Franz Mehring

1846-1919

Franz Mehring

Biography:

Originally a liberal journalist, Mehring joined the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the early 1890s. He rapidly became acknowledged as an important theoretician. In the course of time he moved to the left and became associated with the current around Rosa Luxemburg. With the outbreak of World War I he was, despite his advanced years, a prominent member of the revolutionary opposition to the war along with Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Clara Zetkin. He was a founder member of the German Communist Party established on New Years Day 1919, but died later in the month shortly after the murder of his comrades Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

Works:

The Origins of German Middle Class Culture: The Lessing Legend, 1892/1893

On Historical Materialism, 1893 (alternative translation)

Aesthetical Raids (excerpts), 1899

Ibsen’s Greatness and Limitations, 1900

Frederick Engels, 1906

Obituary of Friedrich Sorge, 1906

Review of Hermann Schlüter’s The Beginnings of the German Labor Movement in America, 1907

Philosophy and Philosophizing, 1909

Absolutism and Revolution in Germany (1525–1848), 1910

Anglo-German Relations, 1911

German Romanticism, 1911

Charles Dickens, 1912

German SDP and the War (with Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin), 1914

Manifesto of Editors and Publishers of the "Internationale" (with Peter Berten, Kate Duncker, Paul Lange, Heinrich Strobel, August Thalheimer and Klara Zetkin), 1915

Letter to Comrade Bohn, 1915

Our Old Masters and Their Modern Substitutes, 1917

Preface to Marx’s The Divine Right of the Hohenzollern, 1918

Socialist Divisions in Germany, 1918

A Call to the Workers of the World (with Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht), 1918

Karl Marx: The Story of His Life, 1918

An Unusual Friendship, 1919

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