The trial of eleven members of the…
November 1852 CE
The trial of eleven members of the Communist League, former associates of Karl Marx (at this time living in London), is held in Cologne from October 4 to November 12.
The police use forged evidence, as Marx will later show in Revelations of the Cologne Communist Trial (Enthüllungen über den Kommunisten Prozess zu Küln).
Three of the accused—journalist Heinrich Bürgers, tailor Peter Nothjung, and cigar maker Peter Gerhard Röser—are sentenced to six years in a fortress, and three of the accused—journalist Hermann Heinrich Becker, chemist Karl Wunibald Otto, and Wilhelm Joseph Reiff—receive five-year prison sentences.
One, Friedrich Lessner, a tailor who will later become a close associate of Marx in London, gets off with one year.