About: Jacob Audorf

Jacob Audorf (1 August 1835 – 20 June 1898) was a German poet, businessman, journalist-commentator and Labour movement pioneer. Much of his poetry was not remotely political, but it was for his political and polemical writing that he became known. The most frequently repeated of his poems was the so-called "German Workers' Marseillaise", a set of three verses (separated by a recurring refrain) of uplifting German-language encouragement for the building of a better future according to the socialist precepts of the time. The words were to be sung, in place of the French language original text, using Rouget de Lisle's already well known revolutionary melody for the Marseillaise.