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18-692: The first committee was formed in Brussels which became the headquarters of the Correspondence Committee, with members including Karl Marx, Wilhelm Wolff , Joseph Weydemeyer , Edgar von Westphalen , Ferdinand Wolff and Philip Giot . Another committee was formed in London between May and June 1846, formed by Joseph Maximilian Moll and Karl Schapper , among others. In June 1846, the Wuppertal communist Gustav Adolf Koettgen approached

36-633: A political platform for itself. The resulting document was The Communist Manifesto . Jacob Venedey and Theodore Schuster founded the League of Outlaws in Paris in 1834. They modeled the organization closely after Philippe Buonarroti 's vision of the "Universal Democratic Carbonari " as an egalitarian international revolutionary fellowship organization, perhaps the first of its kind. Its members were German emigrants. Schuster's 1834 pamphlet, Confession of faith of an outlaw has been suggested as

54-531: A hereditary serf . His mother was well-educated despite her low social class . He went to grammar school in Świdnica and university in Wrocław , mainly studying classical philology . In 1831 he became a member of a radical students' association, for which he was imprisoned between 1834 and 1838 (mainly in Fort Srebrna Góra ), following the resumption of persecution of these types of organisations by

72-676: A tutor until 1840, in the service of Tytus Działyński , a Polish landowner. In 1846, in Brussels , Wolff became a close friend of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . He was active in the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee and a member of the League of the Just , in addition to being co-founder of the League of Communists in 1848, as a member of its central authority. He served as an editor of

90-519: The Bundestag , in line with the Carlsbad Decrees . He was released on 30 July 1838, and moved back to Wrocław. There, he attempted to become a private tutor, having been legally excluded from public teaching due to the interruption of his studies by his arrest. However, his licence to teach privately was denied by the government there. Accordingly, he moved to Posen where he worked as

108-591: The Neue Rheinische Zeitung newspaper in 1848-1849, and as a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly . Wolff emigrated to Switzerland in 1849 and then to England in 1851. Upon his death, Wolff left a large fortune, earned through various business dealings, to Marx, who dedicated the first volume of Das Kapital to him with the line "To my unforgettable friend, Wilhelm Wolff. Intrepid, faithful, noble protagonist of

126-769: The League of Communists was formed, for which Marx and Engles later wrote the Communist Manifesto , all of the committees were present, for Paris Engels and for Brussels Wolff. Wilhelm Wolff Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff , nicknamed "Lupus" (21 June 1809 – 9 May 1864) was a German schoolmaster , political activist and publicist. Wolff was born in Tarnau, a village in the Schweidnitz district of Silesia , Prussia (now Tarnawa  [ pl ] , Lower Silesian Voivodeship , Gmina Żarów , Poland). His family were mainly farmers, his father being

144-471: The 1839 uprising. Schapper advocated for a longer campaign of popular education to prepare the masses for revolution. Karl Marx was hesitant about joining the League due to political disagreements, but was convinced by Joseph Moll that he could be more influential debating as a member from within the organization when Moll visited Brussels in January 1847. In June 1847, the League of the Just merged with

162-560: The Brussels committee and suggested that the German communists should inform each other of their actions, which the Committee welcomed. Engels, who went to France in 1846 upon the committee’s assignment, led the struggle against Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 's reformist influence, the “true socialism,” of Karl Grün and "Weitlingism" or better known as the levelling communism of Wilhelm Weitling among Paris workers. In August 1846, Engels formed

180-597: The French government. They proceeded to move to London. In 1840 in London they established a front organization called the Educational Society of German Workingmen. They continued to grow, until reaching a peak membership of over 1,000 people. In 1845 there was significant public debate within the League between Weitling, who advocated for an immediate uprising of workers, and Karl Schapper , who considered this premature, especially after his experience in

198-723: The Paris Committee there, on behalf of the Brussels Committee, to disseminate the ideas of the committees under the League of the Just . From 1846 to 1847, Heinrich Bürgers and Roland Daniels worked in Cologne for the Correspondence Committee and the physician Georg Weber in Kiel . The traveling salesman and poet Georg Weerth also worked as a courier for the committees. At the London conference in 1847 , at which

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216-524: The first vision of marginalized people joining together in a coming revolution . At its peak, the League of Outlaws had about 100 members in Paris and 80 in Frankfurt am Main . At this time, Schuster focused his efforts on advocating for the unification of Germany and organized middle-class republicans into the League of Germans. As Schuster's and other key members' attention was focused on this work,

234-569: The people." Friedrich Engels wrote dismissively of the League as essentially similar to other French secret societies except that it was German. The latter league had a pyramidal structure inspired by the secret society of the Republican Carbonari , and shared ideas with Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier 's utopian socialism. Their goal was to establish a "Social Republic" in the German states which would campaign for "freedom", "equality" and "civic virtue". Wilhelm Weitling

252-578: The proletariat." Gerhart Hauptmann 's play Die Weber ( The Weavers ) is based on Wolff's essay about the weavers' uprising in Silesia in 1844 and its suppression, Das Elend und der Aufuhr in Schlesien . League of the Just The League of the Just ( German : Bund der Gerechten ) or League of Justice was a Christian communist international revolutionary organization. It

270-470: The working class members of the Outlaws rallied around the leadership of Wilhelm Weitling . This group formed the League of the Just in Paris in 1836 as an offshoot from the League of Outlaws. The Outlaws dissipated in 1838 as their members prioritized other associations. Members of the League of the Just were German journeymen artisans , primarily tailors and woodworkers . Their stated goal

288-548: Was "the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth, based on the ideals of love of one's neighbor, equality and justice ". This was also referred to by the League as the "new Jerusalem". The motto of the League of the Just was "All men are brothers". They have been described as followers of François-Noël Babeuf and as " utopian - communist ". They were anticipating a social revolution, which one of their leaders, Karl Schapper, described as "the great resurrection day of

306-601: Was founded in 1836 by branching off from its ancestor, the League of Outlaws  [ de ] , which had formed in Paris in 1834. The League of the Just was largely composed of German emigrant artisans . In 1847, the League of the Just merged with the Communist Correspondence Committee , an organization led by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , creating the Communist League . The new group tasked Marx and Engels with writing

324-420: Was the most prominent leader in the movement. Weitling denounced private property and money as a source of corruption and exploitation . Other significant leaders included Karl Schapper , Bruno Bauer , Joseph Moll , August Hermann Ewerbeck , and Johann Hoeckerig. Many members of the League of the Just were involved in the 12 May 1839 Blanquist revolt . This led to the group being expelled by

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