Letter to Karl Marx, February 4, 1860

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 4 February 1860


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

[Manchester,] 4 February 1860

D. M.,

One keeps changing one's mind every night as is inevitable, since we've not yet set eyes on the stuff.[1]

The Hirsch affair is truly splendid.[2]

The lawsuit in Berlin also strikes me as a very good idea, always assuming they allow it, though I don't see how they can deny you justice/

Re Lupus'[3] and the affair in general, I waded through the better part of the records for 1850/52 yesterday evening. Lupus cannot recollect anything at all and I have to keep jogging his memory. Not that I'm much better; since those days so much BITTER BEER has flowed down my gullet that many things are difficult to ascertain. As regards Lupus the following emerges:

1. In 1851, not 1850, when the document appeared in the Karlsruher Zeitung (our plan of campaign against the democrats[4] ), Lupus was still in Zurich[5] and was attacked by the fellows as one who happened to be in their midst and was a member of our League.[6]

2. Another document, however, had appeared previously in, if I'm not mistaken, the Hannoversche Zeitung, namely a circular from the Cologne Central Authority composed by Bürgers.[7] But I can't ascertain exactly whether it happened in the Hann. Ztg. You must go into this.

3. Vogt has jumbled all of this up and has Lupus writing a document in London in 1850 which was produced in Cologne at a time when Lupus was still in Zurich. (L. came to London after 5 May and before 21 July 1851.) All that remains to be ascertained is whether Bürgers' document really did appear in the Hann. Zeitung, and how it fell into the hands of the Hanover police. The letters I wrote you between February and April 1851 are bound to contain some mention of it.[8] Let me have particulars about this; without them I hardly imagine that Lupus' statement[9] will suffice.

The item in The Times (original source Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung) had already been noted.[10]

I am starting on my thing[11] today. Up till now, the Vogt rumpus has prevented me from doing so. This time I shall again describe myself as the 'author of Po and Rhine' so as to get that personage all the more firmly established in the field of military literature— if I put my own name to it the immediate result would be a conspiration du silence. At the same time, however, i.e. about a fortnight after it comes out, I shall get Siebel to arrange for an appropriate review to appear in the papers. In general, this fellow could be very useful to us in the Vogt rumpus; he has masses of connections.

Many regards to the FAMILY.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ C. Vogt, Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung.
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 16. This refers to the lawsuit Marx intended to bring against the National Zeitung (see this volume, p. 22).
  3. ↑ See this volume, pp. 15-16.
  4. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, 'Address of the Central Authority to the League, June 1850'.
  5. ↑ Wolff lived in exile in Zurich from August 1849 to May 1851.
  6. ↑ Engels' pamphlet Savoy, Nice and the Rhine was published anonymously by G. Behrend in Berlin in April 1860.
  7. ↑ Engels means an address by the Cologne Central Authority to the Communist League of 1 December 1850 ('Die Centralbehörde an den Bund'), drawn up by supporters of Marx and Engels, mainly by Bürgers. It fell into the hands of the Saxon (not Hanover) police at the arrest of League member Peter Nothjung in Leipzig on 10 May 1850 and was published, in June 1851, in the Dresdner Journal und Anzeiger and the Kölnische Zeitung (not the Hannoversche Zeitung).
  8. ↑ See Engels' letter to Marx of 27 June 1851 (present edition, Vol. 38).
  9. ↑ W. Wolff, 'Erklärung', Die Reform, No. 18, 11 February 1860; Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 44 (supplement), 13 February 1860, and Volks-Zeitung, No. 47, 24 February 1860.
  10. ↑ This refers to a note in The Times, No. 23533, 3 February 1860, on a statement by Vogt in connection with the annexation of Savoy and Nice then being prepared by France. To sidetrack attention from Napoleon III's real designs, Vogt declared that France was willing to let Switzerland have the neutral provinces of Savoy—Faucigny, Chablais and the Genevois—in return for the free use of the Simplon. The pro-Bonapartist content of this statement was exposed by Engels in the pamphlet Savoy, Nice and the Rhine (present edition, Vol. 16) and by Marx in Herr Vogt (present edition, Vol. 17, p. 195).
  11. ↑ F. Engels, Savoy, Nice and the Rhine.