Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, April 26, 1853

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 26 April 1853


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 TO JOSEPH WEYDEMEYER

IN NEW YORK

[London,] 26 April 1853 28 Dean Street, Soho Dear Weydemeyer,

On 21 April I received the anonymous scrawl set out below. An identical anonymous letter was sent to the democratic tavern- keepers, Schärttner and Göringer. I have ASCERTAINED the facts contained therein. I think you should publish the thing (you may name Schärttner and Göringer) along with a few introduc- tory remarks dated London. Messrs Stieber and Goldheim have come over here in order to link Kossuth's apocryphal gunpowder plot with the Berlin affair.[1] From the following you will note to what extent the 'contrite' Hirsch continues to be 'A Victim of Moucharderie'.[2] Let us hope the blackguard doesn't succeed in finding fresh victims in Berlin. I think this business will prove his complete undoing in America. Cluss will have received what follows below at the same time as yourself. We were all very taken with your 2 articles in the Reform.[3] Only see to it that Kellner doesn't exploit you without a fitting quid pro quo in terms of political influence. Well, here is a word-for-word copy of the letter received by Schärttner, etc.:

'London, 21.4.53

Announcement

Recent arrivals: Police Commissioner Stieber and the Jew Goldheim, a police lieutenant, both of Berlin.

Description

Stieber the Jew Goldheim Medium height (about 5') about 6' Hair: black, short black, short Moustache: ditto, ditto ditto, ditto Complexion: sallow and muddy sallow, puffy features Wears dark, narrow trousers, a blue Wears black trousers, a light yellow sack,

sack, a collapsible stuff hat, and black hat. spectacles.

N.B. Both of them regularly go about together and are accompanied by Hirsch, a commercial assistant from Hamburg, and Haering, a one-time postal clerk from Willich's birth-place. Today Stieber and Goldheim had a meeting with Bangya. Stieber or Goldheim visit the Prussian Embassy regularly every day between 11 and 3.'

Today's Times reports the presence here of Stieber and Goldheim.[4]

Many regards to you and your wife.

Your

K. M.

As that fire-eater Heinzen has again had the audacity in his Volk to invoke the 'Chartists'—who simply want universal suffrage without having to bother their heads over communists or odious class distinctions, I think it high time you published in the Reform the letter written to you by Ernest Jones.[5]

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 315 16.
  2. ↑ An allusion to Hirsch's 'Die Opfer der Moucharderie...'
  3. ↑ Weydemeyer, 'Nationalökonomische Skizzen'.
  4. ↑ [Report from a Berlin correspondent of 22 April,] The Times, No. 21412, 26 April 1853.
  5. ↑ Jones' letter to Weydemeyer of 3 March 1852 was intended for Die Revolution. It described the condition of various classes of English society and analysed the development of class struggle in England. Judging by Weydemeyer's letter to Marx of 24 May 1853, the letter was published in the American democratic papers at the end of 1852 or beginning of 1853