Wilhelm Wolff

Neue Rheinische Zeitung Marxism 1809–1864 → Died in exile

Editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and member of the Communist League's central authority, to whom Marx dedicated Capital

Born in 1809 at Tarnau in Silesia, the son of a hereditary serf, he studied classical philology at Breslau. He was imprisoned from 1834 to 1838 for membership of a radical students' association. His essay of 1844 on the misery and revolt in Silesia became the basis of Hauptmann's The Weavers. In Brussels in 1846 he became a close friend of Marx and Engels, worked in the Communist Correspondence Committee and the League of the Just, and was a founding member of the Communist League and of its central authority. He was an editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1848–49 and sat in the National Assembly with the far-left Donnersberg group from 21 May to 18 June 1849. After Switzerland and London he lived as a tutor in Manchester from 1853 until his death in 1864, and Marx dedicated the first volume of Capital to him.

Also known as: Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff