Johann Jacoby

Germany state institutions Russian revolutionary democrats 1805–1877 ○ Natural causes

Radical democrat of 1848 who was imprisoned for opposing the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and later joined the Social Democrats

Born in 1805 into a Jewish merchant family in Königsberg, he practised as a physician and was repeatedly prosecuted for writings demanding Jewish emancipation and a constitution for Prussia. In 1848 he was among the leaders of the Left in both the Prussian National Assembly and the Frankfurt Parliament, and became famous for telling the king to his face that “it is the misfortune of kings that they will not listen to the truth”. He stayed on in the Stuttgart rump parliament. From 1863 to 1870 he sat on the far left of the Progress Party in the Prussian lower house, and his call for tax refusal against Bismarck cost him six months in prison. On 14 September 1870 he spoke against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and was arrested and held in the fortress of Lötzen. He joined the Social Democratic Workers’ Party in 1872 and was elected to the Reichstag in 1874 but refused to take his seat.