CRUCIBLE OF REVOLUTION 2 g
erations the earth could be converted into a Paradise in which
theft, envy, poverty, and murder would be unknown!
Die Menschheit, like Weitling's later publications, revealed the
soul of a man who in spite of his stress upon materialism, rational-
ism, skepticism, and anticlericalism, spoke with the fervor of a
religious prophet. He wrote with the holy fire of an apostle and
with a high moral purpose. In the final analysis he had faith in the
potentialities of man. His life was a bundle of contradictions. He
tried to be a rationalist in his public conduct, yet inwardly he was
motivated by a deep-seated religious sentiment. He was the kind
of man to whom the invention of "systems" came easily because
he was naive enough to underestimate the practical difficulties in
the way of putting them into practice. His fundamental objective
was to bring order out of chaos and to establish harmony and peace
in the world, yet he was never to achieve that harmony and peace
in his own inner self.
In May, 1839, the League of the Just became involved in a revo-
lutionary uprising in the streets of Paris, directed by Blanqui and
Barbès, disciples of Babeuf. Though the rioting was primarily a
demonstration by French members of the Société des Saisons,
Weitling, Schapper, and other Germans were involved to some
degree; and German workmen fought bravely on the barricades
around the Hotel de Ville, side by side with their French com-
rades. Schapper and Bauer were thrown in jail and later, with
Moll, escaped to England. Blanqui and Barbès had their sentences
commuted to life imprisonment. Weitling was neither appre-
hended nor prosecuted, but his League of the Just was broken up,
with the French societies, and was forced to shift the center of its
activities to London.
German journeymen already had carried the seeds of commu-
nism into Germany, and, though the number of communists in
the German states hardly exceeded a few thousand, the authori-
ties were on the alert. Friedrich Engels, writing to Marx, reported
hearing lectures on communism in his home town of Elberfeld-
barré
(Barré)
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