| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 7 August 1851 |
TO JOSEPH WEYDEMEYER IN ZURICH
Manchester, 7 August 1851
Dear Weydemeyer,
Many thanks for your information. If you can get anything further out of Hoffstetter,[1] I would be much obliged to you. I should, by the way, have thought that you might still remember from earlier days the titles of a few manuals and other military text-books; what I need particularly is precisely the utterly commonplace and ordinary stuff required for the ensign's and lieutenant's examination, and which for that reason is generally assumed to be common knowledge. I had already acquired a Decker[2] in Switzerland, in a bad French translation and without a more or less plans, but Marx has mislaid it, and will hardly be able to find it again. I will get hold of the atlas myself, but must also have a map of Hungary. I see that the Austrian General Staff has published several works on the subject; tell me whether your map is of this kind and how much it costs; at the very worst, it's bound to be more serviceable than the large Stieler.[3] As regards Baden and the Rhine frontier between Baden and Switzerland, I salvaged sufficient maps from the campaign.[4] I shall now find out about prices, etc., from Weerth, who is back in Hamburg, and then see what to buy. But as I said, any further information you can obtain for me will be most welcome.
It is bad that you should be going to America, and yet I honestly don't know what other advice I should give you if you can't find anything in Switzerland. There's nothing much doing in London, and Lupus still hasn't found anything here. He's looking round for a position, and I am trying to obtain one for him here, but so far without success. As regards music, the competition here is enormous. Après tout,[5] looked at from England and particularly from here, New York does not seem so very far away, when you see steamers regularly making the passage, which begins on a Wednesday and ends on the Saturday of the following week, and seldom taking the full 10 days. In New York you will also find little red Becker[6] —he was recently in the dispatch department of the Arbeiterzeitung, but whether he is still there I don't know, since I have not heard from him for a long time. His last address was 24 North William Street, upstairs, but should you not be able to discover his present one, you can certainly find out where he is from Lievre, Shakespeare Hotel, or at the Staatszeitung. In New York, by the way, there's a great deal to be done, and a proper representative of our party, who has also had a theoretical training, is badly needed there. You'll find enough material there, your greatest obstacle, however, being the fact that reliable Germans, those who are worth anything, readily become Americanised and give up all idea of returning; and then there are the special American circumstances to be considered—the ease with which the surplus population can drain off into the country, the necessarily rapid, indeed ever more rapid, increase in the country's prosperity—which cause them to regard bourgeois conditions as the beau ideal, etc. Such of the Germans there as are minded to return are mostly good-for-nothing individuals, exploiters of revolution—à la Metternich or Heinzen—, who are the more pitiful the more subordinate they are. You will, incidentally, find the fatherland's imperial rabble[7] in New York. That you'll be able to support yourself there, I have no doubt—besides New York, the only place that is at all tolerable is St Louis; Philadelphia and Boston are ghastly holes.
If you could win the paper over, that would be splendid. Otherwise, make sure that you approach the New-Yorker Staatszeitung, which is very favourable to us and whose European reports were constantly under our supervision.
The best thing would be for correspondence from there to go through me, I can then get the postage paid by the firm.
I hear very little about the barracks now, save that Willich has quarrelled with that crew and no longer lives in barracks. The nucleus of the army of the future has been disbanded,[8] so Marx informs me, and Willich is without a Besançon.[9] Quelle horreur! This Willich, by the way, is not merely a fool but an infinitely perfidious, malicious fellow, whose wickedness—serving as tool for the most colossally and unimaginably puffed-up vanity and self-adulation—knows absolutely no bounds. Never have I seen a creature who is so consummate a liar. I can assure you that I have literally never heard a true word fall from his lips. You can hardly conceive the figure cut by this fellow as a result of the idée fixe that, thanks to his genius as soldier, politician and organiser of societies, he is destined to lead the revolution to victory and completion. This folly has, of course, come upon him only by degrees. While considering him capable of any dirty trick, no matter how base, I do not, by the way, believe him guilty of actual betrayal on this occasion. The Hamburg affair has resolved itself in a different fashion; Bruhn, the only agent Willich and Schapper have there, is not the traitor. Haupt is said to have blabbed, but this I cannot believe.[10]
We, naturally, leave the whole crew to their own devices—their activity being, of course, confined to rodomontade, the forging of crazy schemes, and abuse of ourselves—and leaves us indifferent. We have no need to keep them under observation, this being done for us by the Prussian police. Not a word is spoken in Scharttner's pub, where they meet, that isn't reported.
Anyhow, write to me again before you leave and give me the name of the vessel on which you are sailing—I can see from the papers here when it is due in New York. Once in New York, let us have your address straight away.—Marx's is 28 Dean Street, Soho Square, London.
All my regards,
Your
F. Engels
Have you heard anything of Dronke? He's stuck in Geneva; Schuster will have given you his address.