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Adam Lux (27 December 1765 – 4 November 1793) was a German revolutionary and sympathiser of theFrench Revolution.
Lux was born inObernburg am Main, a village belonging to theElectorate of Mainz, as a farmer's son. However, his parents managed to finance his studies at theUniversity of Mainz (in theArchbishopric of Mainz of theHoly Roman Empire, nowadays inRhineland-Palatinate), where he became aDr. phil. with hisLatindissertation on the notion ofenthusiasm.
As a destitute academic, he first worked as atutor for a merchant family inMainz, into which he married. His wife'sdowry made it possible for him to buy an estate inKostheim, where he followed the call of the French philosopherJean-Jacques Rousseau by getting back to nature, and became a farmer.
His advocacy of the French Revolution was expressed through an odd political action: after a three-day-long informative meeting, Lux held areferendum, about whether his homeland should enter theFrench First Republic, on 2 November 1792 in Kostheim. Of the 223 men entitled to vote, 213 supported an accession to France; only 2 rejected the idea, the remaining 8 couldn't take part in the referendum. The result of poll was celebrated with a feast, whose climax was the planting of aliberty pole.
Lux then moved to Mainz with his family, where the Rhenish-German National Convention, the parliament of theRepublic of Mainz, founded according to the French example and chaired byAndreas Joseph Hofmann elected him to be a representative.
On 21 March 1793, the convention sent the naturalist and writerGeorg Forster, the merchant André Potocki, and him toParis, to complete the planned accession to France. In Paris he met several Germanfriends of freedom, such asKonrad Engelbert Oelsner andJohann Georg Kerner, who shared his disappointment with the development of the Revolution. They were disgusted by the eruption of theTerror and the radicalization of theSans-culottes and theJacobin Club.
On 17 July 1793 Lux witnessed the execution of theGirondistCharlotte Corday, who hadassassinated the radical agitatorJean-Paul Marat. With the publication of provokingpamphlets, in which he justified the killing as an act of liberation, he was apparently risking his life deliberately, although not all motives of his behavior at this time are comprehensible nowadays, especially those concerning his relation to Corday and her actions. The poetJustinus Kerner, whose older brother Johann Georg Kerner witnessed the events in Paris, reported on these activities in his bookBilderbuch aus meiner Knabenzeit, which was based on his brother's records.
After giving up the intention of publicly killing himself in front of theNational Convention, in order to protest against the violence of revolutionary goals, he set out to be executed by his former political friends. According to eyewitnesses, Lux ascended theguillotine'sscaffold, as if it were arostrum.
Because of his mysterious fate, Lux drew the attention of his contemporaries.Jean Paul wrote: "[Let] no German forget him!". According to the AmericanGermanistThomas Saine,Johann Wolfgang von Goethe even based the first husband of Dorothea in hisepicHermann and Dorothea (1798) on Lux. In contrast, the interest in Lux declined in later periods.
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