Activities and affiliations

Ideology and propaganda International Workingmen's Association (First International) 1809–1871 ✕ Killed in action

Jacobin journalist of 1830 and 1848 who became the Commune’s war delegate and walked to his death on a barricade

On 25 May 1871, the final day of Bloody Week, Commune war delegate Delescluze walked unarmed to the barricade at the Place du Château-d’Eau and was shot dead amid the fighting.

Born in Dreux, he fought in the July Revolution of 1830, published republican papers after February 1848 and went into exile. Arrested under the Second Empire, he served time in the penal colony of Cayenne in Guiana, and in 1868 founded the newspaper Le Réveil. Elected to the National Assembly in February 1871, he resigned to join the Commune. A Jacobin “independent revolutionary”, he sat on the Committee of Public Safety and on 11 May became war delegate as a civilian. On 25 May, with defeat certain, he climbed onto the barricade at the Château-d’Eau and was shot dead.

Literature and arts International Workingmen's Association (First International) 1816–1887 ○ Natural causes

Textile designer and poet, a member of the Commune, who wrote the words of “The Internationale” in hiding after Bloody Week

After the Paris Commune's defeat, he wrote the words of “The Internationale” while hiding in Paris in June 1871. In exile in the United States, he organized solidarity for deported Communards.

Born to a Paris box-maker, he worked as a textile designer and wrote songs and poems from the 1830s, taking part in the June Days of 1848. He founded a designers’ union and joined the International. Elected to the Commune in an April 1871 by-election for the 2nd arrondissement, he wrote “The Internationale” in hiding in June after Bloody Week. Condemned to death in absentia, he fled to the United States and returned under the 1880 amnesty. He died poor in 1887; the next year Pierre De Geyter set “The Internationale” to music and it became the anthem of the world labour movement.

Social movements and organizing International Workingmen's Association (First International) 1844–1896 ○ Natural causes

Jeweller who headed the Commune’s Labour and Exchange Commission and later founded Hungary’s workers’ party

He voted to create the Committee of Public Safety on 1 May 1871, then signed the minority declaration criticizing it on 15 May.

Born to a Jewish family in Óbuda, he trained as a jeweller, came to Paris via Germany in 1867 and worked in the International’s German-speaking section, being convicted in the International trial of 1870. The only foreigner elected to the Commune, he headed its Labour and Exchange Commission, pressed the ban on night work in bakeries and the abandoned-workshops decree, and sided with the minority against the Committee of Public Safety. Wounded in Bloody Week, he escaped to London and joined the General Council. Returning to Hungary in 1876, he founded the General Workers’ Party of Hungary in 1880 and spent his last years in Paris.

Social movements and organizing International Workingmen's Association (First International) 1850–1918?

Russian revolutionary who organized the Paris Commune's Women's Union

She organized cooperative workshops to give women control over their labor.

Born Elizaveta Kusheleva, she later used the married name Tomanovskaya. She took part in the Geneva section of the First International and met Marx in London in 1870. Sent to Paris in 1871 as the International's representative, she founded the Women's Union and organized cooperative workshops for women workers. Wounded while fighting on the barricades during the suppression of the Commune, she escaped to Geneva, returned to Russia, and later followed her second husband, Ivan Davydovski, into Siberian exile. Her date of death is unknown; it has been placed probably between 1916 and 1918.