III.5.2 A friend of Friedrich Engels

III.5.2 A friend of Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels ~1860

Everybody know about Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels nowadays who wrote the communist manifest and had been founder of the Marxism ideology.

But everybody forgot about the police commissioner and censor in Barmen, home town of Friedrich Engels, who lost his position and became demoted  as he did not forbid some of theses thesis in local publications and local conferences of communist party.  

Wilhelm Joseph Conrad Huthsteiner had been chief of police in Barmen (today part of Wuppertal) from 1837 to 1844 and a quite liberal censor. He became demoted and finally sent to Erfurt as he did not act according his Prussian superiors’ requirements, did not suppress enough ideas about communism and acted as a quite liberal censor.

In fact Wilhelm was part of the so called ‘Lesekränzchen Freiligrath-Verein’ where also F. Engels out of a dozen individuals was part of it. They usually met once a week for reading Goethe, Schiller and Shakespeare and some discussions afterwards. Herrmann Püttmann, editor of the Barmen newspaper, another member of this ‘Freiligrath-Verein’, fled from Prussia to Switzerland later, was allowed to come back and work again later, but finally emigrated to Australia, likely together with Wilhelm H.’s brother Rudolph.

In Erfurt, a provincial town in his point of view, Wilhelm was quite unhappy and died early.

 

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