Georg Fein

Like his brother, Georg studied jurisprudence at the universities of Göttingen, Heidelberg, Berlin and Munich, beginning in 1822.

As a student he became involved in a radical fraternity that promoted democracy and unification of the German states.

In April 1833, a group of republican conspirators (including the labour leader Karl Schapper) carried out an unsuccessful uprising in Frankfurt, in which Fein was implicated.

In Zurich, Fein became an editor at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung but was forced to resign because his articles were deemed too radical.

In 1835 he joined 'Young Germany', a secret society modelled on Mazzini's 'Young Italy' and propagating a similar ideology of democracy, nationalism and social reform.

In 1836, Fein was expelled from Switzerland and went to Paris, where he joined the utopian communist 'League of the Banned', founded by Wilhelm Weitling.

He went first to London, where he organised a German-language reading circle for workers; subsequently he went to Oslo, Paris, Strasbourg and Switzerland.

He maintained good contacts with German oppositional figures, and published abroad several writings that had been banned by censors in Germany.

Among these was an essay Hoffmann von Fallersleben had intended as an introduction to his Political Poems, together with a lengthy afterword by Fein.

That year and in 1845, a group of Swiss liberals carried out armed invasions of the conservative canton of Lucerne.