Amalie Struve

He saw to it that Amalie and her younger brother Pedro received a sound education, as a result of which she was later able to support her family, when necessary, by working as a languages teacher.

[3][5] Amalie Sruve first came to prominence as the wife of Gustav Struve, at his side in the struggle and agitation that were part of the March Revolution during 1848 in Baden.

During the "March Revolution" the insurgents called for German unity in response to what many of the more politically conscious saw as illiberal policies applied by local rulers taking their lead from Vienna.

In Baden there were calls for a republic from revolutionary leaders such as Friedrich Hecker and Gustav Struve which resonated powerfully with the Volksverein loosely, "popular associations".

She was present at the so-called "Heckerzug" (uprising) in which, on 20 April 1848, an armed civilian militia was convincingly defeated and destroyed by regular troops of the German Confederation at Kandern.

[8] After the uprising had been put down at the "Battle" of Staufen, by troops under by General Friedrich Hoffmann, both Gustav and Amalie Struve were sentenced to prison terms, at separate trials.

Brentano was keen (like the temporarily absent the Grand Duke) to avoid bloodshed and to progress the revolution's democratic objectives through negotiation.

Amalie Struve participated in the fierce fighting against the battle-hardened Prussian troops that followed, but the battle was completely uneven and the last of the revolutionaries were blockaded into the walled fortress of Raststatt and forced to surrender on 23 July 1949.

Some of the movement's most prominent leaders, including Friedrich Hecker, along with Gustav and Amalie Struve, managed instead to move abroad via, initially, Switzerland.

Most famously Karl Marx, the publication of The Communist Manifesto having passed largely unnoticed the previous year, settled in London in June or (more probably: but sources differ) August 1849.

Certainly by the time Amalie Struve completed and published her "Erinnerungen aus den badischen Freiheitskämpfen" ("Memories from the Baden Liberation Struggles"), she did so from London where, according to sources, it had also been written.

In contrast, without any secure source of income ("...ohne sichere Erwerbsquelle"), the Struves felt themselves forced to leave London in favour of New York.

Although the employment prospects for an ex-revolutionary might not have appeared too encouraging, there was already, in the United States a lively market for German-language newspapers from which work might be expected.

[14] They became part of the "Forty-Eighter" class, men and women who had participated in the unsuccessful (in the immediate term) 1848 March Revolution, and who arrived in the "New World" with a shared political engagement and a commitment to democratic ideals.