August Willich

Baden and Palatinate revolutionaries (1848–1849) Revolutionary socialism 1810–1878 ○ Natural causes

Former Prussian officer who led the Palatine free corps with Engels as aide, headed the League's left and became a Union general

Born into the Prussian nobility at Braunsberg in East Prussia in 1810, he was educated for the army at Potsdam and Berlin and became a Prussian artillery officer. A convinced republican, he left the army in 1846 and formally discarded his title in 1847. He fought at the Scheideck in the Hecker uprising of 1848, and in 1849 commanded a free corps in the Palatinate uprising with Engels as his aide-de-camp. In London exile he led, with Karl Schapper, the left faction of the Communist League, which split from the Marx party in 1850, and even challenged Marx to a duel. He went to the United States in 1853, edited a newspaper in Cincinnati and in the Civil War rose from colonel of the 32nd Indiana to brigadier general, fighting at Shiloh, Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge. He died in Ohio in 1878.

Also known as: Johann August Ernst von Willich