Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, May 28, 1852

Author(s) Karl Marx
Friedrich Engels
Written 28 May 1852


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXV, Moscow 1934
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX AND ENGELS TO JOSEPH WEYDEMEYER

IN NEW YORK

Manchester, 28 May 1852

Dear Weiwei,

I am staying with Engels for a few days and have found your letter here. Today you must be content with a few lines.

The main purpose of this letter is to inform you about three individuals who will be arriving in America:

1. Heise (of the Kassel Hornisse), Willich's agent (who, unbeknown to Kinkel with whom he is on bad terms, is seeking to spread Willich's renown). Apropos. Mr Willich was among the cavalière servante[1] of Baroness von Brüningk who, once a week, provided him, Techow, Schimmelpfennig, etc., with free board. The Brüningk woman is a flirtatious little woman and it amuses her to tease the old he-goat, who plays the ascetic. One day he made a direct carnal attaque upon her and was ignominiously shown the door. Keep an eye on Heise and don't trust him out of your sight.

2. Schütz from Mainz. Kinkelian. Member of the Committee for the Administration of the European-American National Loan.[2]

3. Conrad Schramm. He has in his hands a credential from us, so worded that without you he cannot take a step. In his relations with his brother[3] and the latter's other friends, his conduct has not always been beyond reproach. The confidence you accord him should not be unconditional but rather tempered with caution. In the adverse circumstances here he has, furthermore, gone very much downhill, is quite unreliable and not over-scrupulous in moneymatters, tends to swagger and boast like a commis voyageur[4] and hence may well compromise those in his surroundings. On the other hand he has a number of good qualities. I feel it my duty to put you au fait in advance. You should also pass on this information to Cluss.

As to Lupus' letter, you should not take it too literally. Wolff wrote in a moment of agitation and is very well aware of the many obstacles that stood in your way.[5]

Don't forget to send me in your next a detailed report on 'Willich's Corps'[6] in New York.

My warm regards to your wife. I hope that, 'for all that',[7] your affairs will yet progress.

Dana has written to say he wants to do an essay on the Cologne people[8] as soon as you provide him with the necessary information. So go and see him. The Cologne people are to appear before a special Court of Assizes in June. Daniels is said to have consumption and Becker[9] to be half blind. Mind you settle the matter quickly with Dana and send me the article. It will provide consolation for Mrs Daniels.

Your

K. Marx

Dear Weydemeyer,

As regards Heise, I first met him in the Palatinate. A democratic loafer who lends a willing ear to bad jokes about Tom, Dick or Harry, but a no less willing hand to Tom, Dick or Harry's pompous, democratic schemes for world conquest and world liberation. Recently—since his arrival in London—he has consorted exclusively with the others, never coming to see us; now, of course, wholly in the others' clutches. No time for any more. Greetings to your wife.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ knights in attendance
  2. ↑ The reference is to the so-called German-American revolutionary loan which Kinkel and other petty-bourgeois refugee leaders tried to raise among the German emigrants in Europe and America in 1851-52 to finance an 'immediate revolution' in Germany. Kinkel's trip to the USA for this purpose in September 1851-March 1852 was a failure. In a number of their works (e. g. The Great Men of the Exile, The Knight of the Noble Consciousness, present edition, Vols. 11 and 12), Marx and Engels ridiculed this idea of Kinkel's and denounced the attempts to produce a revolution artificially when the revolutionary movement was on the wane
  3. ↑ Rudolf Schramm
  4. ↑ commercial traveller
  5. ↑ Wilhelm Wolff's letter to Weydemeyer of 16 April 1852.
  6. ↑ An allusion to the attempts of Willich's supporters (former members of the volunteers' corps during the 1849 Baden-Palatinate uprising) to form a special military unit in the USA in view of an allegedly imminent revolution in Europe. In a letter to Engels of 17 June 1852 Weydemeyer appraised these actions as an attempt to form one more makeshift organisation of petty-bourgeois emigrants
  7. ↑ An allusion to F. Freiligrath's verse 'Trotz alledem!' published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on 6 June 1848.
  8. ↑ Reference to the leading article 'Justice of Prussia', based on the material sent in by Marx and published in the New York Daily Tribune, No. 3446, 4 May 1852.
  9. ↑ Hermann Heinrich Becker