The true organisation of the Emigration was in fact this tavern organisation presided over by Silenus-Sch rttner in Long Acre which experienced its heyday thanks to the Exhibition. Here the true Central Committee sat in perpetual session. All other committees, organisations, party-formations were just trimmings, the patriotic arabesques of this primeval German tavern society of idlers. In addition the Emigration was strengthened numerically at the time by the arrival of Messrs. Meyen, Faucher, Sigel, Goegg and Fickler, etc. Meyen was a little porcupine who had come into the world without any quills and who under the name Poinsinet, was once described by Goethe in this way: Conjointly with Meyen we must necessarily consider Oppenheim, his co-editor and co-secretary. It has been claimed that Oppenheim is not so much a man as an allegorical figure: the goddess of boredom it is reported, came down to Frankfurt on Main and assumed the shape of this son of a Jewish jeweller. When Voltaire wrote: Tous les genres vent loons, except legenre ennuyeux , he must have had a premonition of our Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim. We prefer Oppenheim the writer to Oppenheim the orator. His writings may be avoided, but his spoken delivery c est impossible. The pythagorean metempsychosis may have some foundation in reality but the name borne by Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim in former ages can no longer be discovered as no man ever made a name for himself through being an unbearable chatterbox. His life may be epitomised by its three climactic moments: Arnold Ruge s editor Brentano s editor Kinkel s editor. The third member of the trio is Mr. Julius Faucher. He is one of those Berlin Huguenots who know how to exploit their minor talent with great commercial adroitness. He made his public debut as the Lieutenant Pistol of the Free Trade Party in which capacity he was employed by Hamburg commercial interests to make propaganda. During the revolutionary disturbances they allowed him to preach free trade in the apparently chaotic form of anarchism. When this ceased to be relevant to the times he was dismissed and, together with Meyen, he became joint editor of the Berlin Abendpost. Under the presence of wishing to abolish the state and introduce anarchy he refrained from dangerous opposition towards the existing government and when, later on, the paper failed because it could no longer afford the deposit, the Neue Preussische Zeitung commiserated with Faucher, the only able writer among the democrats. This cosy relationship with the Neue Preussische Zeitung soon became so intimate that Faucher began to act as its correspondent in London. Faucher s activity in the London Emigration did not last long; his free trade inclined him towards commerce where he found his true calling, to which he returned with great energy and in which he achieved wonders never seen before: namely a price-list that assesses goods according to a completely sliding scale. As is well known, the Breslauer Zeitung was indiscreet enough to inform the general public of this document. This three-star constellation of the Berlin intelligentsia can be contrasted with the three-star constellation of wholesome South German principles: Sigel, Fickler, Goegg. Franz Sigel, whom his friend Goegg describes as a short, beardless man, bearing a strong resemblance to Napoleon, is, again according to Goegg, a hero , a man of the future , above all a genius, intellectually creative and constantly hatching new plans . Between ourselves, General Siegel is a young Baden lieutenant of principle and ambition. He read in an account of the campaigns of the French Revolution that the step from sub-lieutenant to supreme general is mere child's play and from that moment on this little beardless man firmly believed that Franz Sigel must become supreme commander in a revolutionary army. His wish was granted thanks to the Baden insurrection of 1849 and a popularity with the army arising from a confusion of names. The battles he fought on the Neckar and did not fight in the Black Forest are well known; his retreat to Switzerland has been praised even by the enemy as a timely and correct manoeuvre. His military plans here bear witness to his study of the [French] Revolutionary Wars. In order to remain faithful to the revolutionary tradition Hero Sigel, ignoring the enemy and operational and withdrawal lines and similar bagatelles, went conscientiously from one Moreau position to the next. And if he did not manage to parody Moreau's campaigns  in every detail, if he crossed the Rhine at Eglichau and not at Paradies, this was the fault of the enemy who was too ignorant to appreciate such a learned manoeuvre. In his orders of the day and in his instructions Sigel emerges as a preacher and if he has an inferior style to Napoleon, he has more principle. Later, he concerned himself with devising a handbook for revolutionary officers in all branches of warfare from which we are in a position to offer the following important extract: His only deeds during the Revolution were firstly his arrest by Mathy  after the Vorparlament, and, second, his arrest by Romer in Stuttgart in June 1849. Thanks to these arrests he was happily deprived of the opportunity to compromise himself. The W rttemberg democrats deposited 1000 guilders as bail for him, whereupon Fickler went to Thurgau incognito and to the great distress of his guarantors no more was heard of him. It is undeniable that he successfully translated the feelings and opinions of the lakeside peasants into printers' ink in his Lake Journals; for the rest he shares the opinion of his friend Ruge that much study makes you stupid and for this reason he warned his friend Goegg not to visit the library of the British Museum. Amandus Goegg, lovable, as his name indicates, is no great orator, but an unassuming citizen whose noble and modest bearing earns him the friendship of people everywhere (Westamerikanische Bl tter). From sheer nobility Goegg became a member of the provisional government in Baden, where, as he admits, he could do nothing against Brentano and in all modesty he assumed the title of Dictator. No one denies that his achievements as Finance Minister were modest. In all modesty he proclaimed the Social-democratic Republic in Donaueschingen the day before the final retreat to Switzerland actually took place, although it had been decreed before. In all modesty he later declared (See Janus by Heinzen, 1852) that the Paris proletariat had lost on December 2 because it did not possess his own Franco-Badenese democratic experience nor the insights available elsewhere in the frenchified Germany of the South. Anyone who desires further proofs of Goegg s modesty and of the existence of a Goegg Party will find them in the book The Baden Revolution in Retrospect. Paris 1850, written by himself. A fitting climax to his modesty came in a public meeting in Cincinnati when he declared that reputable men came to him after the bankruptcy of the Baden Revolution and had announced that in that revolution men of all the German tribes had taken an active part. It was therefore to be regarded as a German matter just as the Rome uprising was of concern to the whole of Italy. As he was the man who had held out they said that he must become the German Mazzini. His modesty compelled him to refuse. Why? A man who was once dictator and who to cap it all, is the bosom friend of Napoleon Sigel, could surely also become the German Mazzini . Once the Emigration was augmented by these and similar, less noteworthy arrivals, it could proceed to those mighty battles that the reader shall learn of in the next canto.
Heroes of the Exile