ABSTRACT
Most participants in the German revolution of 1848, and consequently most who sought refuge in London afterwards, were not socialists but democrats, republicans, constitutional monarchists or liberal nationalists. These trickled in more slowly than the socialists as the reaction on the Continent slowly tightened its grip. The first wave were refugees from the Baden-Palatinate uprising who arrived in London from late 1849 onwards. Up to 1851 the numbers of those fleeing persecution and trials in Germany increased steadily, then the influx of refugees dried up to a mere trickle of released detainees, such as the writer Corvin von Wiersbitzki and the tailor Andreas Scherzer, who arrived in London in 1855, and Lessner, who came as late as 1856.
