Karl Theodor Ferdinand Grün
He was an associate of Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Feuerbach, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin and other radical political figures of the era.
[1] Although less widely known today, Grün was an important figure in the German Vormärz, Young Hegelian philosophy and the democratic and socialist movements in nineteenth-century Germany.
While a secondary student at Wetzlar, Grün became involved in radical political activism, helping produce and distribute illegal democratic pamphlets.
Grün and Marx frequented the radical philosophical circles of the Young Hegelians and were strongly influenced by the 'humanistic materialism' of Ludwig Feuerbach.
Grün was also strongly influenced by contemporary French socialist theories, combining them with Young Hegelian and Feuerbachian philosophy and democratic politics.
[2]) Grün was also acquainted with several figures of the Vormärz period—the period of radical political ferment leading up to the abortive March Revolution of 1848—such as Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Heinrich Heine, Georg Herwegh and others.
Like many Young Hegelians, Grün saw as parallel and complementary the development of socialist theory in France and the revolution of critical philosophy in Germany.
He was expelled from several German states and lived in a number of cities over the next few years (most extensively in Cologne), supporting himself by means of journalism, giving lectures on literary topics and working as a school teacher.
He contributed to, and edited, a number of radical publications, including the newspaper Der Sprecher ('The Speaker') and the monthly journal Bielefelder Monatsschrift.
In 1843, Grün (along with Marx, Hess and others) participated in the controversy over Bruno Bauer's essay 'The Jewish Question', which opposed civil rights for Jews.
There Grün befriended the anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, whose writings had greatly influenced him and whose ideas he helped popularize among German radicals.
Another acquaintance was the Russian exile Mikhail Bakunin, who had been involved in Young Hegelian circles in Russia and Germany in the 1830s and 1840s and was also living in Paris.
In 1845, Grün published a noteworthy early history of socialism in the francophone world, Die sozialen Bewegungen in Frankreich und Belgien.
Grün helped organize and spoke at a large protest rally, which led to a local insurrection and an attempt to storm the arsenal at Prüm.
He returned to Brussels because he bitterly opposed the régime of Louis Bonaparte (Napoléon III), whose thinly veiled caesarian ambitions were confirmed by the coup d'état of December 1852.
Over the next few months he travelled widely, giving lectures and attending the opening of the National Assembly of the newly unified Italian state in 1861.
Under the influence of his brother Karl, Albert Grün became involved in illegal democratic circles, associated with the Young Hegelians and absorbed the philosophy of Feuerbach and the doctrines of the French socialists, Fourier, Proudhon, etc.
