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of the Viennese revolution, in which he had participated as a mere
lad of sixteen, Hassaurek considered his paper "an organ for in
tellectual enlightenment and social reform." An agnostic and an
enemy of the church, he had become a leading spokesman for the
Freie Gemeinde and the Freimännervereine, rationalist societies
which wanted to substitute ethical culture for old-fashioned re
ligion and organized churches. Weitling distrusted and opposed
the movement, "lest it lead us back into the tutelage of the con
fused... German philosophers" and "the vague, dizzy craving
for liberty which we have successfully combated for twenty
years."^15 He was willing to credit these freethinkers' associations
with rendering real service to science, knowledge, and culture,
but he regarded religion "as something higher, which presupposes
that man has the capacity to transcend himself, and with living
emotion, reach across to that which is greater than he is."^16 The
atheism of Hassaurek and the Freimännervereine represented
nothing more to Weitling's mind than "simply another philo
sophical form ... to bring the destruction and evil inclinations
of the heart... under the control of decency... ." Hassaurek
retaliated by attacking the "brain storms" of all the disciples of
Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Weitling and by consigning the Ar¬
beiterbund and its sponsor to Russia where all "czars" belong.^17
Quite unfairly he accused Weitling of being a "slave of the priest
hood," though on one occasion the latter actually supported Wilhelm Nast, the founder of German Methodism, in an attack in
his Christliche Apologete on Hassaurek's materialism. Karl Hein-
zen once referred to the editor of the Hochwächter as a mere
"beer hall Demosthenes." As a matter of fact, Hassaurek devel
oped into a successful orator in both the English and the German
language. In due time he shed much of the anticlerical radicalism
of his youth, and became a political appointee of Lincoln, who
sent him to Ecuador as minister. In 1872, Hassaurek became a
Liberal Republican, and in 1876 he voted for Tilden.
(^15) Rep. d. Arb., August 9, 1851. (^16) Ibid., December 3, 1853.
(^17) Cincinnati Hochwächter, April 28, 1852.