IN SWITZERLAND 37
a journalist, teacher, and incomparable reader of Goethe, had been
a student of Dr. Georg Büchner at Giessen and had served time in
a Darmstadt jail for revolutionary activities. The son of a minister,
he became a communist in Switzerland and was one of the most
courageous champions of the new radicalism. Mehring, historian
of socialism, called him "a good natured bum," but he was far more
than that. He was one of Weitling's ablest followers and advisers,
trying to dispel the factional strife among the workers and to unite
them for one grand attack on private property. He endorsed most
of Weitling's program and credited him with being an original
thinker. Yet he also was one of the few who frankly told his friend
the truth when the latter revealed signs of jealousy and envy, or
ambition to become the "Communist Pope."^14 Among the out
standing workers with whom Weitling was closely associated
were such stalwarts as Niels Lorenz Petersen, the son of a shoe
maker of Copenhagen, who embraced communism in Switzerland;
Simon Schmidt, a tanner from Liegnitz, who had worked in
France, learned of communism from his Swiss barber, wrote essays
under the name of "Sebastiano," and became an active organizer of
worker's clubs in Switzerland; the tailor Bartels, whom Weitling
met again in Louisville in 1851; Karl Joseph August Haetzel, a
Catholic and a shoemaker, born in Neumarkt, near Breslau.
Like other radical groups, the communists have always had
their lunatic fringe. Indeed, there were those who would have put
Weitling himself into this category, especially during the later
months of his stay in Switzerland. Among the most picturesque of
these unbalanced extremists were Georg Kuhlmann of Holstein
and the "Prophet Albrecht." Kuhlmann was an erratic physician
who became a communist. He regarded himself as a prophet, wore
his hair and beard long, lectured on "The New World, or the
Proclamation of the Rule of the Spirit on Earth" and talked about
establishing colonies in Turkey. The Prophet Albrecht came from(^14) See August Becker, Was Wollen die Kommunisten? (Bern, 1843); Brugger,
Deutsche Handwerker in der Schweiz, 147; and Dokumente des Sozialismus
(Berlin, 1902), I, 203-17.