Wilhelm Wolff (publicist)

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Wilhelm Wolff

Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff , called Lupus , (born June 21, 1809 in Tarnau ( Tarnawa ) , Schweidnitz district ; † May 9, 1864 in Manchester , England) was a private teacher, publicist , politician and close companion of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . Together with them he co-founded the League of Communists , the first international socialist association.

Life

As the son of a small farmer in Silesia, Wilhelm Wolff was confronted in his youth with the feudal relationship between the “Junkers” there and the rural lower classes. The experience of the resulting social conflicts became a formative influence on his later life and also determined the basic attitude of many of his publications. After attending grammar school in Schweidnitz , Wolff studied classical philology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Breslau . He could not finish his studies, however, as he was arrested in 1834 in the wake of the resumption of the " demagogue persecution " for membership in the old Breslau fraternity of the Raczeks , alleged violation of the press law and lese majesty and had to endure many years of pre-trial detention in various prisons before he was accepted finally sentenced to imprisonment at the fortress Silberberg . One of his fellow prisoners in Silberberg at the time was the writer Fritz Reuter . In the series of articles "Wilhelm Wolff" (1876), Friedrich Engels later highlighted "the damp casemates and bitterly cold winters" in the "old rock nest", which would have given his friend the nickname "Casemates Wolff". Wolff's health suffered so badly that he was finally granted a pardon.

He was released from prison on July 30, 1838. In the following years he struggled to work as a private teacher. Another threatened arrest for press misconduct in early 1846 he escaped by fleeing to London and later to Brussels . Here he became acquainted with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . He worked as a correspondent for the German Brussels newspaper , was active in the communist correspondence committees , appeared as a speaker in the German workers' association and was one of the founding members of the League of Communists . According to the French February Revolution of 1848 Wolff was deported from Belgium to France. From there he returned to Silesia and supported the election of radical candidates for the Frankfurt parliament . As editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung ( NRhZ ) he supervised a. a. the rubric “From the Reich” - news from the small German states. During the state of siege in Cologne from September 25 to October 4, 1848, Wolff was wanted for "conspiracies" and first fled to Bad Dürkheim in the Palatinate. He later lived underground in Cologne for a few months until the trial against him was dropped.

On May 19, 1849, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was banned; the famous last number printed in red could just about appear. Like most of their editors, Wilhelm Wolff also fled from Cologne and Prussia to Frankfurt am Main . In the meantime, a decision in the conflict over the imperial constitution had begun here. The Prussian government had issued an order that the Prussian deputies from Frankfurt were recalled. This order was obeyed by the majority of the bourgeois, mostly liberal and conservative parliamentarians. Wolff was then appointed by the remaining left and democratic groups on the basis of an "old Breslau mandate" as the "deputy" of the departed liberal MP Gustav Adolf Harald Stenzel and was a member of the National Assembly from May 21, 1849 to June 18, 1849 itself. In this capacity, Wolff called the members of the Reich government and the Reichsverweser traitors to the people, demanded that they be declared outlawed and that the assembly openly accept revolutionary violence. Within parliament, Wolff belonged to the Donnersberg faction , which was part of the radical left, not least because of these political positions .

Following the flight of the National Assembly to Stuttgart and the eventual dissolution of the rump parliament there on June 18, 1849 by Württemberg troops, Wolff went to Baden; later, like many other refugees, he emigrated to Switzerland . There he settled in Zurich and again worked as a private teacher. Soon, however, due to the increased activities of the Swiss Federal Council against the presence of the German refugees, he was thinking of emigrating to America like the great majority of the opposition. In June 1851 he traveled to London, where he socialized a lot with Marx and Engels and ultimately decided to stay. From September 1853 until his death, Wilhelm Wolff lived in modest circumstances as a private teacher in Manchester , where he continued to maintain close contacts with his old colleagues such as Friedrich Engels . Wolff was buried in Ardwick Cemetery , Manchester. His friends informed the public of his death. "Death notice. On May 9th of this year Wilhelm Wolff from Tarnau near Schweidnitz in Silesia died in Manchester as a result of a blow river at the age of almost 55. In 1848 and 1849 he was co-editor of the 'Neue Rheinische Zeitung' in Cologne and member of the German National Assembly in Frankfurt and Stuttgart, since 1853 private tutor in Manchester. Manchester, May 13, 1864. Karl Marx. Friedrich Engels. Ernst Dronke . Dr. med. Louis Borchardt . Dr. med. Eduard Gumpert . "

Wolff's article "The misery and the turmoil in Silesia" (1844) served Gerhart Hauptmann as a political and socio-historical orientation when designing his naturalistic drama " Die Weber ". Karl Marx dedicated the first volume of his main work Das Kapital ( Hamburg : Verlag von Otto Meissner 1867) to his "unforgettable friend, the bold, loyal, noble champion of the proletariat", Wilhelm Wolff .

Wilhelm-Wolff-Strasse is named after him in Berlin .

Works

  • The misery and turmoil in Silesia . In: Deutsches Bürgerbuch , CW Leske, Darmstadt 1845, pp. 174–199
  • Collected Writings. Along with a biography of Wolff by Friedrich Engels. With introduction and comments. Edited by Franz Mehring . Anniversary edition . Vorwärts bookstore, Berlin 1909 (= Socialist reprints III)
  • Erwin Reiche (Ed.): The Casemate Wolff. Writings by Wilhelm Wolff and his life picture by Friedrich Engels . Thüringer Volksverlag, Weimar 1950 (Becoming and working, misunderstood and forgotten)
  • Association of the German Press (Hrsg.): The misery and the riot in Silesia. Wilhelm Wolff. The casemates. Also a billion . Tribüne, Berlin 1952 (series of publications for journalistic training 1)
  • K. Skonietzki: An unknown letter from Wilhelm Wolff to Fritz Reuter . In: Journal of History . Berlin 5 Jg., 1977, pp. 1243-1245
  • Wilhelm Wolff: From Silesia, Prussia and the Reich. Selected writings . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1985

literature

  • A memory of the communist Wolff . In: The border messengers . Journal for politics, literature and art . I. semester. II. Volume. Vol. 23 (1864), pp. 398-400. Digitized State and University Library Bremen
  • Willy Klawitter: Wilhelm Wolff . In: Schlesische Lebensbilder. Vol. 1: Silesians of the 19th century . Breslau 1922, pp. 266-270.
  • Walter Schmidt : Wilhelm Wolff. His path to becoming a communist 1809-1846 . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1963
  • The Silesian revolutionary Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff (1809-1864) . In: Yearbook of the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelms University in Breslau . Vol. 9, Göttingen 1964, pp. 187 ff.
  • Wilhelm Wolff . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism . Vol. 1, Hannover 1960, pp. 337-338.
  • W. Smirnowa: Wilhelm Wolff . In: Marx and Engels and the first proletarian revolutionaries . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1965, pp. 161-208.
  • Walter Schmidt: Wolff, Friedrich Wilhelm . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 488-491.
  • Walter Schmidt: The Communists and the Prussian Amnesty Decree of January 12, 1861. On an article by Karl Marx from September 1862 that has not been taken into account . In: Journal of History , Berlin 1977, XXV. Vol. 9, pp. 1066-1079.
  • Walter Schmidt: Wilhelm Wolff. Comrade and friend of Marx and Engels. 1846-1864 . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1979
  • Walter Schmidt: The Communists and the Prussian United State Parliament 1847. Article by Wilhelm Wolff in the " Deutsche-Brusser-Zeitung " . In: Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 3, Berlin 1980, pp. 318–364
  • Walter Schmidt: Fritz Reuter's letter to Wilhelm Wolff of January 12, 1864 . In: International Review of Social History , Vol. 27, 1982, pp. 85-96
  • Contributions to post-March research. Christian Gottfried Nees von Esenbeck , Carl Georg Allhusen . Documentation on Wilhelm Wolff's library. Contributions by Günther Höpfner , Waltraud Seidel-Höppner, Boris Rudjak / Maja Dvorkina . Trier 1994 (= writings from the Karl-Marx-Haus issue 47)
  • Heinrich Best , Wilhelm Weege: Biographical manual of the members of the Frankfurt National Assembly 1848/49 . Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998. ISBN 3-7700-0919-3 , pp. 364–365.
  • Walter Schmidt: The scattered Wilhelm Wolff estate, its fate and its significance for the history of the democratic and labor movement from 1830 to 1864 . In: Contributions to Marx-Engels research. New series 2003, Hamburg 2003, pp. 96-109 ISBN 3-88619-692-5
  • Helge Dvorak: Wolff, Friedrich Wilhelm (called Lupus) , in: Helge Dvorak, Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft Volume I Politicians Part 6: T – Z , Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-8253-5063-0
  • Walter Schmidt: Wilhelm Wolff in pre-March Silesia . In: Helmut Bleiber / Walter Schmidt (eds.): Silesia on the way to civil society. Movements and protagonists of Silesian democracy around 1848 . Vol. 2, trafo verlag, Berlin 2007, pp. 115–160 ISBN 978-3-89626-671-2
  • Walter Schmidt: The dedication in the first volume of the capital. For the 200th birthday of Wilhelm Wolff . In: Contributions to Marx-Engels research. New series 2009. Argument, Hamburg 2009, pp. 99–112 ISBN 978-3-88619-669-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Your K. Hochpr. Reg. Most devoted Joh. Fr. Wolff Manchester, June 4th 1862 ”. Quoted from Walter Schmidt: The Communists and the Prussian Amnesty Decree of January 12, 1861. On an article by Karl Marx from September 1862 , p. 1076, which has not yet been taken into account .
  2. ^ "Wolff, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm (according to testament)". In: Association Démocratique, ayant pour but l'union et la fraternité de tous les peuples. An early international democratic association in Brussels 1847-1848 . Edited by Bert Andréas , Jacques Gandjonc and Hans Pelger. Arranged by Helmut Elsner and Elisabeth Neu. Trier 2004 ISBN 3-86077-847-1 , p. 186 (= writings from the Karl-Marx-Haus issue 44).
  3. ↑ "My first name is Friedrich Wilhelm, I was born on June 21, 1809 in Tarnau, Schweidnitzer Kreis, Protestant religion, and the son of the court boy Friedrich Wolff there." Wolff's statement of June 7, 1834.
  4. ^ Walter Schmidt : Wilhelm Wolff. His path to becoming a communist 1809 - 1846 , p. 21.
  5. ↑ Friedrich Engels' statement that Wolff was born in "Tarnau, in the Frankenstein area in Silesia" is incorrect. ( Marx-Engels-Werke Volume 19, p. 55.)
  6. ^ Cemetery Records
  7. ↑ The obituary appeared in the Allgemeine Zeitung on May 23, 1864 (MEW 30, p. 762.) as well as in the Breslauer Zeitung and Kölnische Zeitung .
  8. ↑ Walter Schmidt: The dedication in the first volume of the capital. For the 200th birthday of Wilhelm Wolff , p. 99.
  9. ↑ Contains five documents by Wilhelm Wolff (pp. 1075–1077).
personal data
SURNAME Wolff, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wolff, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm (full name); Lupus (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German private teacher, publicist, politician and close companion of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1809
PLACE OF BIRTH Tarnau, Schweidnitz district
DATE OF DEATH May 9, 1864
Place of death Manchester