Life As A Revolutionary/philosopher
Early on in his youth, Joseph Dietzgen worked with the famed '48ers of the 1848 German Revolution. It was there that he first met Karl Marx and other socialist revolutionaries, and began his career as a socialist philosopher. Following the failure of the 1848 Revolution he spent some time in the United States from 1849 to 1851, returning once again for a visit from 1859 to 1861. While in the New World he traversed the American South and witnessed first hand the lynchings which had come to characterize the slave states. During the period between his travels, Dietzgen joined the Alliance of Communists with Karl Marx back in Germany in 1852. In 1853, after marrying his wife Cordula Finke, he established his tannery business in Winterscheid, Germany. When he returned to the United States he set up another tannery in Montgomery, Alabama. From 1864 to 1868, he lived with his son Eugene in St. Petersburg, where he was headmaster in the state tannery. He worked with the Tsar of Russia on improvement of the Russian methods. During his time spent in Russia he wrote one of his earliest texts, The Nature of Human Brain-Work, which was published in 1869. While he traveled, his wife managed the family tannery business back in Germany until he returned in mid 1869. Once he was back home, he was visited by Marx and his daughter, who proclaimed that Joseph had become "the Philosopher" of socialism. By 1870, Marx had embraced Dietzgen as a friend, and later praised him and his theory of dialectical materialism in the 2nd edition of the first volume of Das Kapital.
On June 8, 1878, Dietzgen was arrested because of the article lectured and later printed in Cologne: The future of the social democracy. He spent 3 months in prison before his trial was absolved and Joseph was released with his articles. In 1881 Joseph sent his son Eugene to the United States in order to avoid the Kaiser's upcoming army draft, to safeguard his articles and documents, as well as to secure a family home in the new world. Young Eugene was 19 when he arrived in New York, but quickly jump started a family business which still exists today as the Eugene Dietzgen Drafting Corporation. During this period, Eugene and Joseph kept in close contact through extensive letters which are currently being documented and published. In the same year, he ran for the elections of the German Reichstag (the parliament), but emigrated in 1884 to New York City. He moved to Chicago two years later, where he became editor at the Arbeiterzeitung. Unfortunately Joseph's death in 1888 marked an end to his son's dependency, but his family line would continue to be part of some of the biggest engagements of the 20th century; from World War I, to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, to the heart of World War II.
Dietzgen was later put on a stamp by the German Democratic Republic.
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