Letter to Friedrich Engels, December 8, 1864

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 8 December 1864


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 3, Berlin, 1930
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 8 December 1864

Dear Engels,

You will find enclosed

1. Free Press.[1] 2. Swabian Beobachter. (With the latter, I have managed to get the fellow at least to adopt an ironical tone towards Blind again, whereas, as a result of the letter transmitted by Bronner,[2] he was so bowled over by Blind's boasting—I have sent the scrawl to Weydemeyer—that he absolutely drew in his horns and paid compliments to the excellent man'. Incidentally, the editor—hinc Mae lacrimae[3] —is the man whom I referred to in Herr Vogt as the 'garrulous Swabian, Karl Mayer',[4] and who is moreover the son of that Mayer the Swabian so incessantly derided by Heine.[5] )

3. Letter enclosed from Red Becker[6] I had, you see, sent a copy of the statement[7] to the Rheinische Zeitung. Please return Becker's letter to me.[8]

Apropos Liebknecht. At the end of the year he is, of course, in a very tight spot. I have sent him money several times in the course of the last six months and now I want to send his wife[9] something in the form of a Christmas present for the children, since I know they are in dire straits. I would appreciate it if you would make a contribution, too. But you must let me know quickly, as periculum in mora.[10] I would then send the whole lot to Frau Liebknecht at the same time.

Salut. Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Presumably The Free Press, No. 12, 7 December 1864, with the article [CD. Collet,] 'Russia's Designs on the Pope'.
  2. ↑ See this volume, p.51.
  3. ↑ hence these tears (Terence, Andria, I, 1, 99)
  4. ↑ See present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 120 and 205.
  5. ↑ Heinrich Heine caustically derided Karl Mayer, a poet of the reactionary-Romantic Swabian school, in his Atta Troll (Chap. 22) and in Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (Chap. 3).
  6. ↑ Hermann Heinrich Becker
  7. ↑ K. Marx, 'To the Editor of the Stuttgart Beobachter'.
  8. ↑ Hermann Becker (nicknamed Red Becker), a former Communist League member (in the 1860s he went over to the liberals), wrote to Marx on 7 December 1864 that the Rheinische Zeitung editors refused to print his statement against Karl Blind (see notes 62 and 64) justifying this on the grounds of their 'unwillingness' to advertise such an 'insignificant' figure as Blind.
  9. ↑ Ernestine Liebknecht
  10. ↑ danger in delay (Livy, History of Rome, Vol. XXXVIII, Chap. 25)