Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 1852
Together with Gustav, Rodomonte [the nickname refers back to the quotation closing the former chapter] Heinzen had arrived in London from Switzerland. Karl Heinzen had for many years made a living from his threat to destroy "tyranny" in Germany. After the outbreak of the February Revolution he went so far as to attempt, with unheard-of courage, to inspect German soil from the vantage point of Schuster Island [near Basle]. He then betook himself to Switzerland where from the safety of Geneva he again thundered against the “tyrants and oppressors of the people” and took the opportunity to declare that “Kossuth is a great man, but Kossuth has forgotten about explosive silver”. His horror of bloodshed was such that it turned him into the alchemist of the revolution. He dreamt of an explosive substance that would blast the whole European reaction into the air in a trice without its users even getting their fingers burnt. He had a particular aversion to walking amid a shower of bullets and in general to conventional warfare in which principles are no defence against bullets. Under the government of Brentano he risked a revolutionary visit to Karlsruhe. As he did not receive the reward he thought due to him for his heroic deeds he resolved to edit the Moniteur [38] of that "traitor" Brentano. But as the Prussians advanced he declared that Heinzen would not "let himself be shot" for that traitor Brentano. Under the pretext of forming an elite corps where political principles and military organisation would mutually complement each other, i.e. where military cowardice would pass for political courage, his constant search for the ideal free corps made him retrace his steps until he had regained the familiar territory of Switzerland. Sophie's Journey from Memel to Saxony [39] was a good deal more bloody than Heinzen's revolutionary expedition. On his arrival in Switzerland he declared that there were no longer any real men in Germany, that the authentic explosive silver had not yet been discovered, that the war was not being conducted on revolutionary principles but in the normal fashion with powder and lead, and that he intended to revolutionise in Switzerland as Germany was a lost cause. In the secluded idyll of Switzerland and with the tortured dialect they speak there it was easy for Rodomonte to pass for a German writer and even for a dangerous man. He achieved his aim. He was expelled and dispatched to London at Federal expense. Rodomonte Heinzen had not directly participated in the European revolutions; but, undeniably, he had moved about extensively on their behalf. When the February Revolution broke out he took up a collection of “revolutionary money” in New York, hastened to the aid of his country and advanced as far as the Swiss border. When the March Club's [40] revolution collapsed he retired from Switzerland to beyond the Channel at the expense of the Swiss Federal Council. He had the satisfaction of making the revolution pay for his advance and the counter-revolution for his retreat.
At every turn in the Italian epics of chivalry we encounter mighty, broad-shouldered giants armed with colossal staves who despite the fact that they lash about them wildly and make a frightening din in battle, never manage to kill their foes but only to destroy the trees in the vicinity. Mr. Heinzen is such an Ariostian giant in political literature. Endowed by nature with a churlish figure and huge masses of flesh he interpreted these gifts to mean that he was destined to be a great man. His weighty physical appearance determines his whole literary posture which is physical through and through. His opponents are always small, mere dwarfs, who can barely reach his ankles and whom he can survey with his kneecap. When, however, he should indeed make a physical appearance, our uomo membruto takes refuge in literature or in the courts. Thus scarcely had he reached the safety of English soil than he wrote a tract on moral courage. Or again, our giant allowed a certain Mr. Richter to thrash him so frequently and so thoroughly in New York that the magistrate, who at first only imposed insignificant fines relented and in recognition of Heinzen's doggedness he sentenced the dwarf Richter to pay 200 dollars damages. The natural complement to this great physique so healthy in every fibre is the healthy commonsense which Heinzen ascribes to himself in the highest possible degree. It is inevitable that a man with such commonsense will turn out to be a natural genius who has learnt nothing, a barbarian innocent of literature and science. By virtue of his commonsense (which he also calls his "perspicacity" and which allows him to tell Kossuth that he has "advanced to the extreme frontiers of thought"), he learns only from hearsay or the newspapers. He is therefore always behind the times and always wears the coat that literature has cast off some years previously, while rejecting as immoral and reprehensible the new modern dress he cannot find his way into. But when he has once assimilated a thing his faith in it is unshakable; it transforms itself into something that has grown naturally, that is self-evident, that everyone must immediately agree to and that only malicious, stupid or sophisticated persons will pretend not to believe. Such a robust body and healthy commonsense must of course have also some honest, down-to-earth principles and he even shows to advantage when he takes the craze for principles to extremes. In this field Heinzen is second to none. He draws attention to his principles at every opportunity, every argument is met by an appeal to principle, everyone who fails to understand him or whom he does not understand is demolished by the argument that he has no real principles, his insincerity and pure ill-will are such that he would deny that day was day and night night. To deal with these base disciples of Ahriman [Zoroastrian demon who returns to earth every 1000 years to wreak havoc] he summons up his muse, indignation; he curses, rages, boasts, preaches, and foaming at the mouth he roars out the most tragicomical imprecations. He demonstrates what can be achieved in the field of literary invective by a man to whom Börne’s [41] wit and literary talent are equally alien. As the muse is, so is the style. An eternal bludgeon, but a commonplace bludgeon with knots that are not even original or sharp. Only when he encounters science does he feel momentarily at a loss. He is then like that Billingsgate fishwife with whom O'Connell became involved in a shouting match and whom he silenced by replying to a long string of insults: "You are all that and worse: you are an isosceles triangle, you are a parallelepiped".
From the earlier history of Mr. Heinzen mention should be made of the fact that he was in the Dutch colonies where he advanced not indeed to the rank of general but to that of NCO, a slight for which he later on always treated the Dutch as a nation without principles. Later we find him back in Cologne as a sub-inspector of taxes and in this capacity he wrote a comedy in which his healthy commonsense vainly strove to satirise the philosophy of Hegel. He was more at home in the gossip columns of the Kölnische Zeitung, in the feuilleton where he let fall some weighty words about the quarrels in the Cologne Carnival Club, the institute from which all the great men of Cologne have graduated. His own sufferings and those of his father, a forester, in his conflicts with superiors assumed the proportions of events of universal significance, as easily happens when the man of healthy commonsense contemplates his little personal problems. He gives an account of them in his Prussian Bureaucracy, a book much inferior to Venedey's [42] and containing nothing more than the complaints of a petty official against the higher authorities. The book involved him in a trial and although the worst he had to fear was six months in gaol he thought his head was in danger and fled to Brussels. From here he demanded that the Prussian government should not only grant him a safe conduct but also that they should suspend the whole French legal system and give him a jury trial for an ordinary offence. The Prussian government issued a warrant for his arrest; he replied with a “warrant“ against the Prussian government which contained inter alia a sermon on moral resistance and constitutional monarchy and condemned revolution as immoral and jesuitical. From Brussels he went to Switzerland. Here, as we saw above, he met Friend Arnold and from him he learnt not only his philosophy but also a very useful method of self-enrichment. Just as Arnold sought to assimilate the ideas of his opponents in the course of polemicising against them, so Heinzen learned to acquire ideas new to him by reviling them. Hardly had he become an atheist than with all the zeal of the proselyte he immediately plunged into a furious polemic against poor old Follen [August Follen, German poet who wrote a collection of sonnets aimed against Heinzen and Ruge] because the latter saw no reason to become an atheist in his old age. Having had his nose rubbed in the Swiss Federal Republic our healthy commonsense developed to the point where it desired to introduce the Federal Republic into Germany too. The same commonsense came to the conclusion that this could not be done without a revolution and so Heinzen became a revolutionary. He then began a trade in pamphlets which in the coarsest tones of the Swiss peasant preached immediate revolution and death to the rulers from whom all the evils of the world stem. He sought out committees in Germany who would drum up the cost of printing and distributing these pamphlets and this led naturally to the growth of a begging industry on a large scale in the course of which the party workers were first exploited and then reviled. Old Itzstein could tell a story or two about that. These pamphlets gave Heinzen a great reputation among itinerant German wine salesmen who praised him everywhere as a bonny little fighter.
From Switzerland he went to America. Here, although his Swiss rustic style enabled him to pass as a genuine poet he nevertheless managed to ride the New York Schnellpost to death in no time at all
Having returned to Europe in the wake of the February revolution he sent despatches to the Mannheimer Zeitung announcing the arrival of the great Heinzen and he also published a pamphlet to revenge himself on Lamartine who together with his whole government had refused to acknowledge him as an official representative of the American Germans. He still did not wish to go to Prussia as he still feared for his head despite the March Revolution and the general amnesty. He would wait until the nation summoned him. As this did not happen he resolved to stand in absentia for the Hamburg constituency to the Frankfurt Parliament: his hope was that he would compensate for being a bad speaker by the loudness of his voice — but he lost the election.
Arriving in London after the collapse of the Baden uprising he fell into a rage with the young people who knew nothing of this great man of before the revolution and of after the revolution, and who caused him to sink into oblivion. He had always been nothing more than l'homme de la veille or l'homme du lendemain, he was never l'homme du jour or even de la journée. As the authentic exploding silver had still not been discovered new weapons had to be found to combat the reaction. He called for two million heads so that he could be a dictator and wade up to the ankles in blood — shed by others. His real aim was, of course, to create a scandal; the reaction had brought him to London at its own expense, by means of an expulsion order from England it would now, so Heinzen hoped, expedite him gratis to New York. The coup failed and its only consequence was that the radical French papers called him a fool who shouted for two million heads only because he had never risked his own. To complete the picture it should be pointed out that his bloodthirsty article had been published in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung owned by the ex-Duke of Brunswick — in return for a cash payment, of course.
Gustav and Heinzen had admired each other for a considerable time. Heinzen praised Gustav as a sage and Gustav praised Heinzen as a fighter. Heinzen had scarcely been able to wait for the end of the European revolution so that he could put an end to the “ruinous disunity in the democratic German emigration” and to re-open his pre-revolutionary business. He called for discussion of a draft programme of the German Revolutionary Party. This programme was distinguished by the invention of a special ministry “to cater for the all-important need for public playgrounds, battlegrounds” (minus hail of bullets) “and gardens”, and was notable also for the article abolishing “the privileges of the male sex especially in marriage” (and also in thrusting maneuvers [Stosstaktik] in war, see Clausewitz). This programme was actually no more than a diplomatic note from Heinzen to Gustav as no-one else was clamouring for it. And instead of the hoped for unification it brought about the immediate separation of the two warriors. Heinzen had demanded that during the “revolutionary transition period” there should be a single dictator who would moreover be a Prussian and, to preclude all misunderstandings, he added: “No soldier can qualify as dictator.“ Gustav, on the other hand, argued for a triumvirate comprising two Badeners and himself. Moreover, Gustav found that Heinzen had included in his prematurely published programme an “idea” stolen from him. This put an end to the second attempt at unification and Heinzen, denied recognition by the whole world, receded into obscurity until, in Autumn 1850, he found English soil too hot for him and sailed off to New York.
After the indefatigable Gustav had made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a Central Refugee Committee together with Friedrich Bobzin, Habegg, Oswald, Rosenblum, Cohaheim, Grunich and other "outstanding" men, he made his way towards Yorkshire. For here, so he believed, a magic garden would flower and in it, unlike the garden of Alcine, [43] virtue would rule instead of vice. An old Englishman with a sense of humour who had been bored by Gustav's theories took him at his word and gave him a few acres of moor in Yorkshire on the express condition that he would there found a “colony of renunciation”, a colony in which the consumption of meat, tobacco and spirits would be strictly prohibited, only a vegetarian diet would be permitted and where every colonist would be obliged to read a chapter from Struve's book on Constitutional Law at his morning prayers. Moreover, the colony was to be self-supporting. Accompanied by his Amalia, by Schnauffer, his Swabian canary and by a few other good men and true, Gustav placed his trust in God and went to found the “Colony of Renunciation”. Of the colony it must be reported that it contained little prosperity, much culture and unlimited freedom to be bored and to grow thin. One fine morning Gustav uncovered a dreadful plot. His companions who did not share Gustav's ruminant constitution had resolved behind his back to slaughter the old cow, the only one and one whose milk provided the chief source of income of the “Colony of Renunciation”. Gustav wrung his hands and shed bitter tears at this betrayal of a fellow creature. He indignantly dissolved the colony and decided to become a "wet" Quaker [44] if he were unable to revive the Deutscher Zuschauer or to establish a “provisional government” in London.
Arnold, who was anything but content in his retreat in Ostend and who longed for a “frequent appearance” before the public, heard of Gustav's misfortune. He resolved to return to England at once and by climbing on Gustav's shoulders, to hoist himself into the pentarchy of European democracy. For in the meantime the European Central Committee [45] had been formed consisting of Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin and Darasz. Mazzini of course was the soul of the enterprise. Ruge thought he could smell a vacant position. In his Proscrit Mazzini had indeed introduced General Ernst Haug, his own invention, as the German associate but for decency’s sake it was not possible to nominate such a completely unknown person onto the Central Committee. Ruge was not unaware of the fact that Gustav had had dealings with Mazzini in Switzerland. He himself was acquainted with Ledru-Rollin but unfortunately Ledru-Rollin was not acquainted with him. So Arnold took up residence in Brighton and flattered and cajoled the unsuspecting Gustav, promised to help him found a Deutscher Zuschauer in London and even to undertake as a joint venture the democratic publication of the Rotteck-Welcker Lexicon of Politics with Ruge paying the costs. At the same time he introduced Gustav as a great man and collaborator into the local German paper which in accordance with his principles he always had on tap (this time the blow fell on the Bremer Tages-Chronik of the nonconformist parson Dulon). One good deed deserves another: Gustav presented Arnold to Mazzini. As Arnold's French was wholly incomprehensible there was nothing to prevent him from introducing himself to Mazzini as the greatest man in Germany and above all as her greatest “thinker”. The canny Italian idealist at once realised that Arnold was the man he was looking for, the homme sans conséquence who would provide the German countersignature of his anti-papal Bulls. Thus Arnold Ruge became the fifth wheel on the state coach of European democracy. When an Alsatian asked Ledru what on earth possessed him to make an ally of such a bête, Ledru replied brusquely: “He is Mazzini's man.” When Mazzini was asked why he became involved with Ledru, a man bereft of all ideas, he answered slyly: “I took him for that very reason.” Mazzini himself had every reason to avoid people with ideas. But Arnold Ruge saw his wildest dreams come true and for the moment he even forgot Bruno Bauer.
When the time came for him to sign Mazzini's first manifesto he sadly recalled the days when he had presented himself to Professor Leo in Halle and old Follen in Switzerland as a Trinitarian on one occasion and as a humanist atheist on another. This time he had to declare himself for God and against the princes. However, Arnold's philosophic conscience had been enfeebled by his association with Dulon and other parsons among whom he passed for a philosopher. Even in his best days Arnold could not entirely suppress a certain foible for religion in general and moreover his “honest consciousness” kept on whispering to him: Sign, Arnold! Paris vaut bien une messe. One does not become fifth wheel on the coach of the provisional govemment of Europe in partibus for nothing. Reflect, Arnold! all you have to do is sign a manifesto every two weeks, and as a member of the German Parliament, in the company of the greatest men in all Europe. And bathed in perspiration Arnold signs. A curious joke, he murmurs. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte. He had copied this last sentence into his notebook the previous night. However, Arnold had not come to the end of his trials. The European Central Committee had issued a series of manifestos to Europe, to the French, the Italians, the Poles and the Wallachians and now, following the great battle at Bronzell, [46] it was Germany’s turn. In his draft Mazzini attacked the Germans for their lack of cosmopolitan spirit, and in particular, for their arrogant treatment of Italian salami vendors, organ-grinders, confectioners, dormouse tamers and mouse-trap sellers. Taken aback Arnold confessed that it was true. He went further. He declared his readiness to cede the Austrian Tirol and Istria to Mazzini. But this was not enough. He had not only to appeal to the conscience of the German people, but also to attack them where they were most vulnerable. Arnold received instructions that this time he was to have an opinion, as he represented the German element. He felt like the student Jobs. [47] He scratched himself thoughtfully behind his ear and after long reflection he stuttered: “Since the age of Tacitus the voices of German bards and baritones can be heard. In winter they kindle fires on all the mountains so as to warm their feet.” The bards, the baritones and fires on all the mountains! That will put a bomb under German freedom! thought Mazzini with a grin. The bards, baritones, fires on all the mountains and German freedom to boot went into the manifesto as a sop for the German nation. To his astonishment Arnold had passed the examination and understood for the first time with what little wisdom the world is governed. From that moment on he despised Bruno Bauer more than ever for all his eighteen hefty tomes written while he was still young.
While Arnold in the wake of the European Central Committee was signing warlike manifestoes with God, for Mazzini and against the princes, the peace movement was raging not only in England, under the aegis of Cobden, but even beyond the North Sea. So that in Frankfurt/Main the Yankee swindler, Elihu Burritt together with Cobden, Jaup, Girardin and the Red Indian Ka-gi-ga-gi-wa-wa-be-ta organised a Peace Congress. Our Arnold was just itching to be able to make one of his “frequent appearances” and to give birth to a manifesto. So he proclaimed himself the corresponding member of the Frankfurt Assembly and sent over an extremely confused Peace Manifesto translated out of Cobden's speeches into his own speculative Pomeranian. Various Germans drew Arnold's attention to the contradiction between his warlike attitude in the Central Committee and his peaceful Quakerism. He would reply: “Well, there you have the contradictions. That's the dialectic for you. In my youth I studied Hegel.” His “honest consciousness” was eased by the thought that Mazzini knew no German and that it was not hard to pull the wool over his eyes.
Moreover, his relationship with Mazzini promised to become even more secure thanks to the protection of Harro Harring who had just landed in Hull. For with Harring a new and highly symptomatic character steps onto the stage.
The great drama of the democratic emigration of 1848-52 had been preceded by a prelude eighteen years previously: the democratic emigration of 1830-31. Even though with the passage of time most of the players had disappeared from the stage there still remained a few noble ruins who, stoically indifferent to the course of history and their own lack of success, continued their activities as agitators, devised comprehensive plans, formed provisional governments and hurled proclamations into the world in every direction. It is obvious that these experienced swindlers were infinitely superior to the younger generation in business know-how. It was this very know-how acquired through eighteen years practice in conspiring, scheming, intriguing, proclaiming, duping, showing off and pushing oneself to the fore that gave Mr. Mazzini the cheek and the assurance to install himself as the Central Committee of European democracy supported only by three straw men of much smaller experience in such matters.
No one was more favoured by circumstances to become the very type of the émigré agitator than our friend Harro Harring. And indeed he did become the prototype whom all our heroes of the Exile, all the Arnolds, Gustavs and Gottfrieds strove more or less consciously and with varying success to emulate. They may even equal him if circumstances are not unfavourable, but they will hardly surpass him.
Harro who like Caesar has himself described his own great deeds (London 1852) was born on the “Cimbrian peninsula” and belongs to that visionary North Frisian race which has already been shown by Dr. Clement to have produced all the great nations of the world.
“Already in early youth” he attempted to “set the seal of action upon his enthusiasm for the cause of the peoples“ by going to Greece in 1821. We see how Friend Harro had an early premonition of his mission to be everywhere where confusion reigned. Later on “a strange fate led him to the source of absolutism, to the vicinity of the Czar and he had seen through the Jesuitism of constitutional monarchy in Poland“.
So Harro fought for freedom in Poland also. But “the crisis in the history of Europe following the fall of Warsaw greatly perplexed him”, and his perplexity led him to the idea of “the democracy of nations”, which he at once “documented in the work: The Nations, Strasbourg, March 1832”. It is worth remarking that this work was almost quoted at the Hambacher Fest. [48] At the same time he published his “republican poems: Blutstropfen [Drops of Blood]; The History of King Saul or the Monarchy; Male voices on Germany's Freedom” and edited the journal Deutschland in Strasbourg. All these and even his future writings had the unexpected good fortune to be banned by the Federal Diet on November 4, 1831. This was the only thing he still lacked, only now did he achieve real importance and also the martyr's crown. So that he could exclaim “My writings were everywhere well received and echoed loudly in the hearts of the people. They were mostly distributed gratis. In the case of some of them I did not even receive enough to cover the Costs of printing.”
But new honours still awaited him. In 1831 Mr. Welcker had vainly attempted in a long letter “to convert him to the vertical horizon of constitutional monarchy”. And now, in January 1832, there came a visit from Mr. Malten, a well-known Prussian agent abroad, who proposed that he should enter Prussian service. What double recognition this was — and from the enemy too! Enough, Malten's offer “triggered off the idea that in the face of this dynastic treachery he should give birth to the concept of Scandinavian nationality”, and “from that time on at least the word Scandinavia was reborn after having been forgotten for centuries”.
In this manner our North Frisian from South Jutland who did not know himself whether he was a German or a Dane acquired at least an imaginary nationality whose first consequence was that the men of Hambach would have nothing to do with him.
With all these events behind him Harro's fortune was made. Veteran of freedom in Greece and Poland, the inventor of “democracy of nations”, re-discoverer of the word “Scandinavia”, poet acknowledged by the ban of the Federal Diet, thinker and journalist, martyr, a great man esteemed even by his enemies, a man whose allegiance constitutionalists, absolutists and republicans vied with each other to possess and, with all that, empty-headed and confused enough to believe in his own greatness — what then was needed to make his happiness complete? But Harro was a conscientious man and as his fame grew so did the demands which he made upon himself What was missing was a great work that would present in an entertaining and popular form the great doctrines of freedom, the idea of democracy, and of nationality and all the sublime struggles for freedom on the part of the youthful Europe arising before his very eyes. None but a poet and thinker of the very first rank could produce such a work and none but Harro could be this man. Thus arose the first three plays of the “dramatic cycle” The People, of which there were twelve parts in all, one of them in Danish, a labour to which the author devoted ten years of his life. Unfortunately eleven of these twelve parts have “hitherto remained in manuscript”.
However, this dallying with the muse was not to last forever.
“In the winter of 1832-1833 a movement was prepared in Germany — which was brought to a tragic end in the skirmish in Frankfurt. I was entrusted with the task of taking the fortress (?) in Kehl on the night of 6 April. Men and weapons were at the ready.“
Unfortunately it all came to nothing and Harro had to retire to the depths of France where he wrote his Words of a Man. From there he was summoned to Switzerland by the Poles arming themselves for their march on Savoy. Here he became “attached to their General Staff”, wrote a further two parts of his dramatic cycle The People, and made the acquaintance of Mazzini in Geneva. The whole band of fire-eaters consisting of Polish, French, German, Italian and Swiss adventurers under the command of the noble Ramorino then made their famous attack on Savoy. [49] In this campaign our Harro "discovered the value of his life and strength". But as the other freedom fighters felt “the value of their lives” no less than Harro and no doubt had just as few illusions about their “strength&lrquo; the exploit ended badly and they returned to Switzerland beaten, dishevelled and in disarray.
This campaign was all that was needed to give our band of emigrant knights a complete insight into the terror they inspired in the tyrants. As long as the aftermath of the July Revolution could still be felt in isolated insurrections in France, Germany or Italy, as long as they felt someone or other standing behind them our émigré heroes felt themselves to be but atoms in the seething masses — more or less privileged, prominent atoms, to be sure, but in the last analysis they were still atoms. But as these insurrections gradually grew feebler, as the great mass of “lackeys”, of the “half-hearted” and the “men of little faith” retired from the putschist swindles and as our knights felt increasingly lonely, so did their self-esteem grow in proportion. If the whole of Europe became craven, stupid and selfish, how could our trusty heroes fail to grow in their own estimation, for were they not the priests who kept the sacred fires of hatred for all tyrants burning in their breasts and who maintained the traditions of virtue and love of freedom for a more vigorous generation yet to come! If they too deserted the flag the tyrants would be safe for ever. So like the democrats of 1848 they saw in every defeat a guarantee of future victory and they gradually transformed themselves more and more into itinerant Don Quixotes with dubious sources of income. Once arrived at this point they could plan their greatest act of heroism, the foundation of “Young Europe” whose Charter of Brotherhood was drawn up by Mazzini and signed in Berne on 15 April 1834. Harro appears in it as
“initiator of the Central Committee, adoptive member of Young Germany and Young Italy and also as representative of the Scandinavian branch” which he “still represents today”.
The date of the Charter of Brotherhood marks for Harro the great epoch from which calculations are made forwards and backwards, thus replacing the birth of Christ. It is the highpoint of his life. He was co-dictator of Europe in partibus and although the world knew nothing of him he was one of the most dangerous men alive. No one stood behind him but his many unpublished works, a few German artisans in Switzerland and a dozen political speculators who had seen better days — but for that very reason he could claim that all the people of the world were on his side. For it is the fate of all great men not to be recognised by their own age whereas the future belongs to them. And Harro had taken care of the future — he had it in black and white in his bag in the form of the Charter of Brotherhood.
But now began Harro's decline. His first sorrow was that “Young Germany split off from Young Europe in 1836”. But Germany was duly punished for that. Because of the split “nothing had been prepared for a national movement in Germany early in 1848” and this is why everything ended so miserably.
But a much greater sorrow for Harro was the growth of communism. We learn from him that the founder of communism was none other than
“the cynic Johannes Müller from Berlin, the author of a very interesting pamphlet on Prussian policy, Altenburg 1831”. Müller went to England where “the only available opening for him was in Smithfield Market where he had to tend swine at the crack of dawn”.
Communism soon began to spread among the German artisans in France and Switzerland and it became a very dangerous enemy for Harro as it cut off the only market for his writings. This was due to the “indirect censorship of communism” from which poor Harro has suffered to this very day and indeed it is now worse than ever as he sadly confesses and “as the fate of my drama The Dynasty proves”. This indirect communist censorship even succeeded in expelling Harro from Europe and so he went to Rio de Janeiro (in 1840) where he lived for a time as a painter. “Using his time conscientiously here as everywhere” he brought out a new work: "Poems of a Scandinavian (2000 copies) which has been distributed so widely among sea-faring people as to have become an oceanic best-seller".
However, his “scrupulous sense of obligation towards Young Europe” unfortunately led him to return to the Old World.
He “hastened to Mazzini in London and soon perceived the danger that threatened the cause of the peoples from communism”.
New deeds awaited him. The Bandiera brothers [50] were preparing for their expedition to Italy. To support them and to divert the forces of despotism Harro “returned to South America where in union with Garibaldi he dedicated himself to furthering the idea of a United States of South America”.
But the despots had got wind of his mission and Harro took to his heels. He sailed to New York.
“During the voyage I was very active intellectually and wrote among other things a drama: The Power of Ideas, which belonged to the dramatic cycle The People — this too has remained in MS. up to now!”
From South America he brought with him to New York a programme from a group alleged to be affiliated with Humanidad.
The news of the February Revolution inspired him to produce a pamphlet in French, La France réveillée and while embarking for Europe “I documented my love for my country once again in some poems, Scandinavia”.
He went to Schleswig-Holstein. Here, after an absence of twentyseven years, he “discovered an unheard of conceptual confusion in the sphere of international law, democracy, republicanism socialism and communism, a chaos which lay like rotting hay and straw in the Augean stables of party factions and national hatred”.
No wonder, for his “political writings” like his “whole striving and activities since 1831 had remained alien and unknown in those frontier provinces of my home country”.
The Augustenburg Party [51] had suppressed him for eighteen years by means of a conspiracy of silence. To deal with this he girt on a sabre, a rifle, four pistols and six daggers and called for the formation of a free corps, but in vain. After various adventures he finally arrived in Hull. Here he hastened to issue two circulars to the peoples of Schleswig-Holstein, Scandinavia and Germany and even sent a note, as has been reported, to two communists in London with this message: "Five thousand workers in Norway send you fraternal greetings through me.
Despite this curious appeal he soon became a sleeping partner of the European Central Committee again, thanks to the Charter of Brotherhood, and he also became “nightwatchman and employee of a young firm of brokers in Gravesend on the Thames where my task was to drum up trade among ships’ captains in nine different languages until I was accused of fraud, a thing which the philosopher Johannes Müller was at least spared in his capacity as swineherd”.
Harro summarised his action-packed life as follows:
“It can easily be calculated that apart from my poems I have given away more than 18,000 copies of my writings in German (varying from 10 shillings to 3 Marks in price, and hence amounting to around 25,000 Marks in toto) to the democratic movement. I have never even been reimbursed for the printing costs, let alone received any profit for myself.”
With this we bring the adventures of our demagogic Hidalgo from the South Jutland Mancha to a close. In Greece and Brazil, on the Vistula and La Plata, in Schleswig-Holstein and in New York, in London and in Switzerland: the representative of Young Europe and of the South American Humanidad, painter, nightwatchman and employee, peddler of his own writings; among Poles one day and gauchos the next, and ship’s captains the day after that; unacknowledged, abandoned, ignored but everywhere an itinerant knight of freedom with a thoroughgoing dislike of ordinary bourgeois hard work — our hero at all times in all countries and in all circumstances remains himself; with the same confusion, the same meddlesome pretensions, the same faith in himself He will always defy the world and never cease to say, write and print that since 1831 he has been the mainspring of world history.