Stephan Born

General German Workers' Brotherhood Early socialism 1824–1898 ○ Natural causes

Typesetter and socialist who founded the Workers' Brotherhood of 1848, the first nationwide German workers' organisation

Born Simon Buttermilch at Lissa in the Province of Posen in 1824, he took the name Stephan Born on converting to Protestantism. He learned typesetting in Berlin while educating himself, met Engels in Paris and Marx in Brussels in 1847 and worked for the Communist League. After the March Revolution he became president of the Central Committee of Workers in Berlin and publisher of its paper Das Volk, and in August–September 1848 he led the general workers' congress that founded the Workers' Brotherhood. In practice he drifted away from Marx and Engels towards social reform, and in May 1849 he fought on the barricades of Dresden. After the revolution he went into exile in Switzerland, became a Swiss citizen, taught at Neuchâtel and lectured on literature as honorary professor at Basel, where he died in 1898.

Also known as: Simon Buttermilch · Stephen Born