Letter to Moritz Elsner, December 20, 1854

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 20 December 1854


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 MORITZ ELSNER

IN BRESLAU

London, Wednesday, 20 December 1854 28 Dean Street, Soho Dear Eisner,

Your letter arrived here on Monday. I myself only got back today after spending a few days visiting Engels and Lupus in Manchester.

[1] [2]

I shall begin work as correspondent on Saturday. To start off right in the middle of the final part of the 'preliminary' parliamentary session WOULD NOT DO. A resume of this short session would make a better entrée. For the past two years I have been writing—i.e. for publication—only in English. German may give me some trouble at the start.

As you are aware, I edited a Prussian newspaper[3] under censorship—for a whole year. So I am quite familiar with the torments which the Neue Oder-Zeitung may have to endure under a new form of censorship, and it is these difficulties, the UNDERHAND struggle AGAINST THE ESTABLISHED POWERS which incline me to work in the interest of this paper.

So far as I am aware, and I know pretty well all the important reading-rooms in London, the N.O.-Z. is not available in any of them. Hence, for the time being, you'll have to send it direct to me. I might perhaps be able to introduce it into a reading-room or

COFFEE-ROOM.

You would particularly oblige me if, by way of an exception, you could send me one issue of the Breslauer Zeitung. Although Edgar Bauer comes to see me every week, he has never spoken about his articles and I would like to get to know his views from one 'sample'.

Since Parliament will be going into recess, and—save for a resume of its sessions and PERHAPS of FINANCIAL MATTERS—there will be little of importance to report, I shall, if these premises hold good, write a number of consecutive articles providing a review of the conduct of the war in the Crimea so far,[4] concerning which I have seen nothing sensible, i.e. critical, either here or from Germany. Moreover, I suppose that this subject is of the greatest general interest and at the same time least liable to lead to a conflict with the indirect Royal Prussian Censorship.

Requesting you to convey my kindest regards to your wife whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting.

Yours

K. Marx

  1. ↑ the Library of the British Museum
  2. ↑ R. S. Ripley, The War with Mexico, in two volumes.
  3. ↑ Rheinische Zeitung
  4. ↑ In compliance with this plan Marx wrote two articles, on 29 December 1854 and 1 January 1855, which were published in the Neue Oder-Zeitung on 2 and 4 January 1855 under the general title 'Rückblicke' ('In Retrospect'). This marked the beginning of Marx's collaboration with this newspaper (see Note 603)