page_title: Ferdinand Lassalle
section_title: Death and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Ferdinand Lassalle / Biography / Death and legacy
context_page_description: Ferdinand Lassalle was a Prussian-German jurist, philosopher, socialist and political activist best remembered as the initiator of the social democratic movement in Germany. “Lassalle was the first man in Germany, the first in Europe, who succeeded in organising a party of socialist action”, or, as Rosa Luxemburg put it: “Lassalle managed to wrestle from history in two years of flaming agitation what needed many decades to come about.” As agitator he coined the terms night-watchman state and iron law of wages.
context_section_description: In Rigi Kaltbad, Lassalle met a young woman named Helene von Dönniges and during the summer of 1864 they decided to marry. She was the daughter of an historian then living in Geneva, who wanted nothing to do with Lassalle. The father prevented Helene from seeing him and Lassalle protested vehemently. Apparently under duress, she soon renounced Lassalle in favour of another suitor, a Wallachian prince named Iancu Racoviță, to whom she had previously been betrothed.
  Lassalle sent dueling challenges both to Helene's father von Dönniges and to Racoviță, who accepted. Lassalle had no experience in the use of pistols and only one day to exercise. At the Carouge, a suburb of Geneva, a duel was held on the morning of 28 August. Lassalle was shot in the abdomen by Racoviță and died three days later on 31 August 1864.
  At the time of his death, Lassalle's political party had 4,610 members and no detailed political program.  The ADAV continued after his death, going on to help establish the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1875.
  Ferdinand Lassalle is buried in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), in the old Jewish cemetery.
caption: Lassalle's tomb in Breslau, now the Old Jewish Cemetery, Wrocław
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