240 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST(^4) Andrä Dietsch, Das tausendjährige Reich, nebst Plan und Statuten zur Grim-
dung von "Neu Helvetia im Staate Missouri in Nordamerika''^1 [Aarau, 1844].
underprivileged with but five years' schooling and a thorough
education in the sufferings of the poor, presented a moving ac
count of the inequalities and injustices of the social order as he
knew them from his own bitter experience. He decided that the
"Father in heaven did not want it so; only man has made it so."
He proceeded to draw a blueprint for Utopia and, having laid the
theoretical basis for the new society, he was eager to put his the
ories into practice. In 1843, he perfected his plans for a colony in
America and invited Weitling to go with him, but the latter at
the moment seems to have had little faith in the success of such a
scheme. As a matter of fact, Dietsch's colony of New Helvetia,
Missouri, located near Westphalia about eighteen miles from
Jefferson City, failed very quickly.^4 The founder died in St. Louis,
probably during the winter of 1845-46, bitterly disillusioned by
the selfishness of his followers. The remnants of his colony moved
to the city, and today there is nothing left to remind the visitor of
this early Utopia except a few graves; even the name of the colony
seems to be unknown to the local historians.
Meantime, Hermann Kriege had organized communist associa
tions in New York. Their influence spread into the interior. After
contact with one of these little groups in St. Louis and with the
aid of Heinrich Koch, publisher of the communist Antipfaff, the
survivors of Dietsch's New Helvetia and several others interested
in colonization formed a new organization from which the settle
ment in Iowa resulted in 1847. Seven years later, two of the orig
inal members of Dietsch's colony still lived in Communia.
Heinrich Koch, first leader of the Iowa colony, was a native of
Bayreuth, who had come to the United States after the Revolution
of 1830. He was a strange individual, sharply critical of American
society, a violent opponent of the clergy, and a follower of Owen
and Fourier. A fiery speaker and a fighting journalist who was
called the "second Tom Paine," he had risen to leadership among
the German workers of St. Louis. At the outbreak of the Mexican