Joseph Weydemeyer

Who was Joseph Weydemeyer?

Joseph Arnold Weydemeyer was a military officer in the Kingdom of Prussia and the United States, as well as a journalist, politician and Marxist revolutionary.

At first a supporter of "true socialism" he became, in 1845-46, a follower of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. He became a member of the League of Communists. From 1849 to 1851 he headed its Frankfurt chapter. He visited Marx in Brussels, staying there for a time to attend Marx’s lectures. He participated in the 1848 Revolution. He was one of the "responsible editors" of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from 1849 to 1850. He was involved in the writing of the manuscript of the Deutsche Ideologie.

He worked on two socialist periodicals which were the Westphälisches Dampfboot and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. In 1851 he emigrated from Germany to the United States and worked there as a journalist. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, written by Karl Marx, was published in 1852 in "Die Revolution", a German-language monthly magazine in New York, established by Weydemeyer.

Weydemeyer took part in the US Civil War as a colonel in the Union Army.