Fritz Anneke Friedrich ' Fritz ' Anneke ( January 3 , 1818 , Dortmund , Germany – December 6 , 1872 , Chicago , United States ) was a German socialist and newspaper editor , owner , and reporter . He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1849 and became an officer in the Union Army , and later an entrepreneur and journalist . He was the husband of Mathilde Franziska Anneke , the older brother of Emil Anneke , the first Republican Michigan Auditor General , and the father of Percy Shelley Anneke , well known in Duluth , Minnesota , as co - founder and owner of the famous Fitger Brewing Company , now registered as a U . S . National Historic Place . Life . The Anneke family ( usually spelled " Annecke " ; Fritz changed the spelling of his name while still in Germany ) originates from a small village called Schadeleben close to Quedlinburg in what is today Saxony - Anhalt . Schadeleben is close to the Harz mountains , one of the oldest mining regions in Europe . Like the family of Martin Luther , whose birthplace , Eisleben , is only a few kilometers away from Schadeleben , many of Anneke ' s ancestors had worked in mining , which is why the family moved to Dortmund in the early 19th century , when industrial coal mining was beginning in the Ruhr district . Like his father , Anneke ' s brother Emil was a mining inspector , before he became involved in the 1848 revolution . Anneke became a Prussia n artillery officer , but was dishonorably dismissed in 1846 because of his democratic activities at his garrison in Münster , and also because he refused a duel . While still in Münster he met the divorced Mathilde Franziska von Tabuillot , who later became his wife . He was one of the leading figures of the Communist movement in Cologne , together with his friends Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels , and Moses Hess ( later the intellectual father of Zionism and the State of Israel ) . He spent most of 1848 in jail for his political activities . In 1849 he joined the revolutionary campaigns in the Palatinate and Baden , and was commander of the artillery there . Carl Schurz served as his adjunct officer . After the fall of Rastatt he fled to France , where he found refuge with his wife in the house of their mutual friend Moses Hess . Later on he worked as a correspondent for U . S . media in Europe , where he tried to join the Italian revolutionary movement under Giuseppe Garibaldi . In 1862 he returned to the USA to assume command of the 34th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment as a colonel . In 1863 he became the victim of blackmail and was dishonorably dismissed . His regiment was dissolved on September 9 , 1863 . Afterwards he tried in vain to be readmitted to Army service , supported by his brother Emil Anneke , who was a leading Republican in Michigan and acting Michigan Auditor General . Many of Anneke ' s friends and comrades from the 1849 campaign in Germany had become Union generals , including his own junior adjunct officer Carl Schurz , August Willich , Ludwig Blenker , Franz Sigel , and Gustav Struve . After various failed commercial enterprises and the split with his wife Mathilde ( who became an eminent figure in the U . S . abolitionist and suffrage movements , and who lived together with the American feminist and writer Mary Booth from 1860 until Booth ' s death in 1865 ) , Fritz moved to Chicago , where he died in December 1872 , after an accident . The short - sighted Anneke had fallen into a construction pit . Lighting was very bad in Chicago in those days , and the city was , one year after the Great Chicago Fire , full of such pits . A son of Fritz , Percy Shelley Anneke , was a local celebrity in Duluth , Minnesota , as co - founder and owner of the famous Fitger Brewing Company , which is now registered as a U . S . National Historic Place . Sources . See German article and article about Fritz ' wife Mathilde Franziska Anneke .