Letter to F. H. Nestler & Melle's Verlag, about September 11, 1886

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 11 September 1886


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO F. H. NESTLER & MELLE'S VERLAG

IN HAMBURG

[Draft]

[London, about 11 September 1886]

Dear Sirs,

I must categorically reject the insinuation in your favour of the 9th inst.[1]

Even had it occurred to Kautsky and, via him, to Dietz, to bring out a similar collection of excerpts simply as a result of the proposal you made me, you could have no cause for complaint, since in your postcard of 15 May you told me:

'We must frankly admit that w i t h o u t you we shall n o t be able to bring our idea to fruition.'

When you withdrew, they were fully entitled to step in. And why I should be considered in any way blameworthy in this matter is utterly incomprehensible to me.

However the above assumption is not even correct. The need for such a collection has long been discussed in socialist circles and preparations to bring one into being have often been all but completed. I know that Dietz, in particular, has had this in mind ever since he started his firm. When I spoke to Kautsky about your proposal, one of the reasons he gave for his refusing was that he was already corresponding with Dietz about a very similar offer and had committed himself to Dietz to the extent of being unable to entertain any proposition of a similar nature from elsewhere. I intimated as much when replying to you,[2] in so far as it was permissible for me to do so; I was not entitled to say more. In fact the matter had by then progressed so far that, at the time you wrote to me, Kautsky had already been engaged for several weeks in finishing off the first instalments (on Marx) and hence needed no prompting from you.

Moreover, the appearance of Dietz's advertisement at this precise moment is in no way the result of your letter to me, of which Dietz, so far as I know, is not even aware. It is solely the result of the fact that Dietz, following his conviction in Freiberg,[3] feels impelled to get various schemes of his to a stage at which they can go ahead without his supervision during his six months' detention.

When I was in business I grew accustomed to hearing overhasty criticisms based on insufficient information. It is one of those philistine German customs which make it virtually impossible for Germans to play a really prominent role in the world of business. But I must confess I am somewhat surprised that a firm of your repute could be capable of this sort of thing.

Yours faithfully

  1. ↑ In the letter referred to, the Hamburg publishers F. H. Nestler und Melle accused Engels, once he had refused to edit the 'Handbibliothek der Sozial-Oekonomie' (see this volume, p. 448 and Note 583), of having passed on the offer to Karl Kautsky and then Die Neue Zeit. Dietz's publishing house was advertising the forthcoming appearance of a series called 'Klassiker der Nationalökonomie und des Sozialismus', whilst Kautsky had also been planning a similar edition for some considerable time.
  2. ↑ See this volume, pp. 447-48.
  3. ↑ As a re-examination of a sentence passed by a court in Chemnitz (see Note 446), a new trial began on 25 July 1886 in Freiberg (Saxony) of a group of leading figures in the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. On 4 August 1886 the local provincial court sentenced Ignaz Auer, August Bebel, Carl Ulrich, Louis Viereck, Georg Heinrich von Vollmar and Karl Franz Egon Frohme to nine months', as well as Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Dietz, Philipp Heinrich Müller and Stefan Heinzel, to six months' imprisonment on a charge of belonging to a 'secret society'. Bebel served his prison sentence in Zwickau from mid-November 1886 to 14 August 1887.