The Utopian Communist: A Biography of Wilhelm Weitling

346 Pages·2010·22.26 MB·English

THE UTOPIAN
C O M M U N I ST
A B I O G R A P HY OF
WILHELM WEITLING
N I N E T E E N T H- CENTURY
R E F O R M ER
BY
CARL WITTKE
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BATON ROUGE
Copyright, 1950, by
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
P R E F A CE
T
HERE were many varieties of radicals, reformers, and
intellectuals among the German Forty-eighters who
migrated to the United States in the middle of the last
century. Some, like Carl Schurz, the best known of this group
of German liberals, became completely adjusted to the American
scene and rose to positions of eminence and trust in their adopted
fatherland. Others, like Karl Heinzen, represented the militant,
uncompromising radicals who remained the same irrepressible
crusaders in America which they had been in Europe, were never
completely at home in the United States, but nevertheless played
an important role in many of the reforms of their time.
Wilhelm Weitling, also a Forty-eighter, belonged to the ex­
treme left wing of the German immigration. A simple artisan,
entirely self-educated, he had won fame in the radical movement
of Europe long before he migrated to the United States. His
books and his propaganda for a communist Utopia were known
in western Europe before Karl Marx leaped into prominence
with his Communist Manifesto and became the outstanding
spokesman of proletarian revolution.
Weitling belonged to the working class. He was not a uni­
versity man and he knew the sufferings of the poor from per­
sonal experience. He served a jail sentence in Switzerland be­
cause of his convictions. He was one of the most important fig­
ures in the history of pre-Marxian socialism. His philosophy of
history and his brand of communism were very different from
Marx's doctrines of economic determinism and the inevitability
of the proletarian revolution, for Weitling, though an agnostic
vi PREFACE
and a severe critic of all institutionalized religion, insisted on
morality, ethics, and religion as a basis for social reform. The
repudiation of this aspect of his "system" by the Marxians is not
without significance for the present-day theory and practice of
communism.
In the United States, Weitling tried once more to give prac­
tical application to the theories he had formulated and pro­
claimed in Europe. He deserves to be remembered, in spite of
his failures and the unsound character of some of his proposals,
because of the important place which he occupied in the early
history of the American labor movement and its agitation for
social security, social insurance, and co-operatives. His disastrous
experiences with the colony at Communia, Iowa, constitute an
interesting chapter in the history of the immigrant Utopias
which were so numerous in the America of a hundred years ago.
Finally defeated and disillusioned, he turned his eager, restless
mind from social reform to the problems of astronomy, lin­
guistics, and inventions.
Weitling's career might be summarily dismissed as simply an­
other failure in a long line of failures by completely impractical
and somewhat unbalanced dreamers. Yet this poor, self-educated,
philosophical tailor had such a passion for social justice, such a
fervent hope that public policy might be judged by the stand­
ards of ethics, such a craving and reverence for science and
progress, and such a desire to make life more humane, that I be­
lieve he deserves to be rescued from among the forgotten men
who, in every age, try to renew men's hopes for a better age than
the one of which they are a part. If faith in the ultimate per­
fectibility of mankind should turn out to be only an illusion, it
is at least a comforting illusion, and it has been a major force in
the history of the human enterprise, for in all ages, men have
had to walk part of their way by faith.
In acknowledging the help received in the preparation of this
biography, I must express my thanks first of all to Terijon Weit­
ling of Staten Island, New York, who so graciously made all the
PREFACE vii
remaining papers of his father available to me and answered all
my questions about those personal details which are so important
in any biographical study.
I also have received aid and suggestions from my friends and
colleagues, Dr. Ernst Feise of The Johns Hopkins University,
Dr. Ferdinand Schevill of Chicago, and Dr. Traugott Böhme of
Berlin. G. W. Hunt of Guttenberg, Iowa, and H. L. Meyer of
Elkader, Iowa, have furnished data which helped me to unravel
some of the confusion which surrounds the closing days of the
Communia colony. I also am indebted to the library staffs of
Western Reserve Historical Society, Western Reserve Univer­
sity, the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, the Wis­
consin Historical Society, the Oberlin College Library and the
library of Belleville, Illinois.
Some of the material contained in this volume has appeared
earlier in the form of two articles, "Wilhelm Weitling's Literary
Efforts," in Monatshefte (Madison, Wisconsin), XL (February,
1948), No. 2, pp. 63-68; and "Marx and Weitling," in Essays
in Political Theory, Presented to George H. Sabine (Ithaca,
1948), 179-93.
CARL WITTKE
Cleveland, Ohio
March 1, 1949

C O N T E N TS
Preface V
I. A Child of War 1
II. Paris, the Crucible of Revolution 11
III. Carrying the Torch to Switzerland 31
IV. Weitling's "System" 56
V. A Martyr's Crown 70
VI. A London Interlude 90
VII. Weitling and Marx 105
VIII. The German Revolution of 1848-49 124
IX. A Radical Journalist in America 138
X. On Tour for the Cause 166
XI. The Workingmen's League 188
XII. Banks, Co-operatives, and Railroads 220
XIII. Communia, Iowa 237
XIV. Farewell to Reform 276
XV. New Frontiers 291
XVI. Closing Years 309
Bibliographical Note 317
Index 319

I L L U S T R A T I O NS
Wilhelm Weitling Frontispiece
Facing page
The new currency of the social revolution 68
Daguerreotype of Weitling's family 282
Sample of work done by Weitling's embroidering device 306
Mrs. Wilhelm Weitling (about 1910) 312