TO THE EDITOR 3 OF THE DAILY NEWS
Sir,
According to a telegram of Reuter's,b
"Herr Bucher, Councillor of Legation, is designated for the post of secretary and keeper of the records of the Congress."[266]
Should this "Herr Bucher" be the same Lothar Bucher who, during his long London exile, shone as a staunch partisan of the late Mr. David Urquhart, whose anti-Russian doctrines he held forth week by week in the Berlin National Gazettec; the same Lothar Bucher who, on his return to Berlin, turned so ardent a votary of Ferdinand Lassalle that the latter named him his testamentary executor, bequeathed him an annual revenue, and transferred the copyright of his works to Lothar Bucher[267]? Soon after Lassalle's death Lothar Bucher entered the Prussian Foreign Office, was made a "Councillor of Legation", and became Bismarck's confidential man-of-all-work.
He had the naivete to address a letter to myself, inviting me, of course with the sanction of his master, to undertake the money article of the Prussian official Staats-Anzeiger.
The pecuniary terms were left to my discretion, while I was expressly told I should enjoy full liberty of treating the operations and the operators of the money market from my own "scientific"
standpoint. Since this odd incident I felt not a little amused at seeing Lothar Bucher's contributions as a member of the "International Working Men's Association" daily and yearly chronicled in the columns of the Vorbote* an organ of the International, edited by Johann Philipp Becker at Geneva. If this be not a case of mistaken identity, and if there be anything in the reports that the Russian and German Governments, à propos of the attempts of Hoedel and Nobiling,[268] intend to propose to the Congress international measures against the spread of Socialism, then Herr Bucher is the very man to tell the Congress authoritatively that the organisation, the action, and the doctrines of the German Social-Democratic party have no more to do with these attempts than with the sinking of the Grosser Kurfürst,[269] or with the meeting of the Congress at Berlin; that the panic-mongering arrests throughout Germany and the whirlwind of dust raised by the Press-reptiles[270] serve the exclusive purpose of an electioneering cry for a Reichstag ready to sanction at last the solution, long since elaborated by Prince Bismarck, of the paradox problem how to endow the German Government with all the financial resources of a modern State, while, at the same time, reimposing upon the German people the ancient political regime scattered to pieces by the hurricane of 1848. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Karl Marx
London, June 12
Endnotes
[265] This letter, signed by Marx, was written by Engels and him on June 12, 1878; a fragment of this letter in Engels' handwriting remains extant.
[266] 266 The reference is to the international congress (June 13-July 13, 1878) convened in Berlin on the initiative of Austria-Hungary and Britain, which opposed the consolidation of Russia's position in the Balkans. The Congress ended with the signing of the Treaty of Berlin which altered the terms of the San Stefano Peace Treaty of 1878 that concluded the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. The new terms were unfavourable for Russia and the Slavic nations of the Balkan Peninsula. (See also Note 309.)
[267] 267 In his will drawn up on August 27, 1864, five days before his death, Lassalle named Bernhard Becker as his successor as President of the General Association of German Workers, and the Berlin lawyer Aurel Holthoff and Lothar Bucher as the executors of his will.
[268] The reference is to the assassination attempt on William I made on May 11, 1878 by tinner Emil Hödel (Hoedel), who had been earlier expelled from the Leipzig Social-Democratic Association, and to that of June 2 made by the German anarchist Karl Eduard Nobiling who had never been a member of the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party. These events gave rise to a vicious campaign against the socialists and were an excuse for the promulgation of the Anti-Socialist Law in October 1878.
[269] The German battleship Großer Kurfürst sank on May 31, 1878 in Pas de Calais at Folkestone (England) as a result of a collision with the German ship König Wilhelm.
[270] See Note 65.