Joseph Moll

Cologne Workers' Association Marxism 1813–1849 ✕ Killed in action

Watchmaker on the Communist League's central authority who presided over the Cologne Workers' Association and fell in Baden in 1849

Born in Cologne in 1813 to a poor working-class family, he trained as a watchmaker and travelled across Europe in search of work. He joined Young Germany in Switzerland in 1834 and the League of the Just in Paris in 1836, went to England in 1839 and in 1840 helped found the German Workers' Educational Association in London. He joined the League's central authority in 1846 and that of the Communist League in 1847. Returning to Cologne in 1848, he succeeded Gottschalk as president of the Cologne Workers' Association and steered it towards Marx's line. Facing arrest after the September unrest, he fled to London in October but came back illegally, joined the Baden-Palatinate rising in May 1849 and was killed in a fight on the Murg on 28 June. Marx and Engels remembered him as one of the oldest, most active and most reliable members of the League.

Also known as: Joseph Maximilian Moll · Maximilien Joseph Moll