Wilhelm Marx

Wilhelm Marx , 1863-1946, German statesman. A Reichstag member, he was a leading figure of the Catholic Center party and was elected its president in 1921. As chancellor (1923-24) he secured the passage of the Dawes Plan. He was succeeded by Hans Luther, whom he followed again as chancellor (1926-28). In the presidential elections of 1925, Marx was the unsuccessful candidate of the Center and the Social Democratic parties against Paul von Hindenburg .

Liebknecht, Wilhelm (1826–1900) German political leader. An early interest in SOCIALISM led to his expulsion from Berlin in 1846 but, after the outbreak of the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848, he returned to Germany to help set up a republic in Baden. Forced to flee, he went to England, where he spent 13 years in close association with Karl MARX. He returned to Germany in 1861 and in 1863 founded the League of German Workers' clubs with August Bebel. A pacifist, he refused to vote for war credits for the war with France in 1870, was convicted of treason, and spent two years in prison. In 1874 he returned to the Reichstag and in 1875, with the followers of the late Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–64), helped to form the German Social Democratic Labour Party, which became the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1891.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831) German philosopher, whose method of dialectical reasoning had a strong influence on his successors, notably Karl Marx. In 1818, he succeeded Johann Fichte as professor of philosophy at Berlin University. He developed a metaphysical system that traced the self-realization of spirit by dialectical movements towards perfection. These progressions took the form of battles between a thesis and an antithesis, eventually resolved in a synthesis at a higher level of truth. Hegel wrote two major books, Phenomenology of Mind (1807) and Science of Logic (1812–16). See also dialectical materialism