Karl Heinzen

Karl Peter Heinzen (22 February 1809 – 12 November 1880) was a revolutionary author who resided mainly in Germany and the United States. He was one of the German Forty-Eighters.

He was born in Grevenbroich, and attended the gymnasium in Kleve. In 1827, he began the study of medicine at the University of Bonn. He was expelled for a rebellious speech and went to the Netherlands where he was recruited for its Indonesian colonies and shipped out as a subaltern to Jakarta. He later (1841) wrote a book on his trip and what he found there: Reise nach Batavia (Voyage to Jakarta). He didn't find the colony suitable for permanent residence, and returned home in 1831.

After he had fulfilled his military service obligation, he worked a short time as a salesman and then as a tax man. After eight years, he became an executive functionary for the Rhenish railroad in Cologne and later part of the administration of a fire-insurance association in Aachen. He devoted his leisure time to writing. Besides the travel book, he published a book of poems (1841; reprinted in Boston, 1867), and after those involved himself in political writings. Two pamphlets, Die Ehre (Honor) and Die geheimen Konduitenlisten (Secret Lists of Leaders), undertook an objective criticism of the measures of the Prussian government. His tone was sharper in contributions he made to two newspapers, the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung and the Rheinische Zeitung.

The banning of these newspapers from Prussia prompted him to write Die preußische Bureaukratie (The Prussian Bureaucracy) which was confiscated immediately on its appearance and led to a criminal investigation. Heinzen fled to Belgium to escape prosecution and in March 1845 began a series of socialist writings with Steckbrief, an indictment of the higher courts of the Prussian Rhine Province. These writings were distributed throughout Germany. In 1846, he moved to Switzerland, first to Zurich, then to Bern, Basel and Genf. All showed him the door, and in the winter of 1847/48 he left for the United States.

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