Adolf Hepner

Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1846–1923 ○ Natural causes

German social-democratic journalist, second editor of Der Volksstaat, tried for high treason with Bebel and Liebknecht

Born in 1846 into a Jewish family at Schmiegel in Posen, he attended the rabbinical seminary in Breslau, turned away from theology and studied philosophy and political economy at Breslau and Berlin. He took part in the founding congress of the SDAP at Eisenach in 1869 and at the end of that year became second editor of the party organ Der Volksstaat. Arrested with Bebel and Liebknecht, he stood trial with them for high treason at Leipzig in 1872 and was the only one acquitted. That year he defied a police ban to attend the Hague congress of the International as a delegate, where he met Marx and Engels. Expelled from Leipzig in 1873, he emigrated in 1882 to escape the Anti-Socialist Laws and edited German-language papers in St. Louis. He returned to Germany in 1908 and wrote for Die Neue Zeit and other journals.

Also known as: A. Ephren