314 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST1 New Yorker Staatszeitung, January 27, 1871.(^2) New York Times, January 27, 1871.
interest as that with which he had calculated the distances of the
stars.
On January 24, 1871, the veteran agitator for social justice at
tended his last public meeting, a fraternal feast and festival of the
German, French, Czech, and English sections of the Workers'
International of New York. The occasion provided a fitting climax
for the career of the pioneer communist and that touch of the
dramatic which Weitling always appreciated. The next morning
he suffered a stroke and fourteen hours later he was dead. He died
at 178 Stanton Street in a modest two-story house, with a little
grocery store in the basement. The Weitlings occupied the rooms
on the second floor.
An advertisement in one of the German-language papers of
New York, signed "several friends," requested the "comrades" of
the deceased to meet at the home for funeral services and to as
semble later at the hall of the tailors' union. The funeral, held on
Sunday, was largely attended by friends, fellow-craftsmen, and
members of some of the old co-operatives which Weitling had
helped to found. We know nothing about the nature of the serv
ices, but we may assume that the ceremonies probably were
directed by kindred spirits from the tailors' organization and were
appropriate for the burial of a man who had never been on friendly
terms with the clergy. Weitling was buried in a "humble location"
in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Later the body was re
moved for reburial in the family plot. On the day of the funeral
the tailors presented the widow with a purse of $100, and fellow
employees of her eldest son collected a like amount.^1 A committee
of seven, including Sorge, was designated to receive contributions
to provide additional financial relief to the needy family.
Most of the New York papers took little or no notice of the
passing of a man whose name once had been well known in the
ranks of radicals and labor leaders on two continents. The New
York Times, however,^2 published a fairly long obituary, headed