Ferdinand Lasalle

Ferdinand Lassalle (; 11 April 1825 – 31 August 1864) was a Prussian-German jurist, philosopher, socialist and political activist best remembered as the initiator of the social democratic movement in Germany. "Lassalle was the first man in Germany, the first in Europe, who succeeded in organising a party of socialist action", or, as Rosa Luxemburg put it: "Lassalle managed to wrestle from history in two years of flaming agitation what needed many decades to come about." As agitator he coined the terms night-watchman state and iron law of wages.

Biography

Early life

Lassalle was born Ferdinand Johann Gottlieb Lassal on 11 April 1825 in Breslau, Silesia (now Wrocław, Poland). His father Heyman Lassal was a Jewish silk merchant and intended his son for a business career, sending him to the commercial school at Leipzig. However, Lassalle soon transferred to university, studying first in the University of Breslau and later at the University of Berlin. There, Lassalle studied philology and philosophy and became a devotee of the philosophical system of Georg Hegel. Lassalle changed his name at a young age to disassociate himself from Judaism.

Lassalle passed his university examinations with distinction in 1845 and thereafter traveled to Paris to write a book on Heraclitus. There, Lassalle met the poet Heinrich Heine, who wrote of his intense young friend in 1846: "I have found in no one so much passion and clearness of intellect united in action. You have good right to be audacious – we others only usurp this divine right, this heavenly privilege".

Back in Berlin to work on his book, Lassalle met Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt, a woman in her early 40s who had been separated from her husband of many years and who had an ongoing dispute with him regarding the disposition of the couple's property. Lassalle volunteered himself to her cause and the offer was readily accepted. Lassalle first challenged her husband to a duel, but his challenge was rejected.

An eight-year legal battle followed in which Lassalle defended Countess von Hatzfeldt's interests in 36 different courtrooms. Ultimately, a settlement was made in her favor, bringing her a substantial fortune. In her gratitude, she agreed to pay Lassalle an annual income of 5,000 thalers (about £750) for the rest of his life.

1848 Revolution and its aftermath

Lassalle was a committed socialist from an early age. During the German Revolutions of 1848, he spoke at public meetings in favor of the revolutionary-democratic cause and urged the citizens of Düsseldorf to prepare themselves for armed resistance in advance of the violence that was expected after the decision of the Prussian government to dissolve the National Assembly. Lassalle was subsequently arrested for his involvement in this activity and he was charged with inciting armed opposition to the state.

Although Lassalle was acquitted of this serious charge, he was kept in prison until he could be tried on a lesser charge of inciting resistance against public officials. He was convicted of this lesser charge and the 23-year-old Lassalle served a sentence of six months in prison.

Banned from residence in Berlin in the aftermath of his conviction, Lassalle moved to the Rhineland, where he continued to pursue the lawsuit of the Countess von Hatzfeldt (settled in 1854) and finished his work on the philosophy of Heraclitus, (completed in 1857 and published in two volumes the following year). Reaction to the book was mixed as some declared the work seminal while others, including Karl Marx, considered it a mere recitation of Hegelian axioms. However, even the book's detractors had to admire the scope of the work and the publication gave Lassalle lasting status among German intellectuals.

During this period, Lassalle was not politically active, although he remained interested in labor affairs. He left his legal practice and philosophy in favor of drama, authoring a play called ''Franz von Sickingen, a Historical Tragedy''. Sent anonymously to the Royal Theatre, the play was rejected by a manager, causing Lassalle to publish it under his own name in 1859. The work was characterized by Edward Bernstein, an early and sympathetic biographer, as awkward and prone to excessive oratory, unsuited for the stage despite several effective scenes.

Lassalle wanted to live in Berlin and despite the ban in 1859 made his return disguised as a wagon driver. Lassalle appealed to his friend, the aging scholar Alexander von Humboldt, to intercede on his behalf before the king to rescind the ban and allow his return. The appeal was successful and Lassalle was again officially allowed to live in the Prussian capital.

Lassalle avoided revolutionary activity for several years thereafter. He became a political commentator and wrote a short book on the war in Italy in which he warned Prussia against rushing to the aid of the Austrian Empire in its war with France. Lassalle followed this with a larger work on legal theory, published in two volumes in 1861 as ''Das System der erworbenen Rechte'' (''The System of Acquired Rights''). According to Bernstein, Lassalle wanted the book "to establish a legal and scientific principle which shall once for all determine under what circumstances, and how far laws may be retroactive without violating the idea of right itself"; that is, determining the circumstances under which laws may be made retroactive when they come into conflict with previously established laws.

Political activism

Only briefly engaged in the revolutionary struggle during 1848, Lassalle reentered public politics in 1862, motivated by a constitutional struggle in Prussia. King Wilhelm I, who became king on 2 January 1861, had repeatedly clashed with the liberal Chamber of Deputies, resulting in multiple dissolutions of the Diet. As a recognized legal scholar, Lassalle was asked to make public addresses dealing with the nature of the constitution and its relationship to the social forces within society.

Lassalle replied by giving a speech wherein he set out that constitutional matters are merely questions of power. The liberal press was enraged by his speech. Lassalle reacted by holding the same lecture twice again.

In another speech, delivered in Berlin on 12 April 1862, later known as the ''Workers' Program,'' Lassalle assigned moral primacy in society to the working class over the bourgeosie, an assertion regarded as dangerous by the Prussian censorship. The entire print run of 3,000 copies of the pamphlet of Lassalle's speech was seized by the authorities, who issued a legal charge against Lassalle for allegedly endangering the public peace.

Lassalle was brought to trial to answer this accusation in Berlin on 16 January 1863. Lawsuits would continue to interfere with his political activity for the rest of his life. After a widely publicized trial at which he presented his own defense, Lassalle was convicted of the charges levied against him, sentenced to four months' imprisonment and assessed the costs of the trial. This term was later replaced by a fine upon appeal.

Foundation of the socialist party

On 22 October 1862, a few worker delegates that had visited London that had come back with left-wing ideas, published an open letter about the political and economic situation of the working class. Lassalle was delighted to find workers whose ideas went even further than the socialist statements which he made in public, and replied with his own open letter in which he called for a workers party, independent of the liberal German Progress Party.

By arguing that the working class had nothing to gain from the liberal party, he was in a state of war with the liberal party and newspapers for the next months until his death. Lassalle soon began a new career as a political agitator, traveling around Germany, giving speeches and writing pamphlets in an attempt to organise and rouse the working class. As he tried to make the working class break with the liberals, this would eventually lead to an alliance with the reactionary Prince Bismarck.

In 1864, Lassalle made several secret appeals to Bismarck, later the main proponent of the Anti-Socialist Laws, in favor of the immediate implementation of progressive policies such as universal suffrage. He also asked for the protection of his own publications from police seizure. Lassalle attempted to make common cause with the conservative Bismarck in his book ''Herr Basitat-Schulze,'' declaring that he "must inform Your Excellency that this work will bring about the utter destruction of Liberals and the whole Progressive bourgeoisie". Lassalle asked Bismarck to exert his influence at the Ministry of Justice to prevent the seizure of the book. The book subsequently appeared without police interference, but Bismarck, occupied with other matters, refused a request by Lassalle for another meeting and no further direct contacts between the pair were made.

Élie Halévy would later write on this situation:

The only stated purpose of the party was the winning of equal, universal and direct suffrage by peaceful and legal means.

Personality

Lassalle was remembered by biographers as a contradictory personality, earnestly committed to the benefit of the masses, but driven by personal ambition and possessing extreme vanity. Indeed, one early biographer declared:

Bertrand Russell said about Lassalle: "No one has ever understood the power of agitation and organisation better than Lassalle … The secret of his influence lay in his overpowering and imperious will, in his impatience of the passive endurance of evil, and in his absolute confidence in his own power. His whole character is that of an epicurean god, unwittingly become man, awakening suddenly to the existence of evil, and finding with amazement that his will is not omnipotent to set it right."

Death and legacy

In Rigi Kaltbad, Lassalle met a young woman named Helene von Dönniges and during the summer of 1864 they decided to marry. She was the daughter of a Protestant family then living in Geneva, who wanted nothing to do with Lassalle. The father, a historian, prevented Helene from seeing him and Lassalle protested vehemently. Apparently under duress, she soon renounced Lassalle in favour of another suitor, a Wallachian prince named Iancu Racoviță, to whom she had previously been betrothed.

Lassalle sent dueling challenges both to Helene's father von Dönniges and to Racoviță, who accepted. Lassalle had no experience in the use of pistols and only one day to exercise. At the Carouge, a suburb of Geneva, a duel was held on the morning of 28 August. Lassalle was shot in the abdomen by Racoviță and died three days later on 31 August 1864. Following the duel Racoviţă fell ill and died not long after Helene von Dönniges married him.

At the time of his death, Lassalle's political party had 4,610 members and no detailed political program. The ADAV continued after his death, going on to help establish the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1875.

Ferdinand Lassalle is buried in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), in the old Jewish cemetery.

Political relations

Relations with Marx

Lassalle and Marx became friends during the Revolutions of 1848. When the protests were crushed, Lassalle was imprisoned and Marx fled Germany. They continued correspondence through letters, and would not meet again until 1861. In the meantime Marx grew to distrust Lassalle under influence of Engels