Joseph Weydemeyer

Communist League Marxism Germany Germany 1818–1866 ○ Died of cholera

Marxist who led the Communist League in Frankfurt, first published Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire in New York and served as a Union colonel

Born in Münster in 1818, the son of a Prussian civil servant, he became an officer in the Prussian artillery, joined a circle of leftist officers inspired by the Rheinische Zeitung and resigned from the army in the mid-1840s. At first a "true socialist", he became a follower of Marx and Engels in 1845–1846. In the revolution of 1848 he organised workers' associations in Westphalia, co-edited the Neue Deutsche Zeitung from July 1848, and from 1849 to 1851 headed the Communist League in Frankfurt. Emigrating to the United States in 1851, he published Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte in his New York magazine Die Revolution in 1852 and helped found the American Workers League in 1853. In the Civil War he rose to colonel in the Union army, commanding at St. Louis, and he was St. Louis County auditor when he died of cholera in 1866.

Also known as: Joseph Arnold Weydemeyer

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