Letter to Karl Marx, October 22, 1852

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 22 October 1852


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, Berlin, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

[Manchester, 22 October 1852]

Dear Marx,

If you want to count on receiving the articles for Dana punctually in future, you must take care not to send me Hungarian COLONELS, especially of a Thursday night. Yesterday the fellow[1] took up the whole of my evening and intends to come back today—he is pretty well-versed in a number of subjects, military included, and is the most interesting Hungarian I have met so far, but he is also a German-Austrian aristocrat.

So we are now recognised by the State, and even by the police, as 'intelligent' people, teste[2] Stieber. A fine business. The way that stupid Stieber tries to shuffle off responsibility for his own spy, Cherval, onto our chaps![3] Have you any idea why Kothes and Bermbach have been arrested?[4] Those two, of all people—it's ominous! But we shall discipline Haupt.[5] Weerth will find out where he is in South America and, on his arrival there, will unmask him. To that end we shall have to get hold of the Kölnische Ztg. or some other paper containing his statements. Could you not attend to this? Do everything you can; it would really be splendid to make the rascal feel the power of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung as far away as Brazil.

More in a day or two, and also translations.[6]

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ Pleyel
  2. ↑ witness
  3. ↑ Here Engels refers to the attempt of the police agent Stieber, a witness for the prosecution at the Cologne trial on 18 October 1852, to ascribe to the Communist League participation in the so-called Franco-German plot (see Note 143)
  4. ↑ See this volume, p. 216.
  5. ↑ Haupt, a former member of the Communist League, was arrested at the time of the Cologne Communist Trial and gave false evidence during the investigation. The police released him before the trial and he escaped to Brazil. His evidence, damaging to the accused, was cited in Seckendorf's speech for the prosecution on 3 November 1852
  6. ↑ English of Marx's article written on 16 October 1852 (see Note 249)