Franz Von Sickingen: A Tragedy in Five Acts

Franz von Sickingen was distinguished German knight who headed a league that spread the Reformation through Germany - distinguished in wealth, in character, in genius and in arms - on that borderland of the world's event when the scroll of the Middle Ages was being rolled up, and the scroll of Modern History began to unroll, Sickingen's stature is almost legendary. The rays of the rising sun fired his mind and heart. The aim he set to himself, and which he devised jointly with Ulrich von Hutten, had he succeeded, would have saved Germany the devastating Thirty Years' War, unified the nation along a direct and less thorny path than it was forced to travel, and materially changed the history of Europe for the better of mankind. He failed. He had a purpose firm, but the rock on which he suffered shipwreck was to fail to make his purpose known. Impossible as it was to conceal his purpose from the detection of the keen instinct of the usurpatory elements to whom his success meant destruction, nothing was earlier than its concealment from the masses, to whom his success meant salvation. Assailed by the former, who penetrated his designs, and left in the lurch by the latter, to whom his designs remained a secret, Sickingen went down.

Ferdinand Lassalle was a German Socialist and author who formulated the so-called Iron Law of Wages. He was killed in a duel over a woman.

Daniel DeLeon?s (translator) introduction ties the economic conditions of the 15th Century to conditions in the early 20th century.