Georg Weerth

Neue Rheinische Zeitung Marxism 1822–1856 ○ Died of fever

Poet who ran the feuilleton of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, called by Engels the first and most significant poet of the German proletariat

Born in Detmold in 1822, a clergyman's son, he trained as a merchant. From 1843 to 1846 he worked for a textile firm in Bradford, saw the poverty the Industrial Revolution brought to the workers, spent months in close contact with Engels and befriended Chartist leaders. In 1846 he moved to Brussels, where Marx lived, and worked as a courier for the Communist Correspondence Committee and the Communist League. In April 1848 he went with Marx and Engels to Cologne and on the Neue Rheinische Zeitung edited British and Belgian affairs and ran the feuilleton, serialising his satire on the nobility, the Life and Deeds of the Famous Knight Schnapphahnski. The satire cost him three months in prison in 1850; afterwards he published no more literature, travelled as a merchant and died of fever in Havana in 1856.

Also known as: Georg Ludwig Weerth