Letter to Karl Marx, April 4, 1867

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 4 April 1867


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


ENGELS TO MARX[1]

IN LONDON

Manchester, 4 April 1867

Dear Moor,

Hurrah! There was no holding back that exclamation when at last I read in black and white that the 1st volume[2] is complete and that you intend taking it to Hamburg at once. So that you shall not be short of the nervus rerum,[3] I am sending you enclosed the halves of seven five-pound-notes, £35 in toto, and will despatch the other halves immediately I receive the usual telegram. Do not let the scrawl from Bücher[4] —it is undoubtedly from him—worry you, it is just Prussian police gossip and the scandal-mongering of men of letters, of the same ilk as that recent stuff about the Polish trip.[5] I enclose a note for you to give to Meissner, so that you can also collect my fee.[6]

There is no longer even a shadow of doubt about the alliance between Bismarck and the Russians. However, the Russians have never yet had to pay so high a price for their Prussian alliance, they have had to sacrifice their whole traditional policy in Germany and, if this time they were to imagine, as is their wont, that it is only 'for the moment', they may well be making the very deuce of a blunder. For all the shouting about the Empire, etc., German unity already seems on the point of outgrowing Bismarck and all those Prussians. They will have to press on all the harder in the Orient—the Russians, that is—, the present favourable conjuncture will surely not endure long. But how great does the financial need have to be and how sluggish must the industrial progress be, s'il y'en a,[7] in Russia, if those fellows are still without a railway to Odessa and Bessarabia, 11 years after the Crimean War, when it would now be worth two armies to them! And so I also believe that the storm will break this year, if everything goes well for the Russians.

The Luxemburg affair[8] appears to be taking the same course as with Saarlouis and Landau.[9] Bismarck undoubtedly offered to sell it in 1866, but Louis[10] really does seem to have held back at that time in the hope that he would later get far more as a present. I have positive knowledge that the Prussian Ambassador Bernstorff told the Hanseatic ditto (Geffcken) in London a few days ago that he had received a despatch to the effect that Prussia was not going to give way over the Luxemburg question under any circumstances. This is the same despatch that The Owl refers to as requesting Britain to make representations at The Hague, which are then said to have succeeded in making Holland withdraw from the deal. The point is that in the present situation Bismarck cannot remotely allow the French to annex German territory without making all his achievements appear ridiculous. What is more, that old jackass Williama has gone and pronounced the words 'not a single German village' and is personally committed. It is, however, as yet by no means certain that the deal may not still come to fruition after all; the Kölnische Zeitung is screaming quite hysterically that we really cannot start a war over Luxemburg and that we have no right to it at all; Luxemburg, they say, should no longer be counted part of Germany, etc., so they have never behaved quite so despicably.

Bismarck may not be Faust, but he does have his Wagener.b The way in which the poor devil translates his Lord and Master into Wagnerese makes you die of laughing. Bismarck recently employed another of his horse-metaphors, and not wanting to be outdone in this either, Wagener ended a speech by trumpeting: Gentlemen, it is time for us to stop riding our hobby-horses and to mount that noble thoroughbred mare Germania! Montez Mademoiselle,d the Parisians used to say during the Terror.[11]

I hope that your carbuncles are more or less mended now and that the journey will help get rid of them entirely. You must put an end to this nonsense this summer.

Many regards to the LADIES and Lafargue.

Your

F. E.

a William I - b Hermann Wagener. Here and below Engels makes a pun on Wagner, a character from Goethe's Faust (a young scholar imitating Faust in every respect). - d Mount the guillotine (during the French Revolution the people nicknamed the guillotine 'Mademoiselle').

  1. ↑ Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Selected Letters. The Personal Correspondence, 1844-1877, Boston, Toronto, 1981.
  2. ↑ of Capital
  3. ↑ sinew of things
  4. ↑ In his note TO MARX of 1 April 1867 Sigismund Borkheim told him that 'a continental friend' ('ein Freund vom Kontinent') had written to him about Marx's strained circumstances and his need of the Party's material support.
  5. ↑ In his letter TO MARX of 15 February 1867 Ludwig Kugelmann enclosed a notice from the Hanover liberal newspaper Zeitung für Norddeutschland, No. 5522, of the same day which reported Marx's intention to go to the Continent with the alleged aim of preparing a Polish insurrection. Sending the text of his refutation ('A Correction', see present edition, Vol. 20, p. 202) Marx considered its publication all the more necessary since he did plan to visit Germany to take the manuscript of Volume One of Capital to the publisher Otto Meissner in Hamburg and to agree about the terms of its publication.
    On 21 February 1867 the Zeitung für Norddeutschland was forced to print a refutation of its fabrication about Marx's intention to take an active part in the preparations for a future insurrection in Poland. On 22 February Kugelmann sent the published refutation TO MARX. This was probably what Marx told Engels in his letter of 25 February.
  6. ↑ for The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party (see this volume, p. 348)
  7. ↑ if there is any
  8. ↑ Early in 1867 a conflict broke out between the ruling circles of Prussia and France, since both sides had claims to the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, which was connected by a personal union with the Netherlands (the King of the Netherlands was also the Grand Duke of Luxemburg) and was also a member of the German Confederation. However, after the latter was disbanded in 1866, Luxemburg refused to enter the North German Confederation which had been formed under Prussia's aegis. The government of Napoleon III and the King of the Netherlands agreed on the sale of Luxemburg to France, but Bismarck prevented it by making use of the Prussian garrison that was stationed in the duchy when the German Confederation still existed.
    In May 1867 the Luxemburg question was discussed at an international conference in London which made it a duty of the European powers to guarantee the preservation of Luxemburg's former status and neutrality. Prussia was to withdraw its troops from the duchy. In both states the Luxemburg conflict entailed preparations for war and extensive militaristic propaganda and became a stage in the preparation for the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.
  9. ↑ A reference to a note handed to Bismarck in early August 1866 by the French Ambassador to Berlin Vincent Benedetti; it demanded the restoration of the 1814 frontiers as a compensation for France's neutrality during the Austro-Prussian war. This meant that the Saar Basin, the Palatinate, and the Rhenish part of Hesse-Darmstadt with the fortresses of Landau and Mainz were to be given over to France. The note also suggested that the Prussian garrison should be withdrawn from Luxemburg. The claims of Napoleon III were based on the secret promises made by Bismarck before the Austro-Prussian war not to impede the annexation of the German territories between the Rhine and Mosel by France in case the latter did not prevent the formation of the Prusso-Italian coalition and defeat of Austria. However, following the victory over Austria, Bismarck, who planned a war with France, changed his stand and rejected the French government's demands on 7 August.
  10. ↑ Napoleon III
  11. ↑ In his speech of 11 March 1867 in the North German Reichstag Bismarck said: 'Gentlemen! Let us quickly get down to work! Let us put Germany in the saddle, as it were! She will be able to ride.' On 23 March of the same year a conservative deputy to the Reichstag, Hermann Wagener ended his speech with the words Engels cites in his letter.