8. F. Engels. To the Hungarian Refugee Committee in London
[Draft]
[London, late February 1850]
To the Hungarian Refugee Committee in London
Citizens Kilinski arid Ryschka have applied for assistance to the German Refugee Committee.[180] Asked for their papers, they produced two certificates from Mr. Fr. Pulszky, copies of which are enclosed herewith.[181] According to these certificates they are not German, but Hungarian refugees since they were recruited by the competent authority here for Hungarian service and therefore come within the province not of the German, but of the Hungarian Committee. However, they maintain that they received 10 shillings from that Committee together with notification that it could give them no further assistance. Since, however, it will hardly do to leave these people destitute on the street, we hereby take the liberty of inquiring whether this is right, and whether the Hungarian Committee may, perhaps, have had some special reason for refusing assistance to the two citizens named above.
(Copy of the certificates.)
Endnotes
[180] On September 18, 1849, a German Refugee Committee was set up on Marx's initiative under the auspices of the German Workers' Educational Society in London. Besides Marx and other members of the Communist League, it included a number of petty-bourgeois democrats. At a meeting of the Society on November 18, the Committee was transformed into the Social-Democratic Refugee Committee, the aim being to dissociate the proletarian section of the London refugees from the petty-bourgeois elements. The new Committee included only members of the Communist League: Karl Marx (who was elected chairman), Heinrich Bauer, August Willich, Karl Pfänder and Frederick Engels (see document on pp. 599-601 of this volume). Besides providing material assistance for the refugees, predominantly those belonging to the proletarian wing, the Committee played an important part in restoring ties between members of the Communist League, in uniting the supporters of Marx and Engels in London and in reorganising the Communist League. In mid-September 1850, following the split in the Communist League, when most members of the Educational Society, to which the Committee was accountable, came under the influence of the Willich-Schapper sectarian group, Marx and Engels, together with their followers, withdrew from the Committee (see this volume, pp. 483 and 631-32).
[181] Appended to the letter were certificates — signed by Ferenc Pulszky, the Committee's agent in London in the spring of 1849 — testifying that the persons named belonged to the unit of Hungarian hussars that had been sent, via Sardinia, to reinforce the Hungarian revolutionary army, but arrived too late to join it and, after the suppression of the Hungarian revolution, was forced to return to London.