Heinrich Simon

Frankfurt National Assembly (1848–1849) Russian revolutionary democrats 1805–1860 → Drowned in exile

Democratic leader in the Frankfurt Parliament whose 1849 pact with Gagern carried the hereditary emperor

Born in Breslau in 1805, he studied law and entered the Prussian civil service in 1827. In 1829 he was sentenced to life in a fortress for killing an opponent in a duel, but was pardoned the next year. As a judge he wrote a Prussian constitutional law (1844) and a polemic for judicial independence, and in 1845 he left the service to work as a publicist with Robert Blum. In 1848 he was secretary of the Pre-Parliament and a member of the Committee of Fifty, then sat for Magdeburg in the Frankfurt National Assembly. As leader of the Westendhall group he made the pact with Heinrich von Gagern that gave the hereditary-emperor party its majority. In June 1849 he joined the regency set up by the Stuttgart rump parliament; after the defeat he fled to Switzerland and was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment. He drowned in the Walensee in 1860.

Also known as: August Heinrich Simon