Wilhelm Bracke

Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1842–1880 ○ Natural causes

Founder of the Eisenach Social Democratic Workers' Party who led its Brunswick committee and was jailed in 1870 for calling for peace

Born into a miller and grain merchant's family in Brunswick, he joined Lassalle's General German Workers' Association as a student, founded its Brunswick section in 1865 and sat on its board. In 1869 he met Marx at Kugelmann's house and stayed in contact with him for life. Sharing the oppositional views of Bebel and Liebknecht, he helped found the Social Democratic Workers' Party at Eisenach in August 1869 and became its spokesman, with Brunswick as the party's first seat. In 1870 he was arrested for calling for peace and sentenced to three months. He then founded a publishing house and the Braunschweiger Volksfreund, which published the first biography of Marx, became the first Social Democrat on the Brunswick city council in 1872 and entered the Reichstag in 1877, defying the Anti-Socialist Law. Ill health ended his mandate in 1879, and he died in 1880.

Also known as: Hermann August Franz Wilhelm Gotthard Bracke