MEHRING, Franz, German historian, critic and socialist philosopher: b. Schlawe, Pomerania, 27 Feb. 1846; d. Berlin, 29 Jan. 1919. He was of middle-class Pomeranian origin, but became interested early in life in the struggles of the poor. His life is an interesting example of the career of a political thinker who passes out of the organizations of his own class and into those of the lower classes. by natural sympathy, although in Mehring's case this process took a long time. He attended the University of Berlin, where he obtained the Ph.D. degree, simultan eously working for a democratic newspaper, Zukunft, under the direction of Johann Jacoby and Dr. Guido Weiss. After this paper was suppressed (1871), he became a member of the staff of Die Wage, a weekly edited by Dr. Weiss. In 1873 appeared Mehring's first social istic pamphlet, *Herr von Treitschke, der Sozialistentoter, and die Enziele des Liberal ismus,* which, as its title indicates, is an attack upon Treitschke (q.v.). When the two chief socialistic bodies in Germany united at Gotha in 1875, Mehring was sympathetic to the new party but did not become a member, and a rather personal controversy which he had with Leopold Sonnemann editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, for which Mehring had been Berlin correspondent, removed him more and more from the activities of the Social-Democratic party. From 1877 to 1882, Mehring was un favorably disposed toward the leaders of the party, and in his (Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie,' which he began writing in those years, he made many attacks upon them, for which he was seriously taken to task at the Dresden Party Congress. He defended him self in a little book
of the Berliner Volkszeitunq (1885-89), but was forced to resign from that paper because of a controversy with Paul Lindau (q.v.), arising out of the latter's maltreatment of the actress Elsa von Schabelski (by a curious coincidence, Paul Lindau's death in January 1919, coincided almost to a day, that of Mehring). Mehring has wrtten profound historical analyses, among which the best are
Les sing-Legende (1893) and