THE GERMAN REVOLUTION 125no communist party as such, and Heinzen later accused the Marx
ian communists of sabotaging the revolution.
Weitling arrived in Paris on a Sunday, two days before the end
of the June revolution in France. He reported that he and his
traveling companion were locked into their hotel because street
fighting, of which he claims to have heard while still on shipboard,
was still in progress. According to his own account, he saw the
National Guard entraining for another descent upon the heart
of Paris; and when he shouted to them, "Messieurs! il ne faut pas
tirer sur les ouvriers," he immediately was thrown to the ground
and overpowered by "mouchards" (spies). Whatever the facts
may have been (and his report seems exaggerated, to say the least),
we know that the German communist did not remain long in
France. As he moved on into his native land, passing through
Frankfurt and Heidelberg, he had revolutionary pamphlets
printed and distributed, including the Nothruf which he had
issued originally in New York. Weitling also spoke at a meeting
in Cologne at which he demanded a thoroughgoing reorganiza
tion of all political and social institutions. As he moved eastward
he found the Mecklenburgers quite responsive to his type of
propaganda, for in this area of large estates there were many sur
vivals of medieval feudalism, and some Mecklenburgers were talk
ing hopefully about a peasant uprising.
We know comparatively little about Weitling's associates on
this barnstorming trip for revolution. Hermann Kriege came over
from the United States and, when the Frankfurt Parliament be
came more and more conservative, joined in the call for a demo
cratic congress in Berlin which he and Weitling attended.^3 Johann
Christian Luchow, a tailor and former colleague, published a labor
paper known as the Werkstatt in Hamburg and distributed revo
lutionary poems and pamphlets. Seiler, another friend of Weitling's, took part in the uprisings in Baden and Westphalia in 1849.
Christian Friedrich Mentel, a tailor, and Karl Joseph Haetzel, a
(^3) See Wilhelm Bolin (ed.), Ausgewählte Briefe von und an Ludwig Feuerbach
(Leipzig, 1904), I, 115—16.