114 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
transformation of society in his pocket. On the other hand, Paul
Annenkov, a Russian friend and creditor of Marx, pictured him as
a "handsome, fair, young man, whose coat had a somewhat foppish
cut, and whose beard was foppishly trimmed," and "who re
sembled a commis voyageur more than the dark, bitter worker,
oppressed by the burden of his labor and his thoughts."
Weitling knew that Marx was organizing a communist party
with himself at the head. He could not have been ignorant of the
fact that Marxism was making inroads among his erstwhile follow
ers, such as Philippe Gigot, Ferdinand Wolff, Louis Heilberg, and
Sebastian Seiler, though in the final realignment, the last two stood
with him. With the help of Gigot and Engels, Marx was carrying
on a correspondence in three languages with communist leaders
in many places, hoping to find a common doctrine which all
could accept. He was eager to "purge" the party of its "senti
mentality" and to crush both the artisan communism of Weitling
and the philosophical communism of Hess. Proudhon refused to
co-operate with his plans; Louis Blanc, on the other hand, kept in
touch with the committee of correspondence in Brussels. Schapper
and Ewerbeck replied from London, and letters were exchanged
with others in Kiel, Silesia, Cologne, and elsewhere.
Weitling could hardly be ignored in the launching of the new
party, and so he was invited to participate in the preliminary dis
cussions. The group consisted originally of seventeen of the faith
ful, the majority of whom definitely belonged to the bourgeoisie.
Among them were Freiligrath, Hess, Marx's brother-in-law,
Edgar von Westphalen, Weydemeyer, a former artillery officer,
Seiler, Heilberg, Gigot, an employee of the Brussels library, Ernst
and Ferdinand Wolff, two German typesetters, Ernst Dronke,
later editor of the Neue Rheiniscbe Zeitung, Weitling, and several
others. The group met twice a week under the name of a workers'
educational society for discussion and debate, amateur theatricals,
singing, and lectures.^14 It was this small group who eventually
(^14) Eden and Cedar Paul (trans.), Otto Rühle's Karl Marx, His Life and Work
(New York, 1929), 145.