Family provenance and early years Franz Gustav Duncker was one of the sons of the publisher
Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Duncker. His brothers included the publisher
Alexander Duncker, the historian
Maximilian Wolfgang Duncker and the Berlin mayor, . Duncker studied
Philosophy and
:History at
Berlin. the granddaughter of a bishop who as "Lina Duncker" would create one of several fashionable political and literary salons in Berlin. A frequent guest was
Gottfried Keller who fell in love with Lina's sister Betty Tendering, and later featured her, renamed as Dorothea Schönfund, in his semi-autobiographical novel,
"Grüne Heinrich". Franz and Lina Duncker's marriage would also give rise to one recorded child, their daughter Marie, born in 1856. • Po und Rhein, an anonymously published "pamphlet", actually by
Friedrich Engels (1858) Control of the publishing business was taken over in 1877 by a man called Wilhelm Hertz. Duncker sold the
Berliner Volks-Zeitung to
Emil Cohn in 1885: twenty years later, in 1904, it was acquired by
Rudolf Mosse.
The political activist Thwarted revolution in 1848 was followed by
political repression in
Prussia, but the ideas of
liberalism and nationalism that had underpinned 1848 never completely disappeared, and Duncker was supportive of both aspirations. In 1858 he was one of the founders of the
German National Association, serving on its principal committees till 1867. He was also, in 1861, a founder of the liberal-leaning
Progressive Party, During the 1861
Constitutional Conflict he was strongly opposed to militia (Landwehr) reforms because he feared they would lead to a weakening of citizen spirit which till that time had been a unique corrective against resurgent militarism. Along with his membership of the Prussian House of Representatives, between 1867 and 1878 Duncker also belonged to the national legislature, the
Confederation Reichstag and its 1871 successor, the
Imperial Reichstag, sitting as a
Progressive Party member and representing an electoral district that included the Berlin quarters
Spandau and
Friedrich-Wilhelm-Stadt. Together with
Max Hirsch and
Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch he established the
Hirsch-Dunckersche Gewerkvereine, which was a form of liberal trades union movement, founded in 1868. ==References==