Franz Mehring

Franz Erdmann Mehring (27 February 1846 – 28 January 1919), was a German publicist, politician and historian.

Franz Mehring was born 27 February 1846 in Schlawe, Pomerania, the son of a bourgeois family.

He worked for various daily and weekly newspapers and over many years wrote lead articles for the weekly magazine Die Neue Zeit. In 1868 he moved to Berlin to study and worked in the editorial office of the Die Zukunft newspaper.

From 1871–1874, Mehring worked for the Correspondence Office in Oldenburg, writing reports on sessions of the Reichstag and the local parliament. He became a well-known parliamentary reporter, working for the Frankfurter Zeitung newspaper and Die Waage, a newspaper published by Leopold Sonnemann (1831–1909).

Mehring left Die Waage after an argument with Sonnemann and in 1884 became chief editor of the liberal Berlin Volks-Zeitung newspaper. He spoke out against Bismarck’s law banning Socialism although he was himself a member of the bourgeoisie.

In 1891 Mehring joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

Between 1902 and 1907 Mehring was the chief editor of the Social Democratic Leipziger Volkszeitung newspaper. From 1906 to 1911 he taught at the SPD’s Party school. He was a member of the Prussian parliament from 1917 to 1918.

During the First World War Mehring began to distance himself from the SPD, along with other members who believed the party was abandoning its Socialist Agenda by passing a bill to send more troops to war. In 1916 the left-wing Marxist revolutionary Spartacus League was founded and Mehring was one of its main leaders alongside Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Mehring was sympathetic to the Bolshevik organization in Russia and to the cause of the October Revolution.

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