57 Facts About Ferdinand Lassalle

Ferdinand Lassalle was born on 11 April 1825, died 31 August 1864 and was a Prussian-German jurist, philosopher, socialist and political activist who is best remembered as the initiator of the social-democratic movement in Germany.

Ferdinand Lassalle's 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, Ferdinand Lassalle soon transferred to university, studying first in the University of Breslau and later at the University of Berlin.

Ferdinand Lassalle changed his name at a young age to disassociate himself from Judaism.

Ferdinand Lassalle passed his university examinations with distinction in 1845 and thereafter traveled to Paris to write a book on Heraclitus.

Back in Berlin to work on his book, Ferdinand 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.

Ferdinand Lassalle volunteered himself to her cause and the offer was readily accepted.

Ferdinand Lassalle first challenged her husband to a duel, but his challenge was rejected.

An eight-year legal battle followed in which Ferdinand Lassalle defended Countess von Hatzfeldt's interests in 36 different courtrooms.

Ferdinand Lassalle was arrested for his involvement in this activity and he was charged with inciting armed opposition to the state.

Ferdinand Lassalle was convicted of this lesser charge and the 23-year-old Lassalle served a sentence of six months in prison.

However, even the book's detractors had to admire the scope of the work and the publication gave Ferdinand Lassalle lasting status among German intellectuals.

Ferdinand Lassalle left his legal practice and philosophy in favor of drama, authoring a play called Franz von Sickingen, a Historical Tragedy.

Ferdinand Lassalle wanted to live in Berlin and despite the ban in 1859 made his return disguised as a wagon driver.

Ferdinand 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 Ferdinand Lassalle was again officially allowed to live in the Prussian capital.

Ferdinand Lassalle 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.

Ferdinand Lassalle followed this with a larger work on legal theory, published in two volumes in 1861 as Das System der erworbenen Rechte.

Only briefly engaged in the revolutionary struggle during 1848, Ferdinand Lassalle reentered public politics in 1862, motivated by a constitutional struggle in Prussia.

Ferdinand Lassalle replied by giving a speech wherein he set out that constitutional matters are merely questions of power.

The entire print run of 3,000 copies of the pamphlet of Ferdinand Lassalle's speech was seized by the authorities, who issued a legal charge against Ferdinand Lassalle for allegedly endangering the public peace.

Ferdinand Lassalle was brought to trial to answer this accusation in Berlin on 16 January 1863.

Ferdinand 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.

Ferdinand 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.

In 1864, Ferdinand 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.

Ferdinand Lassalle asked for the protection of his own publications from police seizure.

Ferdinand 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".

Ferdinand Lassalle asked Bismarck to exert his influence at the Ministry of Justice to prevent the seizure of the book.

Ferdinand Lassalle was the first man in Germany, the first in Europe, who succeeded in organising a party of socialist action.

Ferdinand 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.

Ferdinand Lassalle's vanity was of the kind that neither hurts nor offends.

Ferdinand Lassalle appeared both on the platform and in the Court of Law attired like a fop.

Ferdinand Lassalle was in the habit, too, of comparing himself with great men.

Heine told him that he had good reason to be proud of his attainments, and Ferdinand Lassalle took Heine at his word.

In Rigi Kaltbad, Ferdinand Lassalle met a young woman named Helene von Donniges and during the summer of 1864 they decided to marry.

Ferdinand Lassalle was the daughter of a Protestant family then living in Geneva, who wanted nothing to do with Lassalle.

Ferdinand Lassalle sent dueling challenges both to Helene's father von Donniges and to Racovita, who accepted.

Ferdinand Lassalle had no experience in the use of pistols and only one day to exercise.

Ferdinand Lassalle was shot in the abdomen by Racovita and died three days later on 31 August 1864.

Ferdinand Lassalle is buried in Breslau, in the Old Jewish Cemetery.

Ferdinand Lassalle continued to believe that their friendship was genuine until at least 1862.

Ferdinand Lassalle was a German patriot, and supported Prussia in its quest for German unification.

Ferdinand Lassalle saw that the European nationalities were still firmly established, that national ideas were a factor of supreme importance, and that religion would long retain an influence which no one could afford to neglect, and he thought it possible, even under existing political circumstances, to give the initial impulse to a movement for transforming social conditions.

In September 1878, Bismarck was pressed by Social Democratic representative August Bebel in the Reichstag to provide details about his past relationship with Ferdinand Lassalle, prompting the Chancellor to make the following statement:.

Ferdinand Lassalle was one of the most intelligent and likable men I had ever come across.

Ferdinand Lassalle was very ambitious and by no means a republican.

Ferdinand Lassalle was very much a nationalist and a monarchist.

Ferdinand Lassalle's ideal was the German Empire, and here was our point of contact.

Ferdinand Lassalle was remembered by Richard T Ely, one of the earliest serious scholars of international socialism, as a popularizer of the ideas of others rather than an innovator:.

Ferdinand Lassalle's writings did not advance materially the theory of social democracy.

Ferdinand Lassalle drew from Rodbertus and Marx in his economic writings, but he clothed their thoughts in such manner as to enable ordinary laborers to understand them, and this they never could have done without his help.

Ferdinand Lassalle gave to Ricardo's law of wages the designation the iron law of wages, and expounded to the laborers its full significance.

How Ferdinand Lassalle really thought this was to be accomplished is not so evident.

In contrast with Marx and his adherents, Ferdinand Lassalle rejected the idea that the state was a class-based power structure with the function of preserving existing class relations and destined to wither away in a future classless society.

Ferdinand Lassalle accepted the idea first posited by the classical economist David Ricardo that wage rates in the long term tended towards the minimum level necessary to sustain the life of the worker and to provide for his reproduction.

Ferdinand Lassalle argued that individual measures of self-help by wage workers were destined to failure and that only producers' cooperatives established with the financial aid of the state would make economic improvement of the workers' lives possible.

Ferdinand Lassalle considered Johann Gottlieb Fichte as "one of the mightiest thinkers of all peoples and ages", praising Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation in a May 1862 speech as "one of the mightiest monuments of fame which our people possesses, and which, in depth and power, far surpass everything of this sort which has been handed down to us from the literature of all time and peoples".