Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Johann Gottlieb Lassal, since 1847 Lassalle[1] (11 April 1825 - 31 August 1864), was a jewish jurist, minor author, and committed Marxist political activist in Prussia. He founded the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
Life
Ferdinand Lassalle was born in Breslau, Silesia, the son of Heymann Lassal (1791–1862) and his wife Rosalie, née Heitzfeld, where his father was a silk merchant. His brother Rochus died of consumption at the age of three. His sister Friederike married the merchant Ferdinand Friedland. From 1835 to 1840 he studied at the Maria-Magdalenen-Gymnasium in Breslau. Heymann Lassal intended his son for a business career, sending him to the commercial school at Leipzig from 1840 to 1841. He then returned to the Gymnasum and achieved his Abitur in 1843.
Afterwards, Lassalle continued his studies in Berlin, becoming a member of the very patriotic fraternity "Breslauer Burschenschaft der Raczeks" (with mandatory academic fencing and duels) with their motto "God, Honour, Freedom, Vaterland!". His favourite studies were philology and philosophy; he became a close follower of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Having completed his university studies in 1845, he began to write a work on Heraclitus from the Hegelian point of view; but it was soon interrupted and was not published until 1858.
During the German Revolutions of 1848, he spoke at public meetings in favor of the revolutionary cause, and urged the citizens of Düsseldorf to prepare themselves for armed resistance in advance of the violence that he expected and hoped for. He was subsequently arrested for his involvement in this activity and was charged with inciting armed opposition to the State. He was later tried on a lesser charge of inciting resistance against public officials and convicted, serving six months in prison.
In 1851, Lassalle founded an illegal circle of revolutionary workers in Düsseldorf and propagated socialist ideas. In 1851/1852, he supported the accused in the Cologne communist trial. Towards the end of 1858, Lassalle managed to obtain permanent residency in Berlin, where he had been involved in cultural and intellectual circles for some time. In 1859, he published "The Italian War and the Abandonment of Prussia", in which he pleaded for a strengthening of Prussia's position in the German Confederation (especially in relation to Austria), which is why he was heavily criticized by Marx and Engels from London, but also by other companions.
From 20 April 1863, Lassalle was again in prison for a month because, in his defence speech for the indictment of the workers' manifesto, he had made unfavorable comments about the son of the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling. He was sentenced to an additional four months on charges related to the workers' manifesto. Lassalle also accused Otto von Bismarck of breaking the constitution in two controversial speeches.
In the summer of 1862, he visited Karl Marx in London and tried in vain to persuade him to work together in Germany. After that, contact between Lassalle and Marx broke off. Although Lassalle was a member of the Communist League, his brand of politics were opposed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who thought that Lassalle was not a true Communist as he directly influenced von Bismarck's government (albeit in secret) on the issue of universal suffrage, among others. Élie Halévy would later write on this situation:
- Lassalle was the first man in Germany, the first in Europe, who succeeded in organising a party of socialist action. [...] When in 1866 von Bismarck founded the Confederation of Northern Germany on a basis of universal suffrage, he was acting on advice which came directly from Lassalle. And I am convinced that after 1878, when he began to practice "State Socialism" and "Christian Socialism" and "Monarchial Socialism," he had not forgotten what he had learnt from the socialist leader.
On 23 May 1863, the General German Workers' Association (ADAV) was founded in the Leipzig Pantheon. This party later became the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Ferdinand Lassalle was elected President for a five-year term. In March 1864, Lassalle was charged with high treason for intending to overthrow the constitution. In his speech before the State court, Lassalle said that not only did he intend to do so, but that the constitution would very soon be overturned - and without bloodshed. Lassalle intended to promote the annexation of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein by Prussia in September 1864, but he never got around to it.
- After many years of struggle on behalf of working-class concerns, the German politician and publicist Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-64) founded the General German Workers’ Association in 1863. This group became part of the Social Democratic Party in 1875. In his founding manifesto, the “Open Letter” (1863), Lassalle advocated not only for workers’ rights but also for parliamentariansm and a democratic franchise, promises not honored by the liberals. Severely criticized by Engels and Marx, Lassalle attempted – in vain, as it turned out – to move closer to Bismarck and reconcile state and workers’ interests.[2]
Death
Lassalle fell in love with a young woman named Helene von Dönniges (1843–1911) while at a spa. He wanted to marry her, and she him, but her parents were against it, her hand was already promised. In order to be able to successfully sue her father, the Bavarian diplomat Prof. Dr. phil. Franz Alexander Friedrich Wilhelm von Dönniges (1814–1872), for sequestering his daughter, he tried on 16 or 17 August 1864 to get the Bavarian King Ludwig II on his side. This was to be done through the mediation of a friend, the conductor Hans von Bülow, who in turn was to influence Richard Wagner. However, the suggestion went too far for Wagner. Lassalle then decided to continue his journey to Switzerland and to fight a duel with Wilhelm von Dönniges: As a member of the Breslau fraternity, Lassalle demanded satisfaction from Helene's father, a member of the Corps Rhenania Bonn. The 50-year-old father commissioned his desired fiancé, the aristocratic Bojard/Boyar[3] Janko Fürst von Racowitza, a member of the Corps Neoborussia-Berlin and the "dragon who guards my treasure," as Lassalle had once called him, to take on the duel.
The weapon chosen was the pistol. Lassalle's friends begged him to practise. Lassalle was severely wounded in the duel in Carouge (Canton of Geneva) on 28 August 1864. He had been shot in the stomach by Fürst von Racowitza (as the offended he had, according to the strict rules, the first shot) and died three days later.
- Never had he been so colossal, so assured. His nerves seemed to have regained their tone. The night before the duel he slept like a tranquil child. In the early morn, on the way to the field outside Geneva, he begged his second to arrange the duel on the French side of the frontier, so that he might remain in Geneva and settle his account with the father. At the word of command, "One!" Janko's shot rang out. Lassalle's was not a second later, but he had already received his death-wound. He lay three days, dying in terrible agony, relieved only by copious opium. Between the spasms, surprise possessed his mind that his Will should have counted for nothing before the imperturbable march of the universe.[4]
He was buried in the jewish cemetery in Breslau.[5] The final events of his life were described in George Meredith's novel The Tragic Comedians (1880). A year after Lassalle's death, Helene (henceforth known as the "Red Countess") married Janko von Racowitza (1843–1865). He died shortly after the wedding of "a serious illness" [lung disease] – as the annals put it. After that she married the theater actor drama teacher Siegwart Friedmann (1842–1916) in 1868 and became an actress herself. They divorced 1873, but stayed good friends.[6] A decisive event during the time with her third husband Sergej von Schewitsch (1848–1911) was her personal acquaintance, even friendship, with Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891), through which she found theosophy. She described her way there in the book "How I found my self!", published anonymously in 1901.
Further reading
- Helene von Dönniges und Ferdinand Lassalle – Das Leben und Sterben des Ferdinand Lassalle, "taz", 2019 (in German)
References
- ↑ From 1847 on, he wrote his surname based on the French revolutionary general La Salle.
- ↑ In: From Vormärz to Prussian Dominance (1815-1866)
- ↑ A boyar or bolyar (sometimes declared a count, or even a prince) was a member of the highest rank of the feudal nobility in many Eastern European states, including Kievan Rus', Bulgaria, Russia, Wallachia and Moldavia, and later Romania, Lithuania and among Baltic Germans.
- ↑ Dreamers of the Ghetto
- ↑ Footman, David, The Primrose Path: A Biography of Ferdinand Lassalle, Cresset Press, London, 1994.
- ↑ Helene von Schewitsch, 2022
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