Friedrich Hecker

Baden and Palatinate revolutionaries (1848–1849) Russian revolutionary democrats 1811–1881 ○ Natural causes

Baden democrat who led an armed rising for a republic in April 1848 and later commanded Union regiments in America

Born at Eichtersheim in Baden in 1811, he studied law at Heidelberg and became an advocate before the Supreme Court in Mannheim. Elected to Baden's Second Chamber in 1842, he led the opposition to the government, and at the Offenburg meeting of 12 September 1847 he and Struve drew up the thirteen demands of the people of Baden. After his motion in the Frankfurt Pre-Parliament to declare Germany a republic failed, he called with Struve for an armed rising on 12 April 1848; he expected 70,000 men, only a few thousand came, and he was defeated near Kandern on 20 April. He fled to Switzerland and in September emigrated to the United States, buying a farm near Belleville, Illinois. In the Civil War he commanded the 24th and 82nd Illinois Infantry and was badly wounded at Chancellorsville in 1863. He died on his Illinois farm in 1881.

Also known as: Friedrich Karl Franz Hecker