20 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
organizations and, though frequently founded and directed by
exiled students and intellectuals, gave more and more emphasis to
the demands of the workers.
The first secret society of German refugees established in Paris
probably was the Association patriotique allemande. It was
founded to promote the freedom and unity of the German states.
In 1834 the Society of Exiles, or Banished {Bund der Geächteten),
was organized. It is known that Weitling was a member of this
organization during his first sojourn in Paris. Its leaders were
Theodore Schuster, an instructor in law at the University of
Göttingen and a friend of Buonarroti, and Jakob Venedey of
Heidelberg, a Freemason who had escaped to France from a Ger
man prison and later served as a member of the Frankfurt Parlia
ment of 1848.^11 The membership, estimated to number between
200 and 500, consisted largely of German journeymen organized
in tents or huts (Zelten). The society demanded the liberation of
Germany under a republic and operated in a fashion typical of
secret organizations, demanding blind obedience to its official
hierarchy.
In 1836, several hundred seceders from the Society of Exiles,
under the leadership of the more radical Schuster, joined a new
League of the Just {Bund der Gerechten).^12 Lamennais' Paroles
d'un Croyant had considerable influence on the new League and
was distributed in translation among the German workers of Paris.
It was this League of the Just that attracted Weitling's interest and
enlisted his active support on his return to the French metropolis
in the fall of 1837, and it was as one of its members that he achieved
fame in the early history of communist activities in France, Ger
many, Belgium, Switzerland, and England. He was not its
founder^13 but he quickly became one of its most influential lead
ers. All the while, he was working at his trade as a tailor, sometimes
(^11) See review of Wilhelm Koppen, Jakob Venedey (Frankfurt, 1924), in Marx¬
Engels Archiv, II (1927), 587-91.
(^12) Max Beer, Allgemeine Geschichte des Sozialismus (Berlin, 1924), 434.
(^13) Leopold Schwarzschild, The Red Prussian, The Life and Legend of Karl
Marx (New York, 1947), 92, takes a contrary view.