Ruge, Arnold

Ruge was the son of the estate manager Christoph Arnold Ruge and his wife Katharina Sophia Wilken. After successfully graduating from school in 1821 in Stralsund , Ruge entered the University of Halle and began to study philosophy. In 1822, Ruge moved to Jena University and studied there until 1823 . Then he moved to the University of Heidelberg , where he was arrested, and then in the spring of 1824 he was convicted as "a member of a secret forbidden union." Ruge was a key member of the secret " Union of the Young ", revealed by the authorities in early 1824 .

After an annual investigation in 1826, Ruge was sentenced by the Supreme Court of Breslau to 15 years in prison in the fortress of Kohlberg . He was imprisoned there until the pardon by the king in the spring of 1830 .

Already during the pre-trial detention, Ruge actively studied diligently the classics of antiquity, translated by Theocritus , Aeschylus and Sophocles in the original poetic size, other texts in the style of Jean Paul, imitating the English comedians.

After his release in 1830, Ruge was appointed a teacher and the next year he was able to defend his doctoral dissertation on "Platonic Aesthetics."

Until 1836 he worked as a private assistant professor. In 1832, he married Louise Duffer, who soon gave birth to a son, Robert (1834). Shortly after the birth of her son, Louise Duffer died, and Ruge married at the end of that year for the second time to Agness Wilhelmin Nitsche. In this marriage 2 daughters were born, Hedwig (1837) and Francisco (1849) and son Arnold (1843).

Ruge wrote articles and was published in " Leaflets of a Literary Conversation ." He advocated freedom of the press, the establishment of popular sovereignty, etc., and soon became one of the active Young Hegelians .

The dating of Ruge to E. Echtermeyer dates back to the same time, together with which he founded the Gallic Yearbook of German Science and Art in January 1838. The yearbook quickly became an important critical organ of the Young Hegelians. His most famous collaborators were, among others, Ludwig Feuerbach , David Friedrich Strauss , Hermann Frank and the Brothers Grimm .

In the spring of 1841, the Prussian government began to censor and ban the Yearbook because of its liberal line, and Ruge was forced to move the editorial board from Halle to Dresden and change its name to the German Yearbook of Science and Art . However, the Minister of the Interior, Dr. Johann Paul von Falkenstein, also deprived the magazine of its license. Then Ruge settled in Switzerland , which allowed the Yearbook to be published there.

In 1843, Ruge moved to Paris , where he was very interested in socialism , and also met with Karl Marx . Together with him, he first published the German-French Yearbooks . In 1844, he began to collaborate with Marx in a new journal, Forworths! However, in the winter of that year, Ruge broke up with Marx, as they could not agree on a common political line for the magazine. Ruge abandoned communism and advocated for a bourgeois-democratic republic .

Since September 1846, Ruge lived and acted in Zurich , where he worked very closely with Julius Fröbel . With his assistance, " Letters of Unius " were published ("Unius" is the pseudonym of Fröbel). In Zurich, Ruge also laid the foundation for his own publication of essays, which were later published in Mannheim .

In the spring of 1847, Ruge returned to Germany, settled in Leipzig and began to work as a bookseller. His bookstore also owned a small publishing house, which, under the guidance of Ruge, published texts on current political events. As one of the most important books, the Academy is a pocket-size philosophical book , which appeared in 1848 . Other authors of this publishing house were Gustav Freitag , Julius Fröbel, Friedrich Gerstekker , Friedrich Hebbel , Georg Herweg , Moritz Hartmann and Ludwig Seger .

Friendship with Ludwig Feuerbach quickly became decisive for Ruge in his political setting. In 1848, Ruge welcomed the February Revolution in France and wished the same political transformation for Germany. In order to have a basis for propaganda of his demands, Ruge founded the journal Reform , which from the very beginning became the mouthpiece of German democracy.

After the start of the March Revolution of 1848, he was selected from Breslau to the Frankfurt National Assembly , where he took the place of the extreme left, however, he quickly proved himself an impractical doctrinaire .

In this position, he could not advance; only the requirement for self-determination of Poland and Italy at a meeting of July 29, 1848 is worthy of mention. Soon Ruge became politically disappointed and left for Berlin . As a result, he was declared by the National Assembly to be retired.

In Berlin, he became a member of the Democratic Union and in October 1848 participated in the development of the election program of the Radical Democratic Party of Germany . At the same time, in October 1848, he attended the Democratic Congress in Berlin to raise his Reforma newspaper to an organ of democracy. However, the ensuing siege led to the closure of the newspaper and Ruge was forced to leave Berlin on January 21, 1849.

Ruge returned to Leipzig and took an active part there in the March revolutionary events . After their suppression, Ruge was wanted and, together with his family, fled through Brussels to Brighton .

From there he was taken to London by Giuseppe Mazzini . Ruge, Mazzini, Lajos Kossuth and Alexander Ledru-Rollin began to work on creating a new bourgeois-democratic opposition. This " European Committee " was intended to create a pan-European republic.

Since 1866, Ruge began to move more and more away from this political attitude and more and more inclined towards the politics of Otto von Bismarck . At the Battle of Sadovaya on July 3, 1866, Ruge saw on his own statement "the beginning of the Prussian future of Europe." By personal order of Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, since 1877, Ruge has been assigned an annual honorary monetary allowance of 3,000 imperial marks for services to Prussian politics.

At the age of over 78, Arnold Ruge died on December 31, 1880 in Brighton . There he was buried.

Most of its heritage is at the disposal of the International Institute for Social History ( Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis ) in Amsterdam .

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• Lars Lambrecht (Hrsg.): Arnold Ruge (1802-1880). Beiträge zum 200. Geburtstag. - Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2002 .-- ISBN 3-631-50443-8 .
• Wolfgang Ruge . Arnold Ruge. 1802-1880, Fragmente eines Lebensbildes. - Donn: Pahl-Rugenstein, 2004 .-- ISBN 3-89144-359-5 .