Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, April 25, 1850

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 25 April 1850


First published: in Die Gesellschaft, Jg. VII, Bd. 2, Berlin, 1930
Published in English for the first time in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895, International Publishers, New York, 1953.
Source: Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, p. 233-235
Collection(s): Die Gesellschaft

TO JOSEPH WEYDEMEYER IN FRANKFURT AM MAIN

London, 25 April 1850

Dear Weydemeyer,

Your letter to Marx arrived today, together with £5 for the refugee fund and an enclosure for me. You will meanwhile have received two letters[1] [2] containing the Refugee Committee's statements, its appeal, and its record of accounts.[3] Get these printed as quickly as possible and do whatever you can in the vicinity to collect funds for the refugees. How things are in general, you will see from the enclosed letter to Dronke.[4] Perhaps something could be raised in Franconia, Nuremberg, Bayreuth, etc., etc. The N.Rh.Ztg. has a very large circulation there. If you have an address in Munich, write there likewise. You will realise that now, when those jackasses, Struve and Company, are trying, on the eve of the revolution, to make use of the refugees to get their names into the papers again, it becomes a matter of honour for us to go on supporting at least our own refugees, and not to let the best of the new arrivals fall in their turn into the clutches of those jackasses. We believed that the two following issues of the Revue had been in your hands, the 2nd for 5 weeks, and the 3rd for several days at the least. So that jackass, Naut, never sent them to you! A rude letter has already gone off to him today, telling him to send them to you forthwith.[5] He must have had the 3rd issue for a week. But wait till you've also got the 3rd issue, which brings the first series of articles[6] to a definitive close, before writing a critique of it.

Adieu, your

F. E.


We have just heard that those wretches, Struve, Tellering, Schramm, Bauer[7] (of Stolpe), etc., etc., have put it about in sundry German papers that our committee[8] is itself swallowing up the refugee funds. This infamy is also being spread by letter. You cannot have read of it anywhere, otherwise you would have entered the lists long ago on our behalf. You know that the revolution has cost all of us money and has never brought us in a centime. Not even the Neue Preussische Zeitung, etc., have ever dared to reproach us with such things. The rotten democrats, the impotent 'great men' of the petty bourgeoisie, alone were vicious enough to stoop to such baseness. Our committee has now rendered accounts on 3 occasions,[9] on each of which the donors were invited [to appoint] representatives to verify the books and receipts. What other committee has done that much? A receipt is to hand for every centime. Not one committee member has ever received a centime from the funds, nor would he ever ask for one, however much he was down on his luck. Not one of our best friends has ever received more than the least of the refugees; no one who had a source of income received so much as a sou. If Dronke is no longer there, open his letter, read it, and send it on to him.

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 230-31.
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 232 (the second letter has not survived).
  3. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, 'Statement. 20 April 1850'; Accounts of the Social-Democratic Refugee Committee in London. 23 April 1850; and the appeal may be the Appeal for Support for German Political Refugees. 20 September 1849.
  4. ↑ Engels' letter to Dronke has not been found.
  5. ↑ The letter of Marx and Engels to Naut has not been found.
  6. ↑ F. Engels, The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution.
  7. ↑ Rudolf Schramm, Louis Bauer
  8. ↑ the Social-Democratic Refugee Committee
  9. ↑ Accounts of the Committee of Support for German Refugees in London. 3 December 1849; Accounts of the Social-Democratic Refugee Committee in London. Beginning of March 1850; Accounts of the Social-Democratic Refugee Committee in London. 23 April 1850.