Wilhelm Friedrich Wolff (1809–1864)

German proletarian revolutionary and publicist; one of the leaders of the Communist League.

Wolff was born in June 1809, in Silesia, Germany, into a peasant family. Between 1829–1834, Wolff studied classical philology at the University of Breslau. During his university years, he was arrested and imprisoned for his participation in a democratic youth league. After he was released, he worked as a tutor in Breslau and wrote for newspapers. In 1844, he was wanted for writing an article in support of the Silesian workers’ uprising. At the end of 1845, he was exiled and joined the German Communist Workers’ Educational Society in London. In April 1846, after arriving in Brussels, he became a close comrade-in-arms of Marx and Engels, participated in the work of the Communist Correspondence Committee in Brussels as well as the founding work of the Communist League, and served as the editor-in-chief of the League’s organ, Kommunistische Zeitschrift (Communist Journal). In March 1848, he became a member of the new Central Committee of the Communist League headed by Marx in Paris, and together with Marx and Engels Wolff signed the central document of the Communist League, Demands of the Communist Party in Germany, which was distributed as a leaflet. Returning to Germany in April 1848, he first carried out revolutionary activities in Silesia, and then went to Cologne to join the editorial board of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, chaired by Marx, and served as editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848–1849). He wrote many political commentaries, especially a series of pamphlets entitled Die Schlesische Milliarde (The Silesian Milliard), deeply uncovered and sharply criticized the feudal reactionary forces, and the Silesian Peasants’ Society reprinted a large number of copies of the pamphlets and widely disseminated it, which had a great social impact.

In 1849, as an elected member of parliament from Breslau, Wolff attended the Frankfurt National Assembly in Frankfurt am Main, and made a speech demanding to issue a proclamation which declares the Imperial Regent and the ministers as traitors to the people, causing a shock. After the failure of the 1849 Revolutions in Europe, he was exiled to Switzerland, moved to England in 1851, worked as a private tutor in Manchester, England since 1853, and died in Manchester in May 1864. In memory of Wolff, Marx inscribed on the title page of Capital, Vol. 1, published at the end of August 1867: “To my unforgettable friend, Wilhelm Wolff. Intrepid, faithful, noble protagonist of the proletariat.”