Gustav Struve, known as Gustav von Struve until he gave up his title (11 October 1805 – 21 August 1870), was a German surgeon, politician, lawyer and publicist, and a revolutionary during the German revolutions of 1848–1849 in Baden. He also spent over a decade in the United States and was active there as a reformer.
Early years
Struve was born in Munich the son of a Russian diplomat Johann Christoph Gustav von Struve, whose family came from the lesser nobility. His father Gustav, after whom he was named, had served as Russian Staff Councilor at the Russian Embassy in Warsaw, Munich and The Hague, and later was the Royal Russian Ambassador at the Badonian court in Karlsruhe. The younger Gustav Struve grew up and went to school in Munich, then studied law at universities in Göttingen and Heidelberg. For a short time (from 1829 to 1831) he was employed in the civil service in Oldenburg, then moved to Baden in 1833 where in 1836 he settled down to work as a lawyer in Mannheim.
In Baden, Struve also entered politics by standing up for the liberal members of the Baden parliament in news articles. His point of view headed more and more in a radical democratic, early socialist direction. As editor of the ', he was repeatedly condemned to imprisonment. He was compelled in 1846 to retire from the management of this paper. It was the major literary product of his career and the result of 30 years of study. From 1858 to 1859, he edited Die Sociale Republik.
He also promoted German public schools in New York City. In 1856, he supported John Frémont for U.S. president. In 1860, he supported Abraham Lincoln. In this book the protagonist Mandaras is a young Brahmin from India who visits Germany for education. He finds people bowing with tears before Christ on a cross but are comfortable with killing people with the death penalty. He finds them killing and eating the flesh of other animals. He points out that in his society, nobody eats meat and that they are polytheistic. He refuses to convert to Christianity because he claims that the religion approves of murder. He is imprisoned for not having the right documents and dies in prison because he does not get vegetarian food. He founded the Vegetarische Gesellschaft Stuttgart (Stuttgart Vegetarian Society) in 1868.