Friedrich Adolph Sorge

International Workingmen's Association (First International) Marxism 1828–1906 ○ Natural causes

German-American communist who was General Secretary of the International's General Council in New York

Born the son of a pastor at Bethau in Prussia in 1828, he joined the risings in Saxony and Baden in 1848–1849 and was sentenced to death in his absence. By way of Switzerland, Belgium and London he reached New York in 1852 and settled as a music teacher in Hoboken. In December 1869 he founded Section 1 of the International in New York, set up its North American Central Committee the following year, and in September 1871 organised a demonstration of 20,000 workers for the eight-hour day and the Paris Commune. When the Hague Congress moved the General Council to New York in 1872, he served as General Secretary from 1872 to 1874. He led the group that founded the Socialist Labor Party in 1877 and corresponded with Marx and Engels for decades. He died in Hoboken in 1906.