92 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
away from the hostels of the journeymen and not leave the city
without permission from the authorities.
For a month or six weeks, Weitling remained in his boyhood
home. Friends in Magdeburg, Hamburg, and elsewhere sent him
small amounts of money, and he borrowed a little more from a
local bookdealer. It was at this time that he was rejected formally
as unfit for military service, an obligation which he had managed
to dodge for ten years by means of a false passport. Once, as a
vagabond, he was transported across the border into Brunswick,
only to be returned promptly to the police of Magdeburg. Prussia
tried in vain to get him to surrender his citizenship, and when he
finally was permitted to leave Magdeburg he did so without having
renounced his Prussian allegiance. Fröbel advised him to stay in
Germany, claim his legal rights as a Prussian citizen, win friends
who could help him financially, and abandon the role of the lone
martyr which he had assumed in Switzerland.^1 But Weitling had
other plans. Promising to provide him with funds and a steamship
ticket for England or the United States, the police finally got rid
of their troublesome fellow townsman. Weitling proceeded by
boat down the Elbe to Hamburg. He claimed that he was escorted
to the dock by a large number of citizens, but this seems extremely
doubtful, unless the crowd simply wanted to witness the departure
of one whose presence had become extremely embarrassing to the
authorities.
Weitling arrived in Hamburg on August 18, 1844, and departed
on the steamer Neptun five days later. In this short period of less
than a week, he lived at the Gasthof zur Stadt Wilster under police
surveillance but otherwise unmolested. Two events made the brief
stay in Hamburg of some importance. One was an unexpected
meeting with the poet Heine; the other was the publication of a
small collection of poems.
The meeting with Heine occurred in the bookstore of Julius
Campe, owner of Hoffmann und Campe, who were publishers for
a number of the Young Germany group, including Heine and
(^1) Barnikol, Weitling der Gefangene, 228-30.