Georg Weerth (1822–1856)

He had to quit school when his father got ill, apprenticed with a textile merchant and travelled across Europe as a trade representative. He collaborated with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on the journal Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne (1848). Was sentenced to prison for "defamation of the dead" in his novel "Leben und Thaten des berühmten Ritters Schnapphahnski" and quit writing fiction after completing the sentence. He became agent for another textile company in the West Indies and died in 1856 of malaria.