Ferdinand Lassalle

Ferdinand Johann Gottlieb Lassalle (German pronunciation: [laˈsal]; 11 April 1825 – 31 August 1864), also known as Ferdinand Lassalle-Wolfson, was a German-Jewish jurist, philosopher, and socialist political activist. Lassalle is best remembered as an initiator of international-style socialism in Germany.

Ferdinand Lassalle was born on 11 April 1825 in Breslau (Wrocław), Silesia. Ferdinand's father was a silk merchant and intended his son for a business career, sending him to the commercial school at Leipzig. However, Lassalle soon transferred to university, studying first in the University of Breslau and later at the University of Berlin. There Lassalle studied philology and philosophy and became a devotee of the philosophical system of Georg Hegel.

Lassalle passed his university examinations with distinction in 1845 and thereafter traveled to Paris to write a book on Heraclitus. There Lassalle met the poet Heinrich Heine, who wrote of his intense young friend in 1846: "I have found in no one so much passion and clearness of intellect united in action. You have good right to be audacious – we others only usurp this divine right, this heavenly privilege."

Back in Berlin to work on his book, Lassalle soon found himself ceasing his project in favor of a different mission. Lassalle met Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt, a woman in her early 40s who had been separated from her husband for many years, and had ongoing difficulties with him regarding an equitable division of property. Lassalle volunteered himself to the countess's cause, an offer which was accepted readily. Lassalle first challenged the nobleman to a duel, an offer which was rejected immediately.

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