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I5 0 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYBarbes in 1839 and on its failure the majority of its members fled to
London where they founded a flourishing branch.^103 This in its turn
created a 'front' organisation, the German Workers' Educational Union,
which had almost 1000 members by the end of 1847 and survived until
the First World War.
The League was led by a triumvirate of Karl Schapper, Heinrich Bauer
and Joseph Moll. Schapper was a veteran communist from Nassau, the
son of a poor country pastor. As a forestry student he had joined
the Burschenschaft movement and had worked with both Buchner and
Mazzini while Marx was still a schoolboy. According to one of his col-
leagues in the League Schapper was a revolutionary 'more through
enthusiasm than theoretical knowledge'.^104 Bauer was a shoemaker. Moll
was a Cologne watchmaker, intellectually and diplomatically the most
gifted of the three.^105 The Union organised courses four evenings a week
in the Red Lion public house near Piccadilly. A German economics
professor, Bruno Hildebrand, has left an account of one of these evenings
which is worth extensive quotation as it vividly conveys the atmosphere
in which was born the Communist League (and also the German Workers'
Educational Union, which remained peripheral to Marx's activities for
many years). Hildebrand described an evening in April 1846 just at
the time when Marx was beginning to establish regular contact with the
London communists. He wrote:
We went to the meeting place of the Association about half past eight
in an atmosphere of tension and impatience. The ground floor seemed
to be a beer shop. Porter and other fine beers were on sale but I did
not notice any seats for consumers. We went through this shop and up
a staircase into a room furnished with tables and benches which could
accommodate about 200 people. Twenty or so men were seated in little
groups eating a very simple dinner or smoking one of the pipes of
honour (of which there was one on each table) with their pot of beer
in front of them. Others were still standing and the door was always
opening to admit new arrivals. It was clear that the meeting would not
begin for some time. The clothes were very proper, the behaviour had
a simplicity that did not exclude dignity, but most of the faces were
evidently those of workers. The main language was German, but we
could also hear French and English. At the end of the room there was
a grand piano with some music books on it - and this, in a London
that was so unmusical, showed us that we had come to the right place.
We had been scarcely noticed and sat down at a table opposite the
door. While waiting for Schapper, the friend who had invited us, we
ordered porter and the traditional little penny packet of tobacco. Soon
we saw a man enter who was tall and strong, a picture of health. He
had a black moustache, a clear and penetrating look and an imperious