28 Dean Street, Soho, London October 4, 1851 TO THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE AUGSBURG ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG Since the Editorial Board of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung in a report from a Cologne correspondent dated September 26 has published a direct denunciation of me, I count upon your sense of justice to print the following reply in one of your forthcoming issues.
Yours truly,
Dr. Karl Marx
STATEMENT A recondite report in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, dated Cologne, September 26,a makes out an absurd connection between me, Baroness von Beck and the Cologne arrests. I am alleged to have confided political secrets to Baroness von Beck which later in one way or another came into the hands of the authorities. I have seen Baroness von Beck only twice and that was in the presence of witnesses. On both occasions the matter concerned exclusively literary suggestions which I was compelled to reject since they proceeded from the completely false premise that I had some kind of connection with German newspapers. Having disposed of this matter, I never heard anything again of the Baroness until I learned of her sudden death. But I have never regarded the German refugees who were in daily contact with Frau von Beck as my friends any more than the Cologne correspondent of the Augsburg
Allgemeine Zeitung or the "great" German men in London who turn emigration into a business and an official position. I have never considered it worth the trouble to reply to the mass of perfidiously
See Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 273, September 30, 1851. Supplement.— Ed.
silly, crude and dishonest gossip in the German newspapers, which either comes direct from London or is inspired from there. If I make an exception this time it is only because the Cologne correspondent of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung tries to present the arrests in Cologne, Dresden, etc., as based on my alleged indiscretions to Baroness von Beck.
London, October 4, 1851 Karl Marx
The statement was first published The statement is printed according in the Kölnische Zeitung, No. 242, to the newspaper; the accompany-October 9, 1851 ing letter is printed according to the manuscript
Endnotes
[63] [Editorial note 63: text not recovered from the source scan.]