Joseph Weydemeyer facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Joseph Weydemeyer
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| Born | 2 February 1818 |
| Died | 26 August 1866 (aged 48) |
Joseph Arnold Weydemeyer (born February 2, 1818 – died August 26, 1866) was a military officer in Prussia and the United States. He was also a journalist, a politician, and a Marxist revolutionary. This means he believed in the ideas of Karl Marx, which focused on how society should be fair for everyone, especially workers.
Weydemeyer first supported ideas called "true socialism." But by 1845–1846, he became a follower of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. He joined the Communist League, a group that wanted to change society. He even led their group in Frankfurt from 1849 to 1851. He visited Marx in Brussels and attended his talks. He also took part in the 1848 Revolution, a series of protests across Europe. He worked as an editor for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung newspaper.
Weydemeyer wrote for two socialist newspapers: the Westphälisches Dampfboot and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. In 1851, he moved from Germany to the United States and continued working as a journalist. In 1852, he started a German-language magazine in New York called Die Revolution. This magazine published The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, a famous book written by Karl Marx.
Later, Weydemeyer fought in the American Civil War. He was a lieutenant colonel in the Union Army, which fought to keep the United States together.
Contents
Biography of Joseph Weydemeyer
Early Life and Military Career
Joseph Weydemeyer was born in 1818, the same year as Karl Marx. His father was a government worker in Prussia, living in Münster, a city in Westphalia. Joseph went to a special high school called a gymnasium and then to the Berlin military Academy. In 1838, he became a second lieutenant in the Prussian army's artillery unit.
He was stationed in Minden, a town in Westphalia. There, he started reading a newspaper called Rheinische Zeitung. This paper was edited by Karl Marx and talked about radical ideas. Even though the Prussian government tried to stop it, the newspaper inspired many soldiers. Weydemeyer and other officers in Minden, like Fritz Anneke and August Willich, became interested in these revolutionary ideas. Many of them later became known as "Forty-Eighters" because of their role in the 1848 revolutions. They also became officers in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Weydemeyer and his friends formed a discussion group in Minden. He often visited Cologne to talk about social problems with the journalists from the Rheinische Zeitung. In 1844, he left the Prussian army. He then became an assistant editor for the Trierische Zeitung newspaper. This paper supported ideas about creating perfect communities and a type of socialism. In 1845, he joined the Westphaelische Dampfboot newspaper after visiting Marx in Paris, where Marx was living in exile. Marx and Engels also wrote for this paper. In 1845, Joseph Weydemeyer married Luise Lüning, whose brother edited the Dampfboot.
Involvement in the 1848 Revolution
After visiting Marx again in Brussels in 1846, Weydemeyer returned to Germany. His goal was to help organize the Communist League in Cologne. This was the group for which Marx and Engels wrote the famous Communist Manifesto in 1847. Weydemeyer continued to work for the Dampfboot newspaper.
He also worked as a construction engineer for the Cologne–Minden Railroad. However, he quit this job in 1848 when the company told its employees to stay out of political protests. For the rest of that year, he worked full-time as a revolutionary journalist. In June 1848, he became a co-editor of the Neue Deutsche Zeitung newspaper in Darmstadt. This newspaper aimed to connect the left-wing politicians in the German National Assembly with the public movement.
But in 1849, the government fought back against the revolutionaries. The Prussian government stopped the Frankfurt Parliament and many democratic newspapers, including Marx's Neue Rheinische Zeitung. The Neue Deutsche Zeitung survived by moving to Frankfurt, but it was finally banned in December 1850. Weydemeyer had to hide for about six months.
In July 1851, Weydemeyer, his wife, and their two children moved to Switzerland. He couldn't find a job there. On July 27, he wrote to Marx, saying he had no choice but to move to the United States. Marx suggested New York City as a good place for him to start a German-language revolutionary newspaper. Marx also thought that the U.S. might be a difficult place for socialism to grow because many people were moving to farms or finding jobs in the growing economy. Weydemeyer and his family sailed from Le Havre on September 29, 1851, and arrived in New York on November 7.
Life as a Marxist Journalist in New York
In December 1851, Weydemeyer started a German-language revolutionary newspaper called Die Revolution. It aimed to show the "class struggle" in Europe, meaning the conflicts between different social groups. The first issue came out on January 6, 1852, but the paper stopped on January 13. Weydemeyer wrote to Marx, saying that American society made it hard for his ideas to spread. He also noted that liberal ideas were very strong among German immigrants.
In the spring of 1852, Weydemeyer published Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte as the final issue of Die Revolution. He also arranged for Friedrich Engels' book, The Peasant War in Germany, to be published in parts in the New York Turn-Zeitung newspaper.
Weydemeyer began writing for the Turn-Zeitung about various political topics. He wrote about how Americans didn't like the idea of a "proletarian dictatorship" (a government run by workers). He also pointed out that American liberal groups called for free elections in Europe but didn't talk about the poor conditions of workers. He wrote many articles explaining Marxist ideas to German immigrants, comparing them to liberal ideas. In July, he started discussing American labor issues and the debate between free trade and protectionism. He supported industrial development, which was a traditional Marxist view.
In September, Weydemeyer wrote about the connection between Australian cotton and slavery in America. He believed that the growth of American power in the world market would lead to national economic growth and national political parties, rather than just regional ones. He saw a shift where industry would become more important than agriculture.
In November, Weydemeyer reviewed the 1852 election campaign. He noted that neither the Whig nor the Democratic parties talked about workers' issues. In December, he wrote a two-part article suggesting a plan for American workers. He called for workers to organize politically and economically on a large scale. He also urged them to adopt "internationalism," meaning workers from different countries should support each other.
Starting the American Workers League
In the summer of 1852, Weydemeyer and four friends created a small group called Proletarierbund. This was the first Marxist group in the United States. They gained attention by organizing a meeting on March 20, 1853, in New York. Eight hundred German Americans attended and founded the American Workers League.
This group acted as both a union and a political party. It had a plan for immediate changes for workers and also a long-term goal of socialism. Their plan included:
- Allowing all immigrants to become American citizens quickly.
- Having federal laws for workers, not just state laws.
- Making sure workers got paid even if their employers went bankrupt.
- Making legal help free for workers.
- Reducing the workday to ten hours.
- Banning work for children under sixteen.
- Making education required and providing government support for poor children.
- Opposing laws about Sunday closing and alcohol.
- Creating free colleges and having the government take over private colleges.
- Keeping public lands on the frontier for the people, not for speculators.
Besides these immediate demands, the League's platform also included revolutionary ideas. It blamed capitalists for making workers' lives worse. It said workers needed their own political party, "without respect to occupation, language, color or sex." It also stated that overthrowing capitalist leadership was the way to solve social and political problems.
The American Workers League worked for several years. Weydemeyer tried to get non-German Americans to join, but the League mostly served as a social and support group for German immigrants. In 1855, when some members started a secret military group to defend against anti-immigrant attacks, Weydemeyer left the League. He then focused on studying the American economy and writing and giving talks about Marxist ideas.
Role in the American Civil War
As the United States moved closer to a civil war, German Americans played a big part in the rise of the Republican Party. Weydemeyer helped guide the German community towards the Republicans and the cause against slavery. His support for the Republicans matched the views of many leading labor activists at the time.
The Republican Party also gained support through the "free-soil movement," which wanted to keep western lands free from slavery. Weydemeyer had once been against giving government lands to small farmers, preferring large farms. But in the 1860s, he and other German Republicans urged the party to support a "Homestead law." This law would give public lands to people for homes, protecting them from land speculators. Weydemeyer's change of mind was a tactic to support the anti-slavery cause, which he saw as the most important issue at the time.
After leaving the American Workers League, Weydemeyer moved to the Midwest. He lived for four years in Milwaukee and then in Chicago. He worked as a journalist and a surveyor. He tried to start another German labor newspaper in Chicago and wrote for the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, a well-known German Republican newspaper. In May 1860, he attended a meeting in Chicago to influence the Republican convention's plans and candidates. He returned to New York in late 1860 and found a job as a surveyor for Central Park. He also became active in the election campaign for Abraham Lincoln. Eight months later, he joined the army.
Because he had been a Prussian military officer and a surveyor, Weydemeyer became a technical assistant to General John C. Frémont. Frémont was the commander of the Western department of the Union Army. Weydemeyer oversaw the building of ten forts around St. Louis. After Frémont was removed from his command in November 1861, Weydemeyer became a lieutenant colonel. He was given command of a Missouri artillery regiment that fought against Confederate rebels in southern Missouri in 1862. At the end of that year, he was hospitalized for a nervous problem and then moved to garrison duty in St. Louis. He left this duty in September 1863.
Weydemeyer was politically active in Missouri. He focused on two main issues: extending freedom to enslaved people in Missouri and preventing a split between the Lincoln and Frémont groups within the Republican Party. Even though he liked Frémont's strong views, he tried to bring the groups together to ensure victory in the 1864 election and the war. In September 1864, Weydemeyer rejoined the army as a colonel. He commanded the 41st Missouri Volunteer Infantry, which defended St. Louis.
While serving in the military, he shared copies of the founding document of the International Workingmen's Association, a group of workers from different countries. He also exchanged letters with Engels about military and political topics. He wrote for local newspapers, like the Daily St Louis Press, where he welcomed the founding of the First International. In July 1865, he ended his military service.
After the war, he regularly wrote for the Westliche Post and the Neue Zeit, two newspapers in St. Louis. He was elected as county auditor, a financial position, and held this office from January 1, 1866, until his death. He worked to create stricter tax laws and collect unpaid taxes from people who got rich during the war. On August 26, 1866, the same day the National Labor Union was started in Baltimore, Weydemeyer died of cholera in St. Louis, Missouri, at the age of 48.
See also
In Spanish: Joseph Weydemeyer para niños
