9 - Wilhelm Weitling and Early German Socialism

Summary

Socialist ideas, practices, and discourses first took shape in the bustling politico-cultural environment of Paris and the British centres of industrial development. But, since these places had the attention of the rest of urban Europe, it did not take long before the question of socialism was hotly debated there too. In many cases, socialism was not only passively received as a set of foreign ideas, but also actively redefined and adapted to particular social contexts or intellectual mores. Germany, though not yet united as a nation in politico-institutional terms, was the main site of such redefinitions and adaptions during the 1830s and 1840s. Soon it became a hub of early socialism in its own right, with German ideas of socialism disseminating in neighbouring regions outside the three dominant nationalities of Europe.