Cologne Workers' Association
쾰른 노동자협회
The workers' association founded in Cologne on 13 April 1848 by the doctor Andreas Gottschalk. Led at first by Gottschalk on a social-reform programme, it grew to several thousand members, but after his arrest in July the Communist League members Moll and Schapper took it over, and in October 1848 Marx became its president. The conflict between Gottschalk and Marx over its course was a defining dispute of the labour movement of 1848. It became an educational society in October 1849 and dissolved in 1850.
In depth
The demands Gottschalk presented at the city hall meeting of 3 March were those of radical democracy and the protection of labour. Some 300 attended the founding meeting, and Fritz Anneke was secretary. The Association boycotted the indirect Frankfurt elections, and its membership is given as up to 7,000 or as more than 8,000. Gottschalk proposed a merger with Marx's Democratic Society but was rebuffed.
The Association built barricades during the September unrest. Marx kept it out of the moderate Workers' Brotherhood and handed the presidency to Schapper at the end of February 1849. Its last president was Peter Gerhard Roeser, later sentenced to six years in the Cologne Communist Trial. Gottschalk derided Marx as a "learned sun-god".