BLUM”

Blum, Robert, one of the martyrs of the German revolution,
born at Cologne, Nov. 10, 1807, executed in Vienna, Nov. 9, 1848.
He was the son of a poor journeyman cooper, who died in 1815,
leaving 3 children and a distressed widow, who, in 1816, again
married a common lighterman. This second marriage proved
unhappy, and the family misery rose to a climax in the famine of
1816-17. In 1819 young Robert, belonging to the Catholic
confession, obtained an employment as mass-servant; then became
apprentice to a gilder, then to a girdler, and, according to the
German custom, became a travelling journeyman, but was not up
to the requirements of his handicraft, and, after a short absence,
had to return to Cologne. Here he found occupation in a lantern
manufactory, ingratiated himself with his employer,* was by him
promoted to a place in the counting-house, had to accompany his
patron on his journeys through the southern states of Germany,
and, in the year 1829-30, resided with him at Berlin. During this
period he endeavored, by assiduous exertion, to procure a sort of
encyclopaedic knowledge, without however betraying a marked
predilection or a signal endowment for any particular science.
Summoned, in 1830, to the military service, to which every
Prussian subject is bound, his relations with his protector were
broken off. Dismissed from the army after a six weeks’ service,
and finding his employment gone, he returned again to Cologne,
in almost the same circumstances in which he had twice left it.
There the misery of his parents, and his own helplessness, induced
him to accept, at the hands of Mr. Ringelhardt, the manager of

the Cologne theatre, the office of man of all work of the theatre.
His connection with the stage, although of a subaltern character,
drew his attention to dramatic literature, while the political
excitement which the French revolution of July had caused
throughout Rhenish Prussia, allowed him to mingle in certain
political circles, and to insert poetry in the local papers.

In 1831, Ringelhardt, who had meanwhile removed to Leipsic,
appointed Blum cashier and secretary of the Leipsic theatre, a
post he held until 1847. From 1831 to 1837 he made contributions
to the Leipsic family papers, such as the Comet, the Abend-Zeitung,
&c., and published a “Theatrical Cyclopaedia,”* the “Friend of
the Constitution,” an almanac entitled Vorwdrts, &c. His writings
are impressed with the stamp of a certain household mediocrity.
His later productions were, moreover, spoiled by a superfluity of
bad taste. His political activity dates from 1837, when, as the
spokesman of a deputation of Leipsic citizens, he handed over a
present of honor to 2 opposition members of the Saxon estates.
In 1840 he became one of the founders, and in 1841 one of the
directors of the Schiller associations, and of the association of
German authors.*© His contributions to the Séchsische VaterlandsBlatter, a political journal, made him the most popular journalist
of Saxony, and the particular object of government persecution.
German catholicism,”’ as it was called, found a warm partisan in
him. He founded the German Catholic church at Leipsic, and
became its spiritual director in 1845. On Aug. 13, 1845, when an
immense meeting of armed citizens and students, assembling
before the riflemen’s barracks at Leipsic, threatened to storm it in
order to revenge the murderous onslaught committed the day
before by a company of the riflemen,” Blum, by his popular
eloquence, persuaded the excited masses not to deviate from legal
modes of resistance, and himself took the lead in the proceedings
for legal redress. In reward for his exertions, the Saxon
government renewed its persecutions against him, which, in 1848,
ended in the suppression of the Vaterlands-Blatter.

On the outbreak of the revolution of February, 1848, he became
the centre of the liberal party of Saxony, founded the “Fatherland’s Association,” °? which soon mustered above 40,000 members,
and generally proved an indefatigable agitator. Sent by the city of

a A reference to the Allgemeines Theater-Lexikon oder Encyklopddie alles Wissenswerthen ftir Bihnenkinstler, Dilettanten und Theaterfreunde, published in Leipzig
from 1839 by Robert Blum and others.— Ed.

© Karl Gotthold Todt and Julius Dieskau.— Ed.

Leipsic to the “preliminary parliament,”'° he there acted as
vice-chairman, and by preventing the secession en masse of the
opposition, contributed to sustain that body. After its dissolution,
he became a member of the committee it left behind, and
afterward of the Frankfort parliament, in which he was the leader
of the moderate opposition. His political theory aimed at a
republic as the summit of Germany, but as its base the different
traditionary kingdoms, dukedoms, &c.; since, in his opinion, the
latter alone were able to preserve, intact, what he considered a
peculiar beauty of German society, the independent development
of its different orders. As a speaker he was plausible, rather
theatrical, and very popular.

When the news of the Vienna insurrection !°. reached Frankfort,
he was charged, in company with some other members of the
German parliament, to carry to Vienna an address drawn up by
the parliamentary opposition. As the spokesman of the deputation,
he handed the address to the municipal council of Vienna, Oct.
17, 1848.* Having enrolled himself in the ranks of the students’
corps, and commanded a barricade during the fight, he sat, after
the capture of Vienna by Windischgratz, quietly conversing in a
hotel, when the hotel was surrounded by soldiers, and he himself
made prisoner. Placed before a court-martial, and not condescending to deny any of his speeches or acts, he was sentenced to
the gallows, a punishment commuted to that of being shot. This
execution took place at daybreak, in the Brigittenau.