Letter to Moritz Elsner, September 11, 1855

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 11 September 1855, 8 November 1855


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[1]

IN BRESLAU

London, 11 September 1855 28 Dean Street, Soho[2]

Dear Eisner,

It was impossible for me to write last week because of legal proceedings taken against me by the worthy Dr Freund. He has actually compelled me to leave London for a week or so. During the parliamentary recess this does not, of course, impair my efficiency as a correspondent. This month, therefore, you should not put me on your books until 11 September.

It goes without saying that, should your paper cease to pay yet still remain viable, my contributions will be at your disposal then as now.

Considering the difficult circumstances and the limited space at your disposal, your paper is, in my opinion, edited with great skill and tact, and in such a way that the intelligent reader may read between the lines. Nothing can be more fatuous than to censure you for receiving 'constitutional' money. Some very 'constitutional' citizens paid in shares for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. If these gentlemen subsequently came to regret it, they were at least never forbidden by the editorial board to go on paying.

If I were not so afraid of compromising this or that acquaintance by the mere fact of corresponding with him, I should long since have written to the Rhine Province in the interests of your paper. At all events, Lassalle did wrong in failing to draw attention to the Neue Oder-Zeitung in Cologne, etc. Circumstances would have allowed him to do so.

Should the N. O.-Z. go under, we shall have to console ourselves with the thought that all our present doings, activities and beginnings are purely provisional and no more than a pis aller.

With kindest regards.

Yours

K. M.

A German weekly rag has been started in London, its founder being the French ex(?)-policeman and Viennese refugee, Sigmund Engländer. Contributors: the Russian Herzen, Johannes Ronge and a drunkard by the name of Korn, allegedly a capitaine.

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 11 September 1855, 8 November 1855


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

Manchester, 8 November 1855 34 Butler Street, Green Keys

Dear Eisner,

I have received both your letters,[3] the first somewhat belatedly because my wife accidentally delayed sending it on to Manchester. After receiving your first letter I thought you had resigned from the Neue Oder-Zeitung and for that reason at once ceased to send any articles. When your second letter arrived I was suffering from such a FIT of toothache—which persisted until a few days ago—that I could no more write than I could hear or see.

I passed on your letter of 7 October not only to friends but also to adversaries, and the latter seemed thoroughly taken aback. That I and my friends are in no way affected by the dogmas of Messrs Temme and Simon of Breslau you will readily believe without any further assurance from me.

I do not see Hoyoll, but Lupus does—from time to time. Patriotism has led this Hoyoll to introduce the Breslauer Zeitung into the Athenaeum[4] here, a circumstance which threatens to drive our little Wolff[5] out of what is virtually the only home of the Muses in Manchester.

I have conveyed your greetings to Borchardt, whom I know well. Borchardt maintains a regular and intimate correspondence with Citizen Simon of Breslau. Upon his first asking me whether I knew that the N. O.-Z. lived in sin with the constitutionals, I replied: Qu'est ce que ça me fait?[6] Don't you know that, in my view, constitutionals and democrats, at least of the Prussian variety, are all much of a muchness? And is a distinction now to be drawn between democrats who have accepted one royal imposition while rejecting another and those who, having submitted to the one, also submit to the other?[7] The N. O.-Z. expresses the most extreme views possible in the present condition of the Press. What more do you ask?'

I have had letters from particularly well-informed people in Paris. According to them, the Empire's stock is sinking lower and

  1. ↑ This is Marx's reply to Eisner, who wrote in his letter of 4 September 1855 about the financial straits of the Neue Oder-Zeitung to which Marx contributed during that year (see notes 603 and 612)
  2. ↑ The letter is written in Camberwell but datelined London.
  3. ↑ Eisner's letters of 3 and 7 October 1855 to Marx
  4. ↑ The Athenaeum —the name of the clubs which existed in a number of cities in England, including London and Manchester, and frequented by men of letters and scientists
  5. ↑ Wilhelm Wolff
  6. ↑ What's that to me?
  7. ↑ The reference is to two Prussian Constitutions. The first was imposed by King Frederick William IV simultaneously with the dissolution of the Prussian National Assembly on 5 December 1848. It introduced a two-chamber system. The King retained the right not only to rescind the Chambers' decisions but also to revise certain articles of the Constitution. The further strengthening of the reaction led in April 1849 to the dissolution of the Second Chamber elected on the basis of the 1848 Constitution, to the replacement of universal suffrage with a three-class electoral system based on a high property qualification and to the introduction of a new, still more reactionary Constitution which came into force on 31 January 1850