ABSTRACT
In Germany the members of the Communist League scattered in all directions. The first appeal for unity came from the Mainz Workers' Educational Union. Marx went to Cologne because he had connections with that city which had never been entirely broken off during his years of exile and because Cologne was the obvious place for the headquarters of the Communist League. A branch of the Communist League had existed in Cologne since the autumn of 1847. Its leaders were Andreas Gottschalk, a physician, and August von Willich, a former artillery lieutenant. Both these highly distinctive personalities, each in his own way characteristic of the 'mad year' of 1848. Gottschalk demanded a boycott of the elections both for the Frankfurt and the Berlin assemblies. It was the outward sign of Marx's victory in the struggle he had been carrying on for six months in the ranks of the workers' organisations and the Communist League in Cologne.
