Blum

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On August 26, 1857 Marx wrote to Engels telling him, among other things, that in the list of articles beginning with B requested by Dana for The New American Cyclopaedia “there are only two non-military articles” — “Blum” and “Bourrienne”—and on September 15 he informed Engels that he had dispatched them to New York together with other material. However as can be seen from his notebook Marx finished them only a week later and sent them to the United States on September 22, 1857.

When writing his article on Blum Marx made excerpts from the detailed biographical article “Blum” in Meyer’s Conversations-Lexicon (second Supplement Volume, 1853, pp. 240-46) (see this volume, pp. 391-93), and from Fr. Steger’s Ergänzungs-Conversationslexicon (Vol. 1, Leipzig, 1846, pp. 153-60), and other sources.

Blum, Robert, one of the martyrs of the German revolution, born at Cologne, Nov. 10, 1807, executed in Vienna, Nov. 9, 1848. He was the son of a poor journeyman cooper, who died in 1815, leaving 3 children and a distressed widow, who, in 1816, again married a common lighterman. This second marriage proved unhappy, and the family misery rose to a climax in the famine of 1816-T7. In 1819 young Robert, belonging to the Catholic confession, obtained an employment as mass-servant; then became apprentice to a gilder, then to a girdler, and, according to the German custom, became a travelling journeyman, but was not up to the requirements of his handicraft, and, after a short absence, had to return to Cologne. Here he found occupation in a lantern manufactory, ingratiated himself with his employer, was by him promoted to a place in the counting-house, had to accompany his patron on his journeys through the southern states of Germany, and, in the year 1829-’30, resided with him at Berlin. During this period he endeavored, by assiduous exertion, to procure a sort of encyclopaedic knowledge, without however betraying a marked predilection or a signal endowment for any particular science. Summoned, in 1830, to the military service, to which every Prussian subject is bound, his relations with his protector were broken off. Dismissed from the army after a six weeks’ service, and finding his employment gone, he returned again to Cologne, in almost the same circumstances in which he had twice left it. There the misery of his parents, and his own helplessness, induced him to accept, at the hands of Mr. Ringelhardt, the manager of the Cologne theatre, the office of man of all work of the theatre. His connection with the stage, although of a subaltern character, drew his attention to dramatic literature, while the political excitement which the French revolution of July had caused throughout Rhenish Prussia, allowed him to mingle in certain political circles, and to insert poetry in the local papers.

In 1831, Ringelhardt, who had meanwhile removed to Leipsic, appointed Blum cashier and secretary of the Leipsic theatre, a post he held until 1847. From 1831 to 1837 he made contributions to the Leipsic family papers, such as the Comet, the Abend-Zeitung, &c, and published a “Theatrical Cyclopaedia,” the “Friend of the Constitution,” an almanac entitled Vorwärts, Sec. His writings are impressed with the stamp of a certain household mediocrity. His later productions were, moreover, spoiled by a superfluity of bad taste. His political activity dates from 1837, when, as the spokesman of a deputation of Leipsic citizens, he handed over a present of honor to 2 opposition members of the Saxon estates. In 1840 he became one of the founders, and in 1841 one of the directors of the Schiller associations, and of the association of German authors. His contributions to the Sächsische VaterlandsBlätter, a political journal, made him the most popular journalist of Saxony, and the particular object of government persecution. German Catholicism, as it was called, found a warm partisan in him. He founded the German Catholic church at Leipsic, and became its spiritual director in 1845. On Aug. 13, 1845, when an immense meeting of armed citizens and students, assembling before the riflemen’s barracks at Leipsic, threatened to storm it in order to revenge the murderous onslaught committed the day before by a company of the riflemen, Blum, by his popular eloquence, persuaded the excited masses not to deviate from legal modes of resistance, and himself took the lead in the proceedings for legal redress. In reward for his exertions, the Saxon government renewed its persecutions against him, which, in 1848, ended in the suppression of the Vaterlands-Blätter.

On the outbreak of the revolution of February, 1848, he became the centre of the liberal party of Saxony, founded the “Fatherland’s Association,” which soon mustered above 40,000 members, and generally proved an indefatigable agitator. Sent by the city of Leipsic to the “preliminary parliament,” he there acted as vice-chairman, and by preventing the secession en masse of the opposition, contributed to sustain that body. After its dissolution, he became a member of the committee it left behind, and afterward of the Frankfort parliament, in which he was the leader of the moderate opposition. His political theory aimed at a republic as the summit of Germany, but as its base the different traditionary kingdoms, dukedoms, &c; since, in his opinion, the latter alone were able to preserve, intact, what he considered a peculiar beauty of German society, the independent development of its different orders. As a speaker he was plausible, rather theatrical, and very popular.

When the news of the Vienna insurrection reached Frankfort, he was charged, in company with some other members of the German parliament, to carry to Vienna an address drawn up by the parliamentary opposition. As the spokesman of the deputation, he handed the address to the municipal council of Vienna, Oct. 17, 1848.

Having enrolled himself in the ranks of the students’ corps, and commanded a barricade during the fight, he sat, after the capture of Vienna by Windischgrätz, quietly conversing in a hotel, when the hotel was surrounded by soldiers, and he himself made prisoner. Placed before a court-martial, and not condescending to deny any of his speeches or acts, he was sentenced to the gallows, a punishment commuted to that of being shot. This execution took place at daybreak, in the Brigittenau.