| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 5 April 1895 |
ENGELS TO RICHARD FISCHER
IN BERLIN
London 5 April 1895
41 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
Dear Fischer,
You will have got my letter of the 3rd. 25 Your postcard arrived this morning. So another snag has cropped up. 577 I would ask you to seek legal
advice straight away as to the extent to which the copyright owned by Marx's heirs still applies to his articles in the 'Rheinische Zeitung of 1842. The ar- ticles appeared anonymously. As anonymous articles, however, they are of no value to Mr Baake. So far as he is concerned they only acquire value through Marx's name. And if he publishes them under Marx's name, is he not thereby acknowledging that we have the copyright in so far as this might perhaps have been compromised by the fact of their having first appeared anonymously?
If there is no recourse to law—which would first have to be established so that we can act accordingly—it would be best if you were to get copies made of all the articles—three—in the library and send me duplicates, so that I could look through them quickly and write an introduction. There are three articles.
1. On the proceedings of the Rhine Province Assembly, 2. On thefts of wood, 3. On the condition of the wine growers on the Mosel. 578 You would then have to issue an announcement straight away to the effect that they would be brought out by you and edited by me, along with an introduction and notes (if any).
So far as the Russians are concerned, it is normal practice to encroach upon an author's rights without so much as your leave 'in the interests of propaganda', not to speak of the interests, as is frequently the case, of their own private printing-shop and publishing house, as opposed to those of others. 579 Up till now, however, I have not been accustomed to that kind of thing when dealing with Germans.
Had I only known what I had merely suspected, namely that the old Rheinische Zeitung is in the Berlin Library, I should have gone there back in 1893 580 and looked it out, in which case we should have made a good deal more progress in regard to other matters too.
Is Baake a brother of Kurt Baake's? Regards to everyone.
Yours,
F.E.