116 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
and antirent, and Kriege defended vigorously his program of op
portunism and piecemeal reform on the ground that the demo
cratic United States presented a very different problem from
autocratic Europe. Unfortunately, the Volkstribun was written
in the extravagant style of the sentimentalist who loved all hu
manity, and before long Kriege was charged with making com
munism laughable by the methods of a crackpot. By the end of
1846, the paper had suspended publication. Thereafter its editor
became a Democrat, published three volumes on the "Fathers of
the Republic," went back to Europe to participate in the Revolu
tion of 1848 in Berlin, returned to the United States to edit the
Illinois Staatszeitung in Chicago for a short period, and died, in
sane, in New York at the age of thirty-one. In accordance with
his specific request, Kriege was buried with an American flag
draped across his breast,^15 and the New York Tribune eulogized
him as "one of the most sincere, upright and generous men with
whom it was ever our fortune to be acquainted."^16
To the Marxians, however, Kriege was nothing but a source of
embarrassment for the party. There had been a time when Engels
considered him a "splendid agitator" and had sent him material to
use as an official emissary of the League of the Just, but before
long, Engels repudiated his co-worker in communism, though he
was inclined to blame his eccentricities on "the crazy Harro
Harring," a veteran of the Greek and Polish wars of liberation who
had migrated to the United States in 1834 and later had written
articles for Kriege's Volkstribun.^11 Marx was convinced that the
renegade from orthodox communism must be called to account,
and in this light, Kriege's case was presented to the party confer
ence in Brussels.
(^15) Belleviller Zeitung, January 23, 1851.
(^16) New York Tribune, January 1, 1851.
(^17) Engels to Marx, February 22, 1845, in A. Bebel and Ed. Bernstein (eds.),
Briefwechsel zwischen Friedrich Engels und Karl Marx, 1844 bis 1883 (Stutt
gart, 1921), I, 15, 18, 39, 43, 49; also Quarck, Die erste deutsche Arbeiterbewegung, 324; and B. A. Uhlendorf, "German-American Poetry: A Contribution to
Colonial Literature," Jahrbuch der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Historische Gesell¬
schaft von Illinois (Chicago, 1912-1913), XXII-XXIII, 214.