1787, where he pushed ahead with the construction of the Wearmouth Bridge . In England he made friends with the British statesman Edmund Burke , who had played a mediating role during the American Revolution and who therefore considered Paine a friend of freedom.

After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Burke gave diatribes on the French Revolution in the British Parliament. On November 1, 1790, Burke published his reflections on the French Revolution . Paine answered this counterrevolutionary pamphlet in February 1791 with the first part of his Rights of Man (dt. The rights of man ). The second part followed in February 1792. The work defended the French Revolution and popularized it outside of France, in a style that not only appealed to British and French nobles, philosophers, and non-conformist clergy, but was understandable to everyone. As a result, he drew the hostility of Prime Minister William Pitt . However, he was supported by the Whig Party. In his writing he summarized the results of the political enlightenment of the 18th century.

In September 1792 Paine left England, where he was threatened with arrest at the instigation of the politicians Pitt and Liverpool . In December 1792, he was there in absentia for "seditious publications" (seditious libel) condemns and outlaws ( Outlawry explained). The distribution of the Rights of Man was prohibited. Paine left six hours before the planned arrest; in Dover , the arrest only missed him by 20 minutes.

France

Thomas Paine

France received Paine with open arms. He was elected member of the National Assembly in four departments; he chose Calais . With Danton and Condorcet , among others , he worked out the Girondist draft constitution in 1792/1793, which, however, did not come into force.

Although Paine was a staunch opponent of the monarchy , as a member of the French National Assembly, he opposed the execution of Louis XVI. from. That was enough to bring Paine - who was not exactly known for his diplomacy - into conflict with the increasingly radicalized revolutionary leadership. Robespierre had him arrested on December 28, 1793 and sentenced to death. Paine escaped beheading only by luck: a guard went through the prison and marked the doors of the sentenced prisoners with chalk. Paine's cell door was also marked with chalk - but as a doctor in the cell was treating the prisoner Paine, the cell door was open; when it was closed, the chalk mark was on the inside. Later, when those sentenced to death were called together, Paine was ignored because there was no chalk mark on the outside of his cell. Robespierre was executed three days later. After his release in November 1794, Paine lived a year and a half in the house of the American ambassador to Paris, James Monroe , whose predecessor, Governor Morris, was not innocent of Paine's imprisonment.

On the day of his arrest, Paine had completed the first part of his work Age of Reason (Eng. Age of Reason ). In the Monroes house he wrote the second part of this work critical of religion. Paine avows himself to Unitarianism : “I believe in one God, and nothing more - and I hope for a happy state after this life.” He rejected the inspiration of the Old and New Testaments : “The Christian religion is a parody of the sun worship, in which they put a figure named Christ in the place of the sun and now give him the worship that was originally intended for the sun. "

He believed that true religion consists in doing justice, having mercy, and making others happy. This work also became a bestseller.

His last major campaign pamphlet, Agrarian Justice (Eng .: Agrarian Justice ) appeared in the winter of 1795/96. Here Paine developed the ideas from Rights of Man further and showed how the establishment of land ownership kept the vast majority of people away from their natural heritage and the opportunities for independent survival. The management of the social security institution in the USA sees Agrarian Justice as the first American proposal for a system of old-age pensions.

Back in North America

Thomas Paine US Mail 1969

Paine returned to America in 1802 at the invitation of President Jefferson . He had fallen from grace there because of the Age of Reason and was slandered by the federal press upon his arrival as a lying, drunk and uninhibited infidel. Paine spent his last years lonely and bitter, unbroken he continued to write articles critical of religion and politics. The latter were later released as the third part of the Age of Reason . Paine died in Greenwich Village (New York City) on June 8, 1809. Only six people followed the coffin of the founding spiritual father of the USA. His last will to be buried in a Quaker cemetery was denied.

Paine's bones were later excavated and stolen by William Cobbett for transport to England. After Cobbett's death her trail was lost.

Paine's writings had a major impact on the thinking of his contemporaries. Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Edison later confessed to him. Paine knew how to present complex issues in an understandable way and to trace them back to a few principles, such as individualism, natural law , freedom, equality, human rights, social justice, government through representation. He loved the plain language: “With this as with any other topic, I speak strong and understandable language. I do not deal with hints and hints. I have several reasons for this: first, so that I am clearly understood; second, so that you can see that I mean it in all seriousness; and third, because it is an insult to the truth to tolerate the lie. "

He mastered the art of asking questions that answered themselves.

His motto in life was: "The world is my country and doing good is my religion."

There is a museum in his honor in New Rochelle , New York.

reception

Works (selection)

  • Howard Fast (Ed.): The Selected Work of Tom Paine & Citizen Tom Paine by Howard Fast . The Modern Library (Random House), New York 1945.
  • Philip S. Foner (Ed.): The complete writings of Thomas Paine (2 vols.). Citadel Press, New York 1945.
  • Mark Philp (Ed.): Rights of Man, Common Sense, and other political writings . Oxford University Press , Oxford 1998 ISBN 978-0-19-953800-3 (contains Rights of Man, Common Sense, American Crisis, Letters to Jefferson, Letter Addressed to the Addressers on the Late Proclamation, Dissertation on the First Principles of Government, Agrarian Justice ).

German translations

  • Lothar Meinzer (Ed., Transl.): Common Sense . Reclam's Universal Library 7818. Stuttgart 1982 (Original: Common Sense, 1776).
  • Wolfgang Mönke (Hrsg., Transl.): The rights of people . Akademie, Berlin 1983 (Original title: Rights of Man, 1791).
  • Theo Stemmler (ed.): The rights of people . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1973 (Original: Rights of Man, 1791) Translated by DM Forkel 1792, preface by Georg Forster .

literature

Web links

Commons : Thomas Paine  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Thomas Paine  - Quotes
Wikisource: Paines works  - sources and full texts (English)
Wikisource: Thomas Paine  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. z. B. Bill Bryson : Made in America: an Informal History of the English Language in the United States , Black Swan, 1998, ISBN 0-552-99805-2 , p. 42.
  2. ↑ Moncure Daniel Conway: The Life of Thomas Paine ( Memento of the original from April 18, 2009 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. , Volume 1, New York 1892, p. 3. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thomaspaine.org
  3. ↑ a b "Flash of Enlightenment" , Alexander Bahar, on February 24, 2012, in the Jungewelt
  4. ↑ cf. z. B. Bill Bryson : Made in America: an Informal History of the English Language in the United States. Black Swan, 1998, ISBN 0-552-99805-2 , p. 42.
  5. ↑ thomaspaine.org: Text by African Slavery In America (English) ( Memento of the original from March 15, 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. , accessed March 7, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thomaspaine.org
  6. ^ The Founding Fathers and Slavery. Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed September 30, 2012 .
  7. ↑ Bertrand Russell: Why I am not a Christian. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1968, p. 138.
  8. ^ Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason. In: Thomas Paine Collection - Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blaphemy, Examination Of The Prophecies. Forgotten Books Verlag, p. 290.
  9. ^ Bill Bryson : Made in America: an Informal History of the English Language in the United States. Black Swan, 1998, ISBN 0-552-99805-2 , p. 56.
personal data
SURNAME Paine, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pain, Thomas (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Writer and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1737
PLACE OF BIRTH Thetford
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1809
Place of death New York City