Appendices
...partment. He is coming tomorrow to give the order to the concierge. It was a terrible blow and I leave you to imagine what I'm going to do with my 200 francs, now that I've had to give him 380 fr. as a deposit, half of which he will return when he has found a tenant.
Such are the delightful consequences of that governmental, Guizotian, Humboldtian disgraceful trick. I don't know what we're going to do. This morning I traipsed all over Paris. The Mint was closed and I shall have to go again. Then I visited the carriers and the agent of a furniture auctioneer. I had no success anywhere. And in the course of these wearisome excursions, what's more, Ewerbeck forced me to call on Mme Glaise, who, however, is quite an amiable, artless and kindly woman who pleased me much. At this moment I'm amusing myself with the infant and the grumbler while writing to you. Little Jenny never stops saying papa. She still has a very bad cold and her little teeth are very painful. However I hope she'll soon be herself again. The person is in good spirits, though this morning she felt quite 'lausig'.a I heard from mamab
today. Edgarc will be sitting his exam shortly. Aren't you astonished, my good Karl, at my addressing you in French? But it happened without my thinking about it. I intended to start off with a few sentences in French and then, just as the appetite comes with eating, I was unable to part company with this language. I find it so easy to write to you and chat with you. I am writing as fast as I would in German and, although it may not be classical French, I trust it will amuse you to read it, faults,
2. Jenny Marx to Karl Marx. After 24 August 1845
inexpressible beauties and all. I shall not send off these lines until I get your first letter. Say lots of nice things to our good friend Bürgers on my behalf. A thousand kisses from mama to papa, and a little kiss from Munsterchen. Adieu my friend. I long to see you again. By now you will already be in Brussels. Best greetings to our new fatherland. Adieu.
10 February
Heine was at the Ministry of the Interior where he was told they knew nothing at all about it; Ledru-Rollin will be raising the matter in the Chamber as soon as everyone has escaped. Have you read the Réforme? What a silly, pitiful thing it is. Everything it says is offensive, more so than the most violent attacks launched by the others. There you have the work of that great man, such as he should be — Mr Bakunin, who, however, came and gave me a lesson in rhetoric and drama in order to unbosom himself to me. Herwegh is playing with the child. Ewerbeck is talking incessantly about the continual distractions of Mr Bürgers and the son of the people. Mr Weill, my special protector, came to my aid....
2
JENNY MARX TO KARL MARX[535]
IN BRUSSELS
[Trier, after 24 August 1845]
Although our letters may have crossed on this occasion, my beloved Karl, I nevertheless look on yours as furnishing a reply to my last letter, since it in fact anticipates and answers in advance all the questions concerning which my mind was unsettled and in doubt.[536]
Only one big vital question, the one of the tailor's and dressmaker's bills, still awaits a favourable solution, which I hope will soon be forthcoming. You, sweetheart, weigh up every circumstance with such loving concern that when I read your dear letter I felt quite comforted. But my heart is still irresolute in the matter of leaving or staying or at any rate of fixing a definite date and, if I am to be honest, it inclines more and more toward staying. If only I could draw out each day to twice its length, if only I could attach leaden wings to the hours that they might not hasten by so fast — oh, if only you knew what bliss it is for my mother, our living together, what unending happiness and joy of life she derives from the contemplation of the lovely child, and what consoling elation from my presence! And am I to deprive her of all this with one cold word, am I to take all this away, leaving her with nothing but the forlorn loneliness of long, dreary winter days, anxious worry concerning my life and Edgar's future, nothing save gentle, kindly memories? She herself urges me with rare courage to depart but, having one day secretly fixed the date, I vacillate again on the morrow and grant myself one day more — and then another and still another. And yet my days here are already numbered and it will soon behove me to eke out the time, for it is drawing inexorably closer. Besides, I feel altogether too much at ease here in little Germany! Though to say so in the face of you arch anti-Germans calls for a deal of courage, does it not? But that courage I have and, for all that and all that,(1) one can live quite happily in this old land of sinners. At all events it was in glorious France and Belgium that I first made acquaintance with the pettiest and meanest of conditions. People are petty here, infinitely so, life as a whole is a pocket edition, but there heroes are not giants either, nor is the individual one jot better off. For men it may be different, but for a woman, whose destiny it is to have children, to sew, to cook and to mend, I commend miserable Germany. There, it still does one credit to have a child, the needle and the kitchen spoon still lend one a modicum of grace and, on top of that, and by way of reward for the days spent washing, sewing and child-minding, one has the comfort of knowing in one's heart of hearts that one has done one's duty. But now that old-fashioned things such as duty, honour and the like no longer mean anything, now that we are so advanced as to consider even old watchwords such as these outmoded, now that we actually feel in ourselves an urge towards sentiments of positively Stirnerian egoism, we no longer feel any inclination for the lowlier duties of life. We, too, want to enjoy ourselves, to do things and to experience THE HAPPINESS OF MANKIND in our own persons. But for me, what really turns the scales in favour of Germany is my having seen, me Hercule," that prince of men, the model man — let no one say a word against a Germany in which men such as these stand up on their little legs and turn somersaults. But now joking apart. I shall probably be leaving after the middle of September. Weydemeyer may accompany me as far as Cologne; Schleicher is also going to Brussels and told me yesterday that he might manage to be there at the right moment for me. Fiddlesticks, stout Sir, nothing will come of it. We shall probably have to stick to Breyer. The little house should do. In winter one does not need much room anyhow. My mother thought it might be best if we were to lodge Edgar elsewhere throughout that period, perhaps in the
bois sauvage}a Anyhow that would be cheapest. Then, having concluded my important businessb on the upper floor, I shall remove downstairs again. Then you could sleep in what is now your study and pitch your tent in the salon immensec—that would present no difficulty. The children's noise downstairs would then be completely shut off, you would not be disturbed upstairs, I could join you when things were quiet and the living-room could, after all, always be kept reasonably tidy. The two rooms on the second floor would be of little or no use to us. At all events we must instal a good, warm stove and appurtenances in the living-room at the earliest opportunity. That again is Breyer's business, for one doesn't let out unheatable rooms. It would be as well to tackle Master Braggart in really good time, otherwise it will be the same as in the case of the kitchen table of hallowed memory. After that I shall see to everything else. Such preparations as could be made here, have been made. It would be wonderful for me if you could come and meet me. It is too far to Verviers and there wouldn't be any point. Maybe as far as Liège. Do make inquiries about an inn there at which we could meet. Wilhelm the Pacific, anti-pauper and metal-hard, strongly advised me against making the trip from here to Cologne in one day. It's simply that I detest the idea of spending the night at Coblenz. Nor should I like to spend a whole day at Cologne, but shall travel on to Aix. Then on to Liège the following day. However, I shall have to break the train journeys often for the joggling might well have unpleasant consequences. But I shall let you know more definitely about the journey itself later. What a colony of paupers there is going to be in Brussels!
3. Jenny Marx to Karl Marx. 24 March 1846
Has Engels come back alone or à deuxa} Hess has written and told Weydemeyer he intends to marry. Is Bourgeoisb living in Cologne, or does he have to be in Elberfeld on account of the Spiegel? I should also like to ask Daniels to come and see me, but how? Little Jenny is sitting beside me and is also writing to her papa about whom she constantly talks. She is too sweet for words. Mrs Worbs gave her such a lovely little blue frock. Everyone is quite besotted with the child who has become the talk of the town, so that every day people come to see her. Her favourite is the chimney sweep, by whom she insists on being picked up. Tell Edgar that the woollen stockings are in the big box on the right in the attic, not immediately beneath the window. He will probably find them if he rummages about a bit amongst the children's clothes. If only the great catastrophe did not take place at the very time when you are finishing off your book,[5] the publication of which I anxiously await. More about this and one or two personal rencontres" with your mother when we meet. Such things are better talked of than written about. Goodbye, sweetheart. Give my love to Edgar and the others, and cherish fond thoughts of mother and daughter. Write again soon. I am so happy when you write.
Your
Jenny
3
JENNY MARX TO KARL MARX[537]
IN BRUSSELS
Trier, 24 [March 1846]
A thousand thanks, my dearly beloved Karl, for your long, dear letter of yesterday.[538] How I longed for news of you all during those days of anxiety and sorrow when my heart scarcely dared to hope any more, and how long, how very long, did my yearning breast remain unsatisfied. Every hour contained in itself an eternity of fear and worry. Your letters are the only gleams of light in my life just now. Dear Karl, pray let them shine for me more often and cheer me. But maybe I shall not need them much longer, for my dear mother's condition has taken such a turn for the better that the possibility of her recovery has become almost a probability. This time we all of us hope that the improvement that has set in is not an illusory one as is so often the case in insidious afflictions such as nervous disorders. She is recovering her strength and her mind is no longer oppressed by worries and fears, real or imaginary. I had composed myself for any eventuality and, had the worst happened, should have found comfort and solace enough, but nevertheless my heart is now jubilant with all the joy and rapture of spring. It's a strange thing about the life of someone you love. It is not so readily relinquished. You cling to it with every fibre of your being and, when the other's breathing falters, feel as though those fibres have been abruptly severed. I believe that recovery is now on the way and will rapidly accomplish its task. Now it is a matter of banishing all gloomy thoughts while constantly conjuring up cheerful images before her mind's eye. I now have to think up all kinds of tales which must nonetheless have about them some semblance of truth. All this is most difficult and is rendered easier only by the love I bear my dear mother and the blessed hope that, when all this is over, I shall be able to hasten back again and rejoin you, my darling, and my dear, sweet, little ones.a Stay fit and well, all you my dear ones, and keep a careful watch over their sweet little heads. How I look forward to seeing the children's little faces again!
It seems that murder and mayhem has broken loose among you! I am glad that this radical breach should not have taken place until after my departure. Much of it would have been attributed to the machinations of that ambitious woman, Lady Macbeth,b and not without reason. For I have, to be sure, for too long again been carping at circumstances and exercising la petite critique.c But it is better thus. Now as regards this critical woman, Engels was perfectly right, as opposed to yourselves, in finding such a woman 'as she ought to be',d as the eternal antithesis, very arrogant and hence in making a great fuss about very LITTLE. I myself, when confronted with this abstract model, appear truly repulsive in my own eyes and would like to be sure of finding out all its faults and weaknesses in return. Moreover, it is quite false, or at any rate very mistaken, to speak, in respect of Engels, of a»'rare exemplar'. Then he is right in maintaining that 'such is not to be found'. But that is precisely where the argument falls to the ground. There is an abundance of lovely, charming, capable women, they are to be found all over the world and are only waiting for a man to liberate and redeem them. Any man can become the redeemer of a woman.
Present-day women, in particular, are receptive to all things and very capable of self-sacrifice. True, one would have to acquire a somewhat wider knowledge of one's wares if one was not to renounce all taste which, more than anything else, is reprehensible in a salesman who has long been dealing in such articles. Who could accuse Rabbi Rabunia of a blunder, a display of ignorance, in respect of a commercial transaction? To him, all cats are of the same colour and he is satisfied at that. On the other hand, when he sees rosy tints appear in far-away Poland, he forgets that the colour of these blood-red roses is not genuine; they are pleasing to the eye and necessary and have, 'for all that and all that',b created a great stir, but how can one establish any connection between this attempt and attempts to attempt an attempt? Who can understand that? Things have come to such a pass that, along with the perfectly justified aim and intention of conceiving the real flesh-and-blood human being, with all his needs and desires, as the be-all and end-all, of seeing man as humankind — that, along with this, almost all idealism has gone by the board and been replaced by nothing but fantasticism. Once again the mania for practical reality is firmly in the saddle. And when men like Hess, who are, in fact, nothing but ideologists, who actually have no real flesh and blood but only, as it were, an abstraction of the same, when such men suddenly parade the knife and fork question as their mission in life, then they are bound to plunge neck and crop into fantasticism. Hess will constantly beguile himself with bogus projects while still continuing to exercise a mysterious, inexplicable, magical, personal sway over the weak. Such is indeed his calling — to act, as it were, the prophet and high priest. So let him go to Babel-Jerusalem-Elberfeld if he will. Weitling's hullaballoo about his fantastical projects is also quite explicable. Just as he, coming from the artisan class, is perforce incapable of anything more elevated than to herald drinking bouts in popular poetry, so too he is capable of nothing more elevated than ill-fated undertakings which are obviously foolhardy and fail. He has no sense of the ridiculous, and what a fiasco it would have been on this occasion. That is now plain for all to see. I am happy beyond words, my dear Karl, that you are still keeping your spirits up and continuing to master your impatience and your longings. How I love you for this courage of yours. You are my husband, and I am still thankful for this! To remain calm and clear-headed in the midst of the hurly-burly and to be in harmony with the times! The most repulsive thing about the ill-starred insurrection 5M is that wretched Prussia, with its spinelessness and pseudo-humanism, is again acclaimed by those idiots the French and all the rest of its admirers as against crude, brutish Austria. This besottedness with progress is truly repulsive. But now, my beloved Karl, I shall dwell on the subject of progress and enlarge on it as regards you, my dear master. How are you getting on with Stirner and what progress have you made?[3] Above all, apply yourself to your book.a Time marches inexorably on. I myself am besieged with inquiries here. Schleicher has already asked after it twice and complained bitterly about the literature that comes their way. And it's true, they are very badly off. They are all having to grapple with Grün and Ruge and do not know which way to turn. Schleicher asked whether the Rabbi was by any chance Hess.b Even Schleicher is prepared to swallow anything. But there is altogether too great a lack of knowledge. The false prophets have done so much to queer the pitch....
4. George Julian Harney to Frederick Engels. 30 March 1846[540]
IN BRUSSELS
For Engels London, March 30, 1846
My dear E.,
I am your debtor for two or three letters, and I fear must have offended you by my silence, particularly through not answering before this time the one very important letter to which I shall presently more particularly allude. I am always busy, but the Polish Insurrection[539] has found for me additional occupation. Night and day I have been working to rouse public feeling — not altogether without success. At length the great London meeting has been accomplished[541] — I breathe again, and devote the first moment to write to you.
I first notice a very long letter I received through Weerth several weeks ago, the letter was without a date. I was glad to hear of your arrangements for the publication of your Quarterly.[57] Has the result answered your expectations [?] When I informed my wife* of your very philosophical system of writing in couples till 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning,[542] she protested that such philosophy would not suit her, and that if she was in Brussels she would get up a 'pronunciamento' amongst your wives. My wife has no objection to the manufacturing of Revolutions, provided the work is done on the short time system. She recommends your wives to form an 'Anti-3- or 4 o'clock-in-the morning-Association', she will volunteer her services as 'English Correspondent' and she thinks that Mrs Caudleb might also be induced to join the sister-hood.
Your speculations as to the speedy coming of a revolution in England, I doubt. Revolutionary changes in Germany I think certain and likely to come soon. Such changes are not less certain in France and likely to ensue soon after the death of that old scoundrel Louis Philippe, but I confess I cannot see the likelihood of such changes in England, at least until England is moved from without as well as within. Your prediction that we will get the Charter[543] in the course of the present year, and the abolition of private property within three years will certainly not be realized; — indeed as regards the latter, although it may and I hope will come, it is my belief that neither you nor I will see it. As to what O'Connor has been saying lately about 'physical force',"[44] I think nothing of it. The English people will not adopt Cooper's slavish notions about peace and non-resistance, but neither would they act upon the opposite doctrine. They applaud it at public meetings, but that is all. Notwithstanding all the talk in 1839 about 'arming',[543] the people did not arm, and they will not arm. A long immunity from the presence of war in their own country and the long suspension of the militia has created a general distaste for arms, which year by year is becoming more extensive and more intense. The body of the English people, without becoming a slavish people, are becoming an eminently pacific people. I do not say that our fighting propensities are gone, on the contrary, I believe that the trained English soldiery is the most powerful soldiery in the world, that is, that a given number will, ninety times out of a hundred, vanquish a similar number of the trained troops of any nation in the world (I hope I shall not offend your Prussian nationality). Wanting, however, military training, the English people are the most unmilitary, indeed anti-military people on the face of the earth. To attempt a 'physical-force' agitation at the present time would be productive of no good, but on the contrary of some evil — the evil of exciting suspicion against the agitators. I do not suppose that the great changes which will come in this country, will come altogether without violence, but organised combats such as we may look for in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, cannot take place in this country. To organise, to conspire a revolution in this country would be a vain and foolish project and the men who with their eyes open could take part in so absurd an attempt would be worse than foolish, would be highly culpable.
I must next notice what you say about my 'leadership'. First let me remark that you are too hard upon O' Con. You find fault with his 'leaders','[1] but you say the 'week's summary' affords you entertainment — fun. You speak as though you credited me with the 'summary', but the 'summary' is prepared by O'Connor, as you might have known by the Irish jokes and very Irish poetry continually introduced into the commentary. You are wrong in supposing that he prevented my continuing the remarks on Cabet. The discontinuance was the result first of my own neglect, and second that Hetherington has never completed the translation,"[1]
and I have deferred further comment until the publication was complete. I must do O'C. the justice to say that he never interferes with what I write in the paper, nor does he know what I write until he gets the paper. You have thought proper in the letter I am now commenting on to credit me with all the revolutionary virtues. You say I am 'anti-national', 'revolutionary', 'energetical', 'proletarian', 'more of a Frenchman than an Englishman', 'Atheis-tical, Republican, and Communist'. I am too old a soldier to blush at this accumulation of virtues credited to my account, but supposing it to be even as you say, it does not follow that I am qualified for 'leadership'. A popular chief should be possessed of a magnificent bodily appearance, an iron frame, eloquence, or at least a ready fluency of tongue. I have none of these. O'C. has them all — at least in a degree. A popular leader should possess great animal courage, contempt of pain and death, and be not altogether ignorant of arms and military science. No chief or leader that has hitherto appeared in the English movement has these qualifications, we have never had a B a r b é s for instance. In these qualifications I am decidedly deficient, I know nothing of arms, have no stomach for fighting, and would rather die after some other fashion than by bullet or rope. From a knowledge of myself and all the men who have, and do figure in the Chartist movement, I am convinced that even in this respect was O'C. thrown overboard, we might go further and fare worse. Amongst my revolutionary virtues you give me credit for 'energy'. I know I do possess a sort of energy, which when occasion demands enables me to rouse others to exertion and direct their exertions, myself setting the example, but this is moral energy, the physical energy which makes Cromwells, Napoleons, etc. I possess, I fear, not an atom of. Placed in certain circumstances I should, I fear, fall like Robespierre, through want of the necessary courage to save myself. This is not all, the very qualities you give me the credit for possessing, and which you emphatically sum up in the sentence 'You are the only Englishman who is really free of all prejudices that distinguish the Englishman from the Continental man', are sufficient of themselves to prevent my being a leader. If I am 'the only Englishman, etc.', it follows that I would be a chief without an army, a leader without followers. To myself my proper position appears clear, I am a 'pioneer', the teacher of 'strange doctrines', the proclaimer of principles which startle the many, and are but timidly acknowledged even by the few; and the office of the pioneer is surely useful, and as surely not inglorious. You see I am perfectly candid, I speak of myself as perhaps few men would speak, but I wish you not to be deceived, not to deceive yourself, not to deceive others. I am but one of the humble workers in the great movement of progress, as such I desire to be considered.
The letter I am commenting on came to me through Wfeerth] opened. Now I have every confidence in W. but it is possible that, without meaning any harm, some points of your letter might come to be known, particularly as W. wrote me that he approved and agreed with all you had said about my leadership. Now if what you did say had become known it would place me in a very awkward position with O'C. I do not wish to prevent you criticising O'C. in your letters, or any other person (myself included), only I would wish that every necessary precaution should be taken by you in transmitting your letters.
If you find fault with this egotism, this talk about myself, you have only yourself to blame for it.
I now come to your letter of the 5th of March, which letter exists not, it has gone the way of all flesh, in accordance with your expressed wishes.
It is not necessary that I should go through all the points of your (5th of March) letter seriatim. I cannot pretend to judge of the policy and practicability of your scheme,[546] of these you and your compatriots must be the best judges. For myself I have confidence in your discretion as well as your zeal, and as far as my humble abilities, and time will permit I am willing to aid you in the manner you suggest, you bearing in mind what I have said of my own deficiencies, and consequently that while competent to serve the cause in some ways, I am not competent to do so in others. But before I regularly commence the duties you expect of me, there is one point I must be assured of,— namely,— that your scheme has the sanction of the long-trusted, incorruptible, and martyr men of the German movement. I must inform you that I have been a member of the German Society" for some weeks past (several Englishmen have joined the Society lately which adds to its members every week), now should your scheme not be made known to the Society, or at least to one or two of its most trusted members, I should hesitate to join you, because if your arrangements came to be known I should be placed in a false position, perhaps regarded as a conspirator against the popular interests. I have great faith in Schapper, and if he is not consulted I do not see how I could join you. But are you sure your scheme is not already known in London? I have acted as you directed, no one but myself knows the contents of your letter of the 5th March, but two or three weeks before that letter reached me, I heard that you (the literary characters in Brussels) had formed a society, confined to yourselves into which you admitted no working man.[541] If by this society is meant the society respecting which you have written to me, you will see that it is already known and has excited prejudice amongst the good men. If this 'society' be not your present scheme but something else, still whatever it may be it has excited prejudice here which you must endeavour to dispel before you can hope to have the views expressed in your 5th of March letter adopted by the Germans here. As regards Weitling he may have friends in the London Society, but certainly not the majority. S. is the man who leads, and properly so. He repudiates 'leadership', but nature forms some men for chiefs and she has given him the necessary qualifications.
On Saturdayb I received a long letter from you through Weerth, or rather two letters. The one for the Star I like very much, it will appear this week.[1]' I have altered the date from February 20 to March 20th, it will thereby not look so stale.
The private letter accompanying your public letter I read with much interest, the facts connected with France are very important, and down to the line you indicate I shall use them in the Star though perhaps not this week. Do not be surprised if I use those facts in a 'leader'. All that you say about the middle-class in England and France I fully accord with. All that you say about 'Merry England' is true. You say 'I am just in time to include some resolutions which we thought proper to pass against Cooper'.[548] There are no 'resolutions' in the letter I received from you.
A few words on the state of things in England. The anti-Corn Law27,) agitation is drawing to a close. Whether or no Peel carries his measure through the Lords, the Corn Laws are doomed and the day of their final extinction is drawing nigh. Then comes complete middle-class domination, an increased agitation for the Charter, complete estrangement between the proletarians and the middle-class, and the beginning of that conflict which will be a social as well as a political one.
The Chartists as Chartists are doing nothing, the 'Chartist Convention' at Manchester, and the 'Chartist Message' resulted in nothing — a mere flash in the pan. The Land Society[549] goes on prospering, at least so I learn by the account of monies received, for I am not a member. Some land has been purchased and more will be almost immediately. The Land scheme may do as a passing experiment but is unworthy of the energies of a national movement. I have told you that the German Society is advancing, I am glad that the report of their annual suppera pleased your friends. I have seen the German paper published in New York.b
You will have seen that the 'Fraternal Democrats'[122] are progres-sing. After a deal of trouble and discouragement I think I shall succeed in this. We were for some time regarded with much prejudice and jealousy by the Chartists but this is wearing away. The Polish affair has done a good deal towards bringing this about. Seeing that no other party would move, we determined to begin. Our efforts excited the Chartist-Executive, who feared we would take the popular leadership out of their hands. Hence they came to us. As soon as they came, we said 'You lead, we will follow'. Our policy is not to push ourselves, but our principles, and compel others to adopt them. Thus the two parties worked harmoniously, forming a joint committee to get up the meeting. To me was left the drawing up of the resolutions and petition, and I determined to make both ultra-democratic. I had all my own way in the Committee and at the public meeting the resolutions were passed unanimously. Schapper was received with great enthusiasm, and just in proportion as we were democratic in our sentiments we were applauded. Several Polish aristocrats present left the meeting in a rage, grinding their teeth, and denouncing me as a 'sans-culotte' for my onslaught on them. The meeting was a glorious one, at least three thousand persons present. The humbugs (Lovett and Co.) were plotting to get up a genteel Polish-nationality meeting, when we stepped in and settled their hash for them. It is not likely that they will now hold a meeting at all. The meeting was reported in the Times,c Chronicle, Advertiser, D. News, Globe, and Sun. It was editorially praised by the Advertiser, and Sun, and denounced by the Times, and D. News. Did you see the Times denunciation? It was capital, especially as following within a few days a 'leader' in which the Times man had asserted that the 'delusion of Chartism' was dead and gone.a This meeting will be the commencement of a new era in English agitation, henceforth mere Chartism will not do, ultra democracy, social as well as political, will be the object of our propaganda. Tonight a meeting is to be holden in South London, but that of course [will] not be reported in the daily papers. I must conclude. Write again soon. I will myself write again in a week or two. Mary's love to Mrs E.b [and] yourself. Remember me to Marx, Gigot, etc.
Thine fraternally—
Julian
(Henceforth 'J.')
5. Jenny Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer. 17 March 1848[310]c
Dear Mr Weydemeyer,
My husband, being again so caught up in the work and pother here in this huge city, has asked me to suggest that you announce in the Westphälisches Dampfboot that several German societies have been formed here, particulars of which will be known to Mr Lüning; but that the German Workers' Club[550] under the leadership of the Germans in London, Schapper, Bauer, Moll, and the Germans in Brussels, Marx, Wolff, Engels, Wallau, Born, that these (who are also in direct touch with the Chartists in England via Harney and Jones) have nothing in common with the German Democratic Society headed by Börnstein, Bornstedt, Herwegh, Volk, Decker, etc., a society which flies the black, red and gold flag[205] (wherein it had already been anticipated by the Federal Diet[474]) and babbles of Father Blücher and is drilled in sections by retired Prussian officers. It is of the utmost importance that, in the eyes of France and Germany, one should dissociate oneself completely from that society, since it will bring the Germans into disrepute. If the Dampfboot comes out too late, use the information provided above for a short article in any German newspapers you choose, these being more readily at your command in the South. Try and get as much as you can into German papers.
I would like to write and tell you a great deal more about the interesting goings-on here which grow livelier by the minute (tonight 400,000 workers are meeting in front of the Hôtel de Ville[3]), while attroupementsb are again on the increase; however I am so busy with house and home and the three mitesc that all I have time for is to hail you and your dear wifed from afar with a few friendly words of greeting.
Greeting and fraternity.
Your Citoyenne and Vagabonde
Jenny Marx
6. Elisabeth Engels to Frederick Engels. After 4 October 1848
Dear Friedrich,
You will have received your father's letter; I should have liked to add a few words to it, but I felt too sick at heart. Now you have really gone too far. So often have I begged you to proceed no further, but you have paid more heed to other people, to strangers, and have taken no account of your mother's pleas. God alone knows what I have felt and suffered of late. I was trembling when I picked up the newspaper" and saw therein that a warrant was out for my son's arrest.2M
I can think of nothing else but you and then I often see you as a little boy still, playing near me. How happy I used to be then and what hopes did I not pin upon you. Dear Friedrich, if the words of a poor, sorrowing mother still mean anything to you, then follow your father's advice, go to America and abandon the course you have pursued hitherto. With your knowledge you will surely succeed in finding a position in a good firm and if, later on, you should not like it, you could always take to something else. For so many years now I have never been able to think of you without a pang; pray send me for once some piece of news that will gladden my heart a little. You are now separated from your friends — why not break away from them too now and go your own way for once, or listen for once to what your mother has to say. Nobody, surely, can mean so well by you as I do, so why have you refused to listen to my plea?
Do write to me soon, dear Friedrich, and let me have good news of you, I beseech you. May God have mercy on you and not forsake you.
But believe me when I say that your father, no less than I, will bless the day when you return to us again and once more consent to be our child and walk the same path with us. May God soon grant us that joy. Then we shall forget all the worry and distress we have endured on account of you.
Write soon to your deeply grieving mother
Elise Engels
7. Hermann Ewerbeck to Moses Hess. 14 November 1848
My dear Hess,
Here I sit — not in a bower of roses, far from it — at half past one in the morning side by side with Marx at the newspaper'sa
editorial table correcting proof-sheets, but still find time to write to you, especially since, newly arrived and due (I hope) to depart for Paris tomorrow, I have heard that the philosopher Wolfb is in Paris. There is, Tpresume, no need for me to advise you as to how our club[551] should act vis-à-vis this man. My presence in Paris might be needed at this moment, lest the philosopher should prove troublesome with his nagging and taunting. So I am hastening thither. I could not come any sooner. Berlin has held me in thrall and I have got to spend one day in Cologne, especially since Marx has been summoned to appear in court tomorrow and is in danger of being arrested.[236]
The city of Berlin, in state of siege, will be severely wrangled/ It is a matter either of a republic or of Cossack rule.d
Do not let Wolf exert any influence. Neither Worcell nor anyone else must be allowed to listen to him. He seems to be corresponding with Marx. The latter is very enthusiastic about Engels, whom he describes as outstanding 'intellectually, morally and from the point of view of character'. The said Engels is in Switzerland for the good cause, says Marx.[233]
Farewell. NB. Post the enclosed without delay.
8. Elisabeth Engels to Frederick Engels. 5 December 1848
Dear Friedrich,
Yesterday a letter arrived from you at long last[552] and although I was grieved by the tone in which it was written, I was nevertheless glad to hear that all was well with you and that you had received the money. I shall not hark back to your speech at the Eiser Hall except to say that we first read it in the Deutsche
Zeitung' which they take at the Concordia,[553] and only later did it also appear in the Elberfelder.[554]
Now as to the suspicions your friends have incurred, let me tell you quite simply how matters stood. When the disturbances broke out in Cologne and the Rheinische Zeitungh was suspended,[233] we heard immediately that you had already earlier left for Verviers. For what reason, no one knew. But nobody, ourselves included, doubted that the meetings at which you and your friends spoke, and also the language of the Rh. Z., were largely the cause of these disturbances. You, too, will be perfectly well aware that this led to bitter feeling, since most of the country desires a return to peaceful and orderly conditions. We then got your letter from Liège and I could not but agree with your father when he expressed the hope that, if you were compelled to fend for yourself, you might perhaps decide, or have to decide, to turn to activities other than those which you have been pursuing in recent years and which have already caused us so much distress. You must not imagine, dear Friedrich, that, when your father made his proposals to you in the letter he sent to Brussels, he did so without my assent. I was in complete agreement with him and hoped that you would either fall in with the proposal that you go to America or, should you cease to receive money from us, that you would make up your mind to take up something else so as to be able to exist.
Just at the time when we received your letter from Liège, our Emil arrived here from Engelskirchen via Cologne, where he had inquired at the editorial office of the Rh. Z. whether they knew anything about you, and was told in reply that the editors were all expected back on the following day and that the paper would be reappearing within the next few days.a As you yourself know, it was not long before this happened, so what could be more natural than that I should imagine that Marx and the others were back in Cologne? A little later, your father went to Cologne where he heard from Plasmann, as I told you in my letter, that several letters had arrived from you, in which you asked for money but that none had yet been sent to you — I mentioned this in an earlier letter. A few days later Plasmann actually sent us a letter of yours, addressed to one Schulz and written, if I am not mistaken, in Brussels, in which you complain that they have not replied to your letters, including one to Mrs Marx. About this time we read of your expulsion from Brussels and, not having heard at all whether you had received the money in Brussels, we grew anxious and your father wrote to Gigot, who soon replied, saying he had handed you the money and giving us the address to which I wrote-to you in Paris. We then got your letter from Geneva in which you told us that, for the first fortnight, you could expect nothing from your friends as 'they had all been dispersed'. Was I not forced to conclude from this that you did not know that the Rh. Z. was again appearing and hence that the editors must also be there?
I do not wish to say anything further about Marx; if he acted in the way you describe, and I do not doubt this for one moment, he did what he could and in my heart I thank him for it. As to your other Cologne friends, I do not wish to discuss them further, for you yourself say little about them, so we shall let the matter rest. Time will tell who is most dependable. They were, by the way, at great pains to send us your address when they heard from Gigot that we had been making inquiries about it. We got it from three sourcesb at the very time your letter arrived from Geneva.
I am sorry to see from your letter that you imagine us to be responsible for the hard time you had in Geneva. But that often happens to people. They willingly blame others for things for which they are themselves responsible. Why did you have to leave Cologne? You know yourself, dear Friedrich, how often I expressed concern that one day you might again come to such a pass, but you always said that that was out of the question. We then had no word from you for five weeks, neither a letter nor your address, so how could you expect us to send you money? No sooner did we receive word from you, than we sent you some. It is surely not our fault if you received it so belatedly.
There is many a thing I could say in reply to your letter, but what purpose would it serve? We cannot, after all, agree on everything, so it is better to hold one's peace. Except for one thing, dear Friedrich. I have learned from a fairly reliable source a thing or two about your plans in Cologne, and I must say that when one plans to build barricades one is not so far from murder. Thank God such plans are not all carried out. Later, perhaps, we can discuss this affair, you had best not reply concerning it. Now for another matter. Plasmann sent us your things, which arrived, I am happy to say, while your father was still away, for amongst them I discovered various letters which I would rather did not find their way into your father's hands. I prefer to withhold from him matters which may distress him or cause him anxiety, for I consider it unnecessary to tell him everything I know, but if asked I do not knowingly tell anything but the truth, as you too will have discovered. Amongst the letters in your trunk I found one addressed to 'Madame Engels' and one from a lady to yourself, written in French though from Cologne. Both these letters I burnt unread and at once put all the other letters together in the leather brief-case, so that there is little probability of your father seeing them. Those two letters might perhaps have given me the explanation why last spring," when we had that talk together in the garden, you were not being truthful with me. Whatever your relations may have been at the time and may perhaps still be, it is as well to let the matter rest. Do not write to me about it, for I am most anxious that your father should hear nothing of the matter. Later on, perhaps, you might give me an explanation by word of mouth. But I only wish to hear the truth. If you cannot tell me that, it would be better for us not to speak at all on the subject.
Now that you have got the money from us, I entreat you to buy yourself a warm overcoat so that you will have it when the weather turns colder, as it soon will; also to provide yourself with drawers and a bed jacket so that you will be warmly clad should you catch a cold, as can very easily happen. I only wish I had occasion to send you some warm socks. Your father, however, thinks it would cost more than they are worth and says I ought to keep them and everything else until you are closer to us again.
9. Jenny Marx to Caroline Schöler. 14 July 1849
What more can I say to you, dear Friedrich? That I love you as only a mother can love her child, you know. May God shine His light upon your heart that you may know what will bring you peace. It is already one o'clock in the morning and I too shall now go to bed. May God's grace and mercy go with you.
With much love
Your mother Elise
Your father returned from his trip last Friday(1) but left again today for Engelskirchen.
Hermann, Hedwig, Rudolf and Elise send their love.
9
JENNY MARX TO CAROLINE SCHÖLER
IN COLOGNE
Paris, 14 July 1849 rue de Lille, No. 45
My dear Lina,
You will have received my two letters from Trier and will have seen from them that on this occasion I did not feel at ease there. Everything has changed too much there and one does not, of course, always remain the same oneself. I felt an intense nostalgia for Paris and so, together with all my baggage, I returned posthaste via Aix and Brussels; we got back here last Saturday, fit and well.[263] I found very pretty, convenient lodgings in a salubrious district where we have already set up house, including kitchen, quite cosily.
At this moment Paris is splendid and luxurious in the extreme. The aristocracy and bourgeoisie suppose themselves safe since the ill-starred 13th of June and the fresh victories their party has won.[260] On the 14th all the grandees, together with their carriages and their liveried retainers, were already creeping out of the holes in which they had been hiding and thus the marvellous streets are awash with magnificence and splendour of every description. Paris is a gorgeous city. How often during the past few days have I not wished you were here beside me as, filled with admiration and amazement, I walked along streets that were alive with people. Once we have settled in properly you must pay us a visit here and see for yourself how lovely it is.
Until 15 August we shall remain in these lodgings which, however, are too dear for us to stay in for any length of time. In Passy, a very pretty place an hour's distance from Paris, we have been offered a whole cottage with garden, 6-10 rooms, elegantly furnished throughout, and having four beds, at the unbelievable rent of eleven thalers a month. If it were not too remote we should remove there at once. ; We have still not made up our minds whether we should have our things sent or not. So I shall have to make yet further calls upon your kindness and good nature.
Could you not find out from Johann and my packing-case maker, Hansen [Kunibert], approximately how many cwt. the whole amounts to, i.e. including only one of the boxes of books, No. 4, and how much it costs to transport a cwt. from Cologne to Paris? That would enable us to make an estimate of sorts. Before winter sets in you would in any case have to unpack out of the trunks and dispatch to me here some of the linen, clothing, etc. I shall be sending you further details later on. Johann would be of very great service to you in this.
At the end of August our things will have to be removed from the place where they are now. Perhaps you could have a word with Johann or Faulenbach about cheap storage for them later on. These are all very tiresome affairs, but unavoidable in view of our vagabond existence. I am only sorry that I should have to place this additional burden on you, the more so since you yourself will surely have had a great deal to arrange and see to of late. For I feel sure that your next dear letter will bring me the joyous tidings of Bertha's[3] marriage. Whether that day is already past or whether it is yet to come, do please convey to her my most cordial wishes for her future prosperity and happiness. I wish it were within my power to make you all really happy and more than anything else I should like to see you, my dear Lina, as cheerful and contented as you deserve and have every right to be, considering the many cares, troubles and disappointed expectations that have already clouded and embittered your young life. Rest assured that in me you will always find a loyal and loving friend.
I shall not write anything about politics today. There is no telling what may happen to a letter.
My dear husband sends you his warm regards and wonders whether you could, perhaps, find out from Stein, the banker in the Neumarkt, or from his mother, etc., etc., the address of Jung, the assessor, and then forward the enclosed letter to him,[555] the matter is one of some urgency. I am not franking these letters because the franking office is much too far away — I beg you not to frank your letters either and, in fact, to get yourself a cash book for your outlays on my behalf. If you fail to keep strict accounts, I shall have to have recourse to coercive measures.
The children,a who can hardly open their eyes wide enough to take in all these marvels, often babble about their dear Aunt Lina and send you their love, so does Lenchen,h qui est toujours la même.c
My love to your sisters, to Roland et femme and to the Eschweilers should you happen to see them, etc., etc.
Yours ever
Jennye
10. Conrad Schramm to Joseph Weydemeyer. 8 January 1850
Dear Weydemeyer,
I am writing to you at the request of Marx, who is up to his eyes in work completing the first issue of the Revue. The Revue will be distributed through booksellers and besides, in larger cities, through agents. It will be printed, etc., in Hamburg and dispatched from there to the agents. The first issue will come out a bit late, but will be quickly followed by the next ones, so that the March issue will probably appear at the beginning of the month. If the Revue does at all well, it will appear twice a month. I would urge you to insert the announcement straight away? even supposing the Kölnerinh has not yet had it. As regards your South German article,[295] Marx would like to have it as soon as possible for the February issue; the point is not so much to report the most up-to-date facts, which is not in any case feasible; it would be best, I think, to conclude the reports on the 15th of each month; and send off the manuscript soon enough for it to get here by the 19th or 20th of each month. One more thing; please alter the price in the announcement from 24 to 25 Sgr.c or 20 ggr.,d this latter price having been suggested by the booksellers as being more convenient. It is to be hoped that in Frankfurt you will take the lead in promoting the Revue, in which case you must charge to us the cost of sub-agents, delivery boys, etc. How many copies should I let you have?
Little that's new today over here. Struve and Heinzen are doing all they can to create a commotion and are, to the best of their ability, making asses of themselves and the German emigration. These two dictators, by the by, have fallen out, Struve having allegedly stolen an idea (?) of Heinzen's! I shall shortly be writing to Bruhn, to whom kindly give my regards, and shall then provide a detailed account of what is going on here.
Do you not require a correspondent over here? I could always send you prompt reports on the most important events in Parliament, which, in any case, promises to be interesting. I regularly follow the English movement for financial reform[284] and can keep you au courant. In the next day or two I shall send you a sample article and you could then let me know at your convenience whether you would like to have my letters and what you would give for them. Here in England one has got to have something with which to pay for one's STEAKS and beer.
The young communist who has installed himself chez Marx is called Henry Edward Guy Fawkes. He was born on the anniversary of the Gun Powder Plot, 5th Nov., and for that reason has been named Guy Fawkes.[324] Just now the little fellow is getting on everyone's nerves with his bawling; however, he will no doubt become more reasonable in due course.
All your acquaintances send their kind regards.
With cordial regards,
Yours
C. Schramm[3]
11. From Peter Röser's Evidencea
... Immediately after the New Year of 1850 / received a letter from Marx in which he asked me to set up a communityb in Cologne and to do my utmost to start communities in other Rhine towns, because, now that freedom of speech and of the press has been all but suppressed, he too considers it necessary to reorganise the League, as in the near future, clandestine propaganda will alone be possible. I replied that I was prepared to do this but demanded, before proceeding further, Rules to which we [must] conform and such as would preclude any kind of conspiracy. Marx replied that the Rules of 1847c were no longer in keeping with the times, that the Rules of 1848 were no longer approved in London[557] and that new Rules were to be drafted; also that, as soon as the League had been organised, a Congress was to be held to which the Rules would be submitted for approval. Up till then, he said, I was to organise things on the basis of the Manifestod of 1847 which was sold openly in Cologne in 1848 as printed in The Hague and had been in my possession ever since. In both letters he urgently recommended that I hold discussions with Dr Daniels and Bürgers with a view to recruiting them into the League...
...In the letter I received from Marx, he repeated that his brother-in-law, von Westphalen,a a lawyer resident in Trier, had formerly been admitted by him into the League and had subsequently set up a community in Trier, but that he was a lazy man and had of late failed to reply to his letters. Marx asked me to write to this von Westphalen, since it was less dangerous for me to correspond with him from Cologne.
I received no reply to two letters conveyed to von Westphalen through Schlegel...
...At the end of Julyb Wilhelm Klein, a knife grinder and a native of Solingen, who had hitherto lived in London as a refugee, having been compromised by his participation in the uprising in Elberfeld in 1849,[286] returned from London to Germany after the trial relating to the Elberfeld uprising was over and there was no longer any fear of his being prosecuted. I had known Klein since the time of the 1848 and 1849 congresses in Cologne.[558] He arrived in Cologne at the end of July 1850, lodged there with his uncle, whose name and address I do not know, and brought me a letter from Marx in which the latter gave vent to his anger at Willich & Company and said it was a great pity that Schapper should have attached himself to this bunch of frauds. He said that during the winter of 1849/50 he had lectured to the London Workers' Society[52] on the Manifesto and had explained that communism could only be introduced after a number of years, that it would have to go through several phases and that generally its introduction could only be effected by a process of education and gradual development, but that Willich had violently opposed him with his rubbish — as Marx called it — saying that it would be introduced in the next revolution, if only by the might of the guillotine, that the hostility between them was already great and he [Marx] feared it would lead to a split in the League, General Willich having got it firmly into his head that, come the next revolution, he and his brave men from the Palatinate would introduce communism on their own and against the will of everyone in Germany. Finally he recommended the said Klein to me as a capable worker who did not as yet have any clear idea of social and communist principles. Here I must repeat what I said during the trialc—that we did not receive the second London Address,d or at any rate I was not given it by the said Klein...
...One afternoon during the second half of September 1850 Dr Daniels and Bürgers turned up at my lodgings accompanied by a young man whom they described as Haupt, a salesman and native of Hamburg, who was on his way home from London. Whether it was Daniels or Bürgers who told me that Haupt had brought with him a letter from Marx addressed to Daniels, I cannot recollect, but either one or the other told me this. We went together to Bürgers' lodgings which Daniels left immediately afterwards and where I remained alone with Bürgers and Haupt. At this point the letter was handed to me and, having read it, I found that the contents tallied with the letter previously received from Marx. In it Marx said that it was no longer possible to go along with Schapper and Willich, that there had been a formal split and that the majority of the London Central Authority had decided to remove the Central Authority to Cologne and that, should the people in Cologne accept that resolution, they, as the new Central Authority, would shortly have to draft new Rules, which might possibly have to remain provisionally in force until the next Congress, and that they would have to communicate the said Rules to the districts and communities[342]...
Haupt gave us detailed information on the London conflict and stressed in particular that the split had occurred because Marx and Engels, the opposing party maintained, were not going forward resolutely enough and refused to abandon the illusion that it would not be possible to introduce communism already in the next revolution. The conflict had become so embittered that Schramm called Willich a liar at a committee sitting. The result was that Willich challenged Schramm to a duel, which took place on Belgian territory.[379] Willich is said to have left Schramm lying severely wounded at the place of the duel while he himself returned to London and said that he had bumped Schramm off. There were no seconds at the duel, Schramm was found by a peasant, in whose house he was attended to, and later he returned to London. This Schramm is a Krefeld merchant.
We explained to Haupt that we would submit the resolutions of the Central Authority to the community for discussion, but must first await the arrival of the relevant minutes which, Haupt had said, would follow. Haupt told us that he had fought in the Baden campaign(1) and had taken refuge in Switzerland, and had gone from there to London. It was only very recently that he had been admitted into the League by Marx. I was surprised at his admittance and subsequently also expressed my disapproval of it to Bürgers, because I did not trust Haupt.
...A few days later, I received through the cashier Zimmermann a letter from Eccarius together with a copy of the London minutes, if I am not mistaken, of the 15th of September 1850.a I had recommended Zimmermann to Marx as a reliable man. I gave him the letters and took the letters from him. Police Sergeant Quelting of Cologne saw me frequently visit Zimmermann at his tax collector's office. Through whom Zimmermann forwarded the letters I do not know, but at all events through guards or other employees of the Cologne-Aix-la-Chapelle Railway. Marx must have had similar connections in Belgium and on the Calais-Dover or Ostend-London crossings, through whom letters were forwarded.
The letter was signed by Eccarius. At that time Engels must already have been living in Manchester and Eccarius have been secretary of the Central Authority. I knew of Eccarius, partly through Moll and partly from an earlier letter which, as secretary of the London Workers' Society, he had addressed to the Cologne Workers' Association[559] in the autumn of 1848. This last-mentioned letter is among the documents relating to the case. I obtained the most reliable information on Eccarius during a visit I paid to Schapper in Cologne in February 1850.
There was nothing in Eccarius' letter save a note to the effect that the minutes of the London Central Authority were enclosed. The minutes contained the resolutions already communicated to us by Marx, namely the removal of the Central Authority to Cologne and the drafting of new Rules. The minutes had been signed by the majority of the now dissolved London Central Authority — that is, if I am not mistaken, by Marx, Eccarius, Schramm, Harry Bauer, Pfänder and by Engels or else by Friedrichb Wolf (Lupus) — I can no longer say for certain — and the signatures were, moreover, original ones. Hence I cannot say whether the minutes sent to Cologne were the original ones, or a duplicate of the same, or a copy with original signatures. This document remained in Bürgers' possession and only after we had been arrested was it burnt with all the other papers, as stated by Bürgers during the final hearing. Bürgers had placed the said papers in safe hands — whose, I do not know, nor could I hazard a guess...
...Finally, I would further remark that we — both parties, that of Marx as well as that of Schapper — have been reproached for wanting communism. Yet it was on the question of the introduction of communism that the two parties became declared opponents, even enemies. Schapper-Willich propose to introduce communism on the basis of the present state of education, if necessary in the next revolution and by force of arms. Marx considers it to be feasible only by a process of education and gradual development and, in a letter to us, cites four phases through which it must pass before it is introduced. He says that as things are now, the petty bourgeoisie and proletariat will combine against the monarchy until the next revolution. That revolution will not be of their making but will arise out of the force of circumstances, of the general distress. It will be accelerat-ed by periodically recurring trade crises. Only after the next revolution, when the petty bourgeoisie is at the helm, will the communists' activities and opposition really begin. This will be followed by a social and then a socio-communist republic which will finally make way for the purely communist republic...
After the Central Authority had removed to Cologne, Marx told me in a letter that there was a very good community in Göttingen and that Liebknecht, a student, maintained correspondence with it, for which there were very favourable opportunities. For this reason he held that it was better for the time being to correspond with this community from London. I presume that this community consisted or still consists of students. Liebknecht studied in Giessen and Göttingen and does not come from Hanau, as I mistakenly testified today. My testimony in this instance must therefore be corrected. But one of the members of the London League is from Hanau, his name will be easy to ascertain. I can give no further testimony on the community in Göttingen, we never corresponded with it...
12. Jenny Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer. 20 May 1850
Dear Mr Weydemeyer,
Almost a year has gone by since I was accorded such a kind and cordial reception by you and your dear wife,a since I felt so happy and at home in your house,[263] and throughout that long time I have sent you no word; I remained silent when your wife wrote to me so kindly, I even remained mute when news reached us of the birth of your child. I have myself often felt oppressed by this silence, but for much of the time I have been incapable of writing, and even today find it difficult, very difficult.
Circumstances, however, compel me to take up my pen — I beg you to send us as soon as possible any money that has come in or comes in from the Revue. We are in dire need of it. No one, I am sure, could reproach us with having made much ado about what we have been obliged to renounce and put up with for years; the public has never, or hardly ever, been importuned with our private affairs, for my husband is very sensitive about such matters and would sooner sacrifice all he has left rather than demean himself by passing round the democratic begging-bowl, as is done by the official great men. But what he was entitled to expect of his friends, especially in Cologne, was active and energetic concern for his Revue. He was above all entitled to expect such concern from those who were aware of the sacrifices he had made for the Rh.
Ztg!b Instead, the business has been utterly ruined by the negligent, slovenly way in which it was run, nor can one really say which did most harm — the bookseller's procrastination, or that of acquaintances and those managing the business in Cologne, or again the whole attitude of the democrats generally.
Over here my husband has been all but crushed by the most trivial worries of bourgeois existence, and so exasperating a form have these taken that it required all the energy, all the calm, lucid, quiet self-confidence he was able to muster to keep him going during these daily, hourly struggles. You, dear Mr Weydemeyer, are aware of the sacrifices made by my husband for the sake of the paper; he put thousands in cash into it, he took over the paper's property, talked into doing so by democratic worthies who otherwise must themselves have assumed responsibility for the debts, at a time when there was already small prospect of being able to carry on. To save the paper's political honour and the bourgeois honour of his Cologne acquaintances, he shouldered every burden, he gave up his machinery, he gave up the entire proceeds and, on his departure, even borrowed 300 Reichstalers so as to pay the rent for newly hired premises, the editors' arrears of salary, etc.—and he was forcibly expelled.
As you know, we saved nothing out of all this for ourselves, for I came to Frankfurt to pawn my silver — all that we had left; I sold j my furniture in Cologne because I was in danger of seeing my linen and everything else placed under distraint. As the unhappy era of counter-revolution dawned, my husband went to Paris where I followed him with my three children." Hardly had we settled down in Paris than he was expelled, I and my children being refused permission to stay for any length of time. Again I followed him across the sea. A month later our 4th childb was born. You would have to know London and what conditions are like here to realise what that means — 3 children and the birth of a 4th. We had to pay 42 talers a month in rent alone. All this we were in a position to defray with our own realised assets. But our slender resources ran out with the appearance of the Revue. Agreements or no agreements, the money failed to come in, or only by dribs and drabs, so that we found ourselves faced with the most frightful situations here.
Let me describe for you, as it really was, just one day in our lives, and you will realise that few refugees are likely to have gone through a similar experience. Since wet-nurses here are exorbit-antly expensive, I was determined to feed my child myself, however frightful the pain in my breast and back. But the poor little angel absorbed with my milk so many anxieties and unspoken sorrows that he was always ailing and in severe pain by day and by night. Since coming into the world, he has never slept a whole night through — at most two or three hours. Latterly, too, there have been violent convulsions, so that the child has been hovering constantly between death and a miserable life. In his pain he sucked so hard that I got a sore on my breast — an open sore; often blood would spurt into his little, trembling mouth. I was sitting thus one day when suddenly in came our landlady, to whom we had paid over 250 Reichstalers in the course of the winter, and with whom we had contractually agreed that we should subsequently pay, not her, but her LANDLORD by whom she had formerly been placed under distraint; she now denied the existence of the contract, demanded the £5 we stiil owed her and, since this was not ready to hand (Naut's letter arrived too late), two bailiffs entered the house and placed under distraint what little I possessed — beds, linen, clothes, everything, even my poor infant's cradle, and the best of the toys belonging to the girls, who burst into tears. They threatened to take everything away within 2 hours — leaving me lying on the bare boards with my shivering children and my sore breast. Our friend Schramm(1) left hurriedly for town in search of help. He climbed into a cab, the horses took fright, he jumped out of the vehicle and was brought bleeding back to the house where I was lamenting in company with my poor, trembling children.
The following day we had to leave the house, it was cold, wet and overcast, my husband went to look for lodgings; on his mentioning 4 children no one wanted to take us in. At last a friend came to our aid, we paid and I hurriedly sold all my beds so as to settle with the apothecaries, bakers, butchers, and milkman who, their fears aroused by the scandal of the bailiffs, had suddenly besieged me with their bills. The beds I had sold were brought out on to the pavement and loaded on to a barrow — and then what happens? It was long after sunset, English law prohibits this, the landlord bears down on us with constables in attendance, declares we might have included some of his stuff with our own, that we are doing a flit and going abroad. In less than five minutes a crowd of two or three hundred people stands gaping outside our door, all the riff-raff of Chelsea. In go the beds again; they cannot be handed over to the purchaser until tomorrow morning after sunrise; having thus been enabled, by the sale of everything we possessed, to pay every farthing, I removed with my little darlings into the two little rooms we now occupy in the German Hotel, 1 Leicester Street, Leicester Square, where we were given a humane reception in return for £5.10 a week.
You will forgive me, dear friend, for describing to you so exhaustively and at such length just one day in our lives over here. It is, I know, immodest, but this evening my heart has flowed over into my trembling hands and for once I must pour out that heart to one of our oldest, best and most faithful friends. Do not suppose that I am bowed down by these petty sufferings, for I know only too well that our struggle is not an isolated one and that, furthermore, I am among the happiest and most favoured few in that my beloved husband, the mainstay of my life, is still at my side. But what really shatters me to the very core of my being, and makes my heart bleed is that my husband has to endure so much pettiness, that so little would have been needed to help him and that he, who gladly and joyously helped so many, has been so bereft of help over here. But as I have said, do not suppose, dear Mr Weydemeyer, that we are making demands on anyone; if money is advanced to us by anyone, my husband is still in a position to repay it out of his assets. The only thing, perhaps, my husband was entitled to ask of those who owe him many an idea, many a preferment, and much support was that they should evince more commercial zeal, greater concern for his Revue. That modicum, I am proud and bold enough to maintain, that modicum was his due. Nor do I even know whether my husband ever earned by his labours 10 silver groschen to which he was not fully entitled. And I don't believe that anyone was the worse off for it. That grieves me. But my husband is of a different mind. Never, even in the most frightful moments, has he lost his confidence in the future, nor yet a mite of his good humour, being perfectly content to see me cheerful, and our dear children affectionately caressing their dear mama. He is unaware, dear Mr Weydemeyer, that I have written to you at such length about our situation, so do not make any use of this letter. All he knows is that I have asked you on his behalf to expedite as best you can the collection and remittance of the money. I know that the use you make of this letter will be wholly dictated by the tact and discretion of your friendship for us.
Farewell, dear friend. Convey my most sincere affection to your wife and give your little angel a kiss from a mother who has shed many a tear upon the infant at her breast. Should your wife be suckling her child herself, do not tell her anything of this letter. I know what ravages are made by any kind of upset and how bad it is for the little mites. Our three eldest children are doing wonderfully well, for all that and for all that.(2) The girls are pretty, blooming, cheerful and in good spirits, and our fat boy is a paragon of comical humour and full of the drollest ideas. All day the little imp sings funny songs with tremendous feeling and at the top of his voice, and when he sings the verse from Freiligrath's Marseillaise Come, o June, and bring us deeds, Fresh deeds for which our hearts do yearna
in a deafening voice, the whole house reverberates. Like its two unfortunate precursors, that month may be destined by world history to see the opening of the gigantic struggle during which we shall all clasp one another's hands again.
Fare well.
13. Jenny Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer. About 20 June 1850
Dear Mr Weydemeyer,
My husband is not a little astonished that you could send the money to Naut, and likewise that from the red numberb to anyone but himself.
There will, of course, have to be a complete overhaul of the way in which the Revue is distributed. Meanwhile my husband requests you not to send anything more to Mr Naut, but rather all of it here, even the smallest amount (in Prussian talers). Conditions here are not as they are in Germany. We live, all six of us, in one small room and a very small closet, for which we pay more than for the largest house in Germany, and pay weekly at that. Hence you can imagine what a position one finds oneself in if so much as 1 Reichstaler arrives a day too late. For all of us here, without exception, it's a question of our daily bread. So do not await Mr Naut's orders and so forth. Another thing my husband wishes me to say is that it really is not desirable for Liming to write a critique, a strong attack would do, only no praise. Nor has my husband ever expected a profound critique, but only a straightfor-ward piece such as all newspapers accord to reviews and pamphlets, and what your paper[3] also does when it wants to make works known and promote them, namely, publish short excerpts of a suitable kind. This involves little work.
Many regards to your dear wife,h and my cordial regards to yourself.
Yours
Jenny Marx
14. Jenny Marx to Frederick Engels. 19 December 1850
Dear Mr Engels,
On Karl's request I send you herewith six copies of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung!" Harney, who is a little better, wishes you to send one to Helen Macfarlane. Just imagine, that rascal Schuberth will only let Eisen have the 300 copies if he is paid in cash and Naut, the jackass, is now quite beside himself. Hence Karl has masses of letters to write, and you know what that means where he is concerned. The Cologne anathema against Willich and Co. arrived yesterday, together with new Rules,[560]
circulars, etc. This time the Cologne people were exceptionally active and energetic and adopted a firm stand vis-à-vis the rotten band. Just imagine, it wasn't enough for Willich to have put his foot in it once, with the Fanon-Caperon manifesto[11]—the leviathans must needs issue another epistle, while Willich has gone so far as to send red Beckerc 3 decrees for forwarding to the Cologne Landwehr™e in which he gives them orders from here to mutiny, to nominate a provisional government in every company and to overthrow all civil and military authorities and have them shot if need be. And the Cologne Landwehr, at that, who are now quite happily talking pot politics in the city of their fathers on the Rhine's cool strand. If Willich is not ripe for the lunatic asylum, then I don't know who is. Schapper has obtained a passport from Hamburg, to enable him to take over in person Haude's occupation of emissary. Good luck to the hippopotamus!
We have also heard from Dronke. Mrs Mosesa has again persuaded her husband that he is 'poss' of the 'gommunists'. But you'll soon be here[345] and can hear and see for yourself everything that's been going on. The Caperonians set upon and beat up red Wolffb one night, and our red friend had Wengler taken into custody. The next morning, when he had been sentenced, Willich ransomed him for 20 shillings.
We are all looking forward to seeing you here soon.
Yours
Jenny Marx
[On the back of the letter]
Frederic Engels, Esquire 70 Great Ducie Street, Manchester
time
15. Jenny Marx to Frederick Engels. 11 January 1851
On my husband's request I am sending you herewith a letter for Weerth.[561] You had agreed to forward it along with your own. Red Wolff has made a new pair of shoes by machine, citizen Liebknecht grows daily more earnest and virtuous, Schramm[3] is down in the dumps and no one has seen anything of him. The children send their love to Engels, and my husband is at the librarya whiling away his time.
With my warm regards,
Jenny Marx
16. Jenny Marx to Frederick Engels. 17 December 1851
Dear Mr Engels,
Moor has just asked me to send you in great haste a few words in reply to Weydemeyer's letter,b just received. He will himself let you have an article on the French misèrec by Fridayd and wonders whether you might not be able to dispatch to America a humorous essay on the German nonsense, notably the hoaxing of Prussia by Austria, etc.[562] I am also, on the orders of the powers that be, sending Freiligrath a reminder. We all look forward very much to seeing you here soon.e Colonel Musch and the young ladies, his sisters,' send you their warm regards as does your
Jenny Marx
17. Jenny Marx to Frederick Engels. 17 December 1851
Dear Mr Engels,
Hardly had I posted my letter to you (yoursa not having arrived until four o'clock in the afternoon) when Moor returned from the Museumb and began 'burning his fingers' over the French stuff.c
Now he asks me to send you at once this second epistle to tell you that, as he would not be able to post his article until late on Thursday evening,e he proposes to send it off from here, and that, supposing you were in fact to leave on Friday,[526] everything would cross. If you can send your article[562] here by Friday, it could travel in company with the rest; but you might consider it preferable to send yours off from Liverpool. So comme il vous plaira? How do you like my husband creating a stir with your articlef
throughout western, eastern and southern America — and mutilated at that, and what's more under another name? For the rest the whole article is nothing but a source of mystification.
Should you have the English version of the Manifesto* to hand, please bring it with you.
Colonel Muschh writes three letters a day to Frederick in Manchester, sticking used stamps thereon with the utmost conscientiousness. The whole tribe sends its love. Until Saturday, then.
Farewell.
Yours
Jenny Marx
NOTES
AND INDEXES
Endnotes
[534] Only part of this letter is extant; the beginning and the en between the Prussian authorities and the Guizot Government on this issue. Subsequently, Engels confirmed this version in his obituary of Jenny Marx (1881).—525 8 May 1838 in the form of a Bill to be submitted to Parliament. It consisted of six points: universal suffrage (for men of 21 years of age), annual elections to Parliament, secret ballot, equal constituencies, abolition of property qualifications for candidates to Parliament, and salaries for M.P.s. In 1839 and 1842, petitions for the Charter were rejected by Parliament.—533
[535] The letter has no date. The date of writing has been established by its mentioning Engels' return to Brussels from England (he had gone there with Marx in the second half of July 1845) on about 24 August 1845. Jenny Marx, who was expecting a second child, was in Trier at the time with her mother, Caroline von Westphalen.— 526
[536] Marx's letter to Jenny written in August 1845 has not been found.— 526
[5] Engels is referring to Kritik der Politik und National-Okonomie, a work which Marx planned to write. Marx began to study political economy at the end of 1843 and by spring 1844 he set himself the task of writing a criticism of bourgeois political economv from the standpoint of materialism and communism. The draft 'Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844' (see present edition. Vol. 3), written at that time, have reached us incomplete. Work on The Hoh Family forced Marx temporarily to interrupt his study of political economy until December 1844. In February 1845, just before his expulsion from Paris, he signed a contract for his Kritik der Politik und Nationalökonomie with the publisher Leske (see Note 27). In Brussels Marx continued to study the works of English, French, German, Italian and other economists and added several more notebooks of excerpts to those compiled in Paris, although his original plan for the book was not carried out.—6, 27, 94, 105, 532
[537] Only part of the letter is extant, the end is missing, and neither month nor year of writing is given. Judging by Joseph Weydemeyer's letter to his future wife Louise Liining of 21 February 1846, Marx accompanied his wife to Arlon on her way to Trier to visit her sick mother. Jenny Marx returned to Brussels in April 1846.—529
[538] Marx's letter to his wife written some time before 23 March 1846 has not been found.—529
[540] George Julian Harney's letter was in reply to several letters Engels wrote to him on his own behalf and that of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee (see Note 51); these letters have not survived but Harney's reply gives some idea of their contents.—533
[539] The reference is to the national liberation uprising in the Cracow republic which by the decision of the Congress of Vienna was controlled jointly by Austria, Russia and Prussia. The seizure of power in Cracow by the insurgents on 22 February 1846 and the establishment of a National Government of the Polish Republic, which issued a manifesto abolishing feudal services, were part of the plan for a general uprising in the Polish lands. In March the Cracow uprising was crushed by the forces of Austria and Russia; in November 1846, Austria, Prussia and Russia signed a treaty incorporating the 'free town of Cracow' into the Austrian Empire.— 532, 533
[57] A reference to the two volumes of a quarterly journal the publication of which was negotiated in 1845 and 1846 with a number of Westphalian socialists, the publishers Julius Meyer and Rudolph Rempel among others. Marx and Engels intended to publish in it their criticism of the German ideology which they started to write in the autumn of 1845. It was also planned to publish a number of polemical works by their fellow-thinkers, in the first place those containing criticism of German philosophical literature and the works of the true socialists'. In November 1845 Hess reached an agreement with Meyer and Rempel on financing the publication of two volumes of the quarterly. Further negotiations were conducted by Weydemeyer, who visited Brussels in February 1846 and returned to Germany in April on the instruction of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee. In a letter to the Committee of 30 April 1846 from Schildesche (Westphalia) he wrote that no headway was being made and that he proposed that Meyer should form a joint-stock company in Limburg (Holland), as in Germany manuscripts of less than 20 printed sheets were subject to preliminary censorship. He also recommended that Marx should sign a contract with the Brussels publisher and bookseller C. G. Vogler for the distribution of the quarterly and other publications. The contract was not concluded because Vogler could not assume even part of the expenses. Weydemeyer continued his efforts, but succeeded only in getting from Meyer a guarantee for the publication of one volume. But as early as July 1846 Meyer and Rempel refused their promised assistance on the pretext of financial difficulties, the actual reason being differences in principle between Marx and Engels on the one hand and the champions of 'true socialism' on the other, whose views both publishers shared. Marx and Engels did not abandon their hopes of publishing the works ready for the quarterly, if only by instalments, but their attempts failed. The extant manuscript of The German Ideology was first published in full in the Soviet Union in 1932.—41, 533 5 and 27) for the publication of his Kritik der Politik und National-Ökonomie. But as early as March 1846 Leske suggested that Marx find another publisher and, in case he did find one, return him the advance received. Therefore Marx hoped to repay Leske either when he signed a contract with a new publisher or out of the sum received for financing the planned publication. But Marx was unable either to sign a new contract or to fulfil his intention to write a work on economics, and in February 1847 the contract with Leske was cancelled.—43
[542] Engels recalled this period of joint work with Marx on The German Ideology in a letter to Laura Lafargue of 2 June 1883 (see present edition, Volume 47). He wrote that when he read passages from the manuscript to Hélène Demuth who kept house for him after Marx's death, she said: 'Now at last I know why that time in Brussels you two laughed at night so much that nobody in the house could sleep.' To this Engels added: 'We were bold devils then, Heine's poetry is childlike innocence compared with our prose.'—533
[44] Julius Campe's letter to Engels mentioned here has not been found.—34
[546] Harney refers to plans for establishing an international communist organisation to unite by means of correspondence committees the advanced workers and the revolutionary intellectuals in various countries of Europe, primarily England, France and Germany.— 536 o47 The false rumours that when the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee was being formed Marx and Engels intended to restrict the organisers of the international proletarian party to intellectuals were spread by Weitling. This emerges from the letter of the London Communist Correspondence Committee to Marx of 6 June 1846 (MEGA2, Abt. Ill, Bd. 2, Berlin, 1980).— 537
[548] This refers to a resolution of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee censuring Thomas Cooper for disavowing the Chartist movement and preaching the anti-revolutionary doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force (the text of the resolution has not survived). Marx and Engels also censured Cooper in their 'Address of the German Democratic Communists of Brussels to Mr Feargus O'Connor' in July 1846 (see present edition, Vol. 6, p. 59).—537
[549] The reference is to the Chartist Land Cooperative Society founded on the initiative of O'Connor in 1845 (later the National Land Company, which lasted till 1848). The aim of the Society was to buy plots of land with the money collected, and to lease them to worker shareholders on easy terms. Among the positive aspects of the Society were its petitions to Parliament and printed propaganda against the aristocracy's monopoly of land. (These aspects were emphasised by Engels in 1847 in his article 'The Agrarian Programme of the Chartists', see present edition, Vol. 6.) However, the idea of liberating the workers from exploitation, of reducing unemployment, etc., by a return to the land proved Utopian. The Society's activities were not successful in practice.—
[122] Fraternal Democrats—an international democratic society founded in London on
[310] This letter was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895, International Publishers, New York, 1953.—233, 489, 539
[550] The German Workers' Club was founded in Paris on 8 and 9 March 1848 on the initiative of the Communist League leaders. The leading role in it belonged to Marx. The Club's aim was to unite the German emigrant workers in Paris, explain to them the tactics of the proletariat in a bourgeois-democratic revolution and also to counter the attempts of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats to stir up the German workers by nationalist propaganda and make them join the adventurist march of volunteer legions into Germany. The Club was successful in arranging the return of German workers one by one to their own country to take part in the revolutionary struggle there.—539
[205] The German Democratic Society was formed in Paris after the February 1848 revolution. The Society was headed by petty-bourgeois democrats, Herwegh, Bornstedt and others, who campaigned to raise a volunteer legion of German refugees, with the intention of marching into Germany. In this way they hoped to carry out a revolution in Germany and establish a republic there. Marx and his followers in the Communist League opposed to this adventurist plan the tactics of uniting the German emigrants and organising their return to Germany individually to take part in the revolutionary struggle that was developing there. Late in April 1848 the volunteer legion moved to Baden, where it was dispersed by government troops. Black, red and gold were the colours symbolising German unity; the unity slogan was interpreted by the petty-bourgeois democrats as a call to establish in Germany a federation of autonomous provinces on the pattern of the Swiss Confederation.—162, 540
[474] The Federal Diet—a representative body of the German Confederation, an ephemeral union of German states, founded in 1815 by decision of the Congress of Vienna. Though it had no real power, it was nevertheless a vehicle for feudal and monarchical reaction. During the 1848-49 revolution in Germany, reactionary circles made vain attempts to revive the Federal Diet, intending to use it to prevent the democratic unification of Germany. After the defeat of the revolution, the Federal Diet was reestablished in its former rights in 1850 and survived till 1866.—443, 540
[551] Presumably an allusion to the émigré German Union (Réunion allemande) organised in Paris in August 1848. Although it occupied the left flank of the democratic movement and followed on the whole the political line charted by the Communist League, this organisation was- not free from petty-bourgeois influence. Moses Hess, who was in Paris at the time, tried to use it against Marx, Engels and their followers. On his initiative an attempt was made to split and change the organisation directed by the Communist League, in particular to set Marx and Engels at loggerheads. Ewerbeck, who came to Germany to attend the Second Congress of Democrats in Berlin, was to a certain extent involved by Hess in his political intrigues.— 542 550
[236] Early in July 1848 legal proceedings were instituted against Marx because of his article 'Arrests' published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 176-79), exposing the arbitrary actions of the Prussian authorities.
[552] Neither Engels' letter to his mother written about 30 November 1848 nor his letters to his parents from Liège and Brussels mentioned below have been found.—543 55S Concordia—publishers in Vienna, apparently had an office in Berlin.— 543
[553] Engels and other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung atte
[554] Engels and other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung attended the open meeting in the Eiser Hall, Cologne, on 20 September 1848 and he made a speech the text of which has not survived. From newspaper reports of the meeting it emerges that Engels branded as treachery the decision of the all-German Frankfurt National Assembly to ratify the treaty on the Danish-Prussian armistice.— 543
[260] Montagnards—during the French revolution of 1848-49 representatives in the Constituent and subsequently Legislative Assembly of a bloc of democrats and petty-bourgeois socialists grouped around the newspaper La Réforme. They called themselves the Montagne by analogy with the Montagne in the Convention of 1792-94. On 13 June 1849 the Montagne staged a peaceful demonstration to protest against the sending of French troops to suppress the Roman Republic. The demonstration was dispersed by the army and the bourgeois detachments of the National Guards and there followed a counter-revolutionary offensive, persecution of democrats and proletarian activists, including emigrants. Many Montagnards were arrested or emigrated.—199, 211, 283, 309, 360, 409,547
[555] Marx's letter to Georg Jung has not been found.— 548
[295] Marx's intention to enlist Joseph Weydemeyer as a regular contributor to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue was never realised. About mid-January Weydemeyer wrote his first article 'From South Germany' but it was not published in the first issue of the Revue owing to lack of space, and later lost its topical interest.—219, 225, 228, 549
[284] At the meeting on 13 August 1849 in the London Drury Lane Theatre of the National Association for Parliamentary and Financial Reform (founded by the bourgeois radicals in 1849 with the aim of achieving a democratic electoral system and changes in the tax system) O'Connor advocated a union of the middle and working classes. His speech was supported by the Free Trader Thomas Thompson.—211, 219, 272, 279, 549
[324] Marx's son Heinrich Guido was nicknamed Fawksy by the family because he was born on 5 November 1849, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The conspirators, Guy Fawkes among them, wanted to blow up the Houses of Parliament and James I on 5 November. In Britain this anniversary is celebrated with fireworks.—241, 550
[557] The reference is to the Statute of the Revolutionary Party drafted by the London members of the Communist League at the end of 1848. Marx and his adherents criticised it sharply as early as the spring of 1849. The Statute reflected sectarian and conspiratorial tendencies, while the communist nature of the organisation and the communist aims of the movement were obscured by vague phrases about a social republic', etc. The document got no farther than the stage of draft rules, not being approved in Communist League circles.— Presumably this refers to the district congresses of democrats of the Rhine Province and Westphalia held in Cologne on 13-14 August and 23 November 1848 and also to the district congresses of democratic societies and workers' unions of the province held in Cologne on 6 May 1849.— 551 The Cologne Workers' Association—a workers' organisation founded on 13 April 1848 by Andreas Gottschalk. Most of the leading figures in the Workers' Association were members of the Communist League. After Gottschalk's arrest on 6 July, Moll was elected President of the Association, and on 16 October the presidency was temporarily assumed by Marx at the request of the Association members. From February to May 1849 the post was held by Schapper. From the very outset, Gottschalk's sectarian position was opposed by the supporters of Marx and Engels. Under their impact the Workers' Association became a centre of revolutionary agitation among the workers and the peasants. It maintained contacts with other workers' and democratic organisations. After the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was suppressed and Marx, Schapper and other leaders left Cologne, the Association gradually turned into an ordinary workers' educational society.— 553 The reference is to the Address of the Cologne Central Authority of the Communist League to the League of 1 December 1850 censuring the splitting activities of the Willich-Schapper group. Together with the Address and other documents, the Central Authority also sent to the London district the Communist League Rules which had been drawn up in Cologne (see notes 342 and 438).—560 Jenny Marx's letter to Georg Weerth written at Marx's request has not survived.— 561 Instead of an article on Prussia, Engels soon wrote a series of articles on England for Joseph Weydemeyer's weekly Die Revolution; however, they were not published (see Note 529).—562, 563
[286] Xhe Elberfeld uprising of workers and petty bourgeoisie in defence of the Imperial Constitution, which flared up on 8 May 1849, served as a signal for armed struggle in a number of towns in the Rhine Province (Düsseldorf, Iserlohn, Solingen and others). Engels arrived in Elberfeld on 11 May and took an active part in the uprising, in particular directing the erection of street barricades. However, his efforts to secure the disarmament of the bourgeois civic militia, the imposition of a war tax on the bourgeoisie, the formation of the nucleus of a Rhenish revolutionary army out of armed workers' detachments and to unite localised uprisings, met with opposition from the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaders of the movement. Under pressure from bourgeois circles Engels was expelled from the town on 15 May. The uprising in Elberfeld, as in other towns of the Rhine Province, was a failure. On Engels' participation in the revolutionary struggle in Baden and the Palatinate see notes 264 and 265.—213,551
[558] Presumably this refers to the district congresses of democra
[52] Marx has in mind members of the League of the Just in Paris and the German Workers' Educational Society in London. The League of the Just—the first political organisation of German workers and artisans — was formed between 1836 and 1838 as a result of a split in the Outlaws' League, which consisted of artisans led by petty-bourgeois democrats. The League of the Just, whose supreme body — the People's Chamber — was in Paris, and from the autumn of 1846 in London, was connected with French secret conspiratorial societies and had groups in Germany, Switzerland and England. Besides Germans it included workers of other nationalities. The views
[342] This refers to the Communist League Rules drawn up by the Cologne Central Authority in the autumn of 1850 after the split in the League (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 634-36). The Rules were received in London on 18 December 1850 and were approved on 5 January 1851 by a London district committee meeting, at which Marx was present.— 257, 552
[379] An allusion to a duel between Conrad Schramm and August Willich on 11 September 1850 in Belgium in which Schramm was slightly wounded. Schramm challenged Willich because the latter had insulted him at a meeting of the Communist League Central Authority at the end of August 1850 during heated disputes between supporters of Marx and Engels and adherents of the Willich-Schapper separatist group.—307, 473, 552
[559] The Cologne Workers' Association — a workers' organisation founded on 13 April 1848 by Andreas Gottschalk. Most of the leading figures in the Workers' Association were members of the Communist League. After Gottschalk's arrest on 6 July, Moll was elected President of the Association, and on 16 October the
[560] The reference is to the Address of the Cologne Central Autho
[11] The disagreements between Marx and Engels on the one hand and Arnold Ruge on the other dated back to the time of the publication of the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, under the editorship of Marx and Ruge. These disagreements were due to Ruge's negative attitude towards communism and the revolutionary proletarian movement, the fundamental difference between Marx's views and those of the Young Hegelian Ruge, who was an adherent of philosophical idealism. The final break between Marx and Ruge occurred in March 1844. Ruge's condemnation of the Silesian weavers' rising in June 1844 impelled Marx to criticise his views in the article 'Critical Marginal Notes on the Article "The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian'" (see present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 189-206).—10
[345] At the end of 1850 Engels stayed with Marx's family in London for a whole week and on 30 December he made a speech at a New Year party organised by the Fraternal Democrats. Marx and his wife were also present (see present edition, Vol. 10, p. 637).—263, 561
[561] Jenny Marx's letter to Georg Weerth written at Marx's reques
[526] Engels went to London on 20 December 1851. He stayed there for about a fortnight, mostly in Marx's company, and returned to Manchester on about 4 January 1852.—515, 516, 518, 562, 563
[2] Karl Bernays, one of the editors of the German newspaper Vorwärts!, published in Paris, was sued by the French authorities in September 1844 at the request of the Prussian Government for not having paid the caution-money required for the publication of a political newspaper. The real reason, however, was the article 'Attentat auf den König von Preußen' published in Vorwärts!, No. 62,
[3] August 1844. On 13 December 1844 Bernays was sentenced to two months' imprisonment and a fine.—4 '* Engels left Germany in November 1842 and lived for nearly two years in England, working in the office of a Manchester cotton-mill of which his father was co-proprietor.—4
[541] On 15 and 17 March 1846 meetings of the Fraternal Democrats (see Note 122) in support of the Cracow uprising (see Note 539) took place in London. A report on them was published in The Northern Star, No. 436, 21 March 1846.—533
[543] The People's Charter containing the demands of the Chartists was published on 538
[1] This is the earliest extant letter of Engels to Marx, written soon after Engels' return to Germany from England. On his way back to Germany at the end of August 1844, he stopped in Paris, where he met Marx. During the days they spent together they discovered that their theoretical views coincided, and they immediately began their first joint work, directed against the Young Hegelians. Engels finished his part before leaving Paris, while Marx continued to write his. At first they intended to call the book A Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Co. But while it was being printed Marx added The Holy Family to the title. This meeting of Marx and Engels in Paris marked the beginning of their friendship, joint scientific work and revolutionary struggle. The extant original of this letter bears no date. The approximate time of its writing was determined on the basis of Engels' letter to Marx of 19 November 1844 (see this volume, pp. 9-14). This letter was published in English in full for the first time in: Marx and Engels. Selected Correspondence, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955.—3
[233] On 26 September 1848 the Prussian authorities, fearing the growing revolutionary-democratic movement, declared a state of siege in Cologne (it was lifted on 2 October). By order of the military command political organisations and associations were banned, the civic militia disbanded, democratic newspapers, including the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, suspended, and an order issued for the arrest of Engels and a few other editors. Engels and Dronke had to leave Cologne. For a time Engels lived in hiding in Barmen. On 5 October Engels and Dronke arrived in Paris after a short stay in Belgium whence they were expelled by the police. Dronke remained in the French capital and wrote to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from there, while Engels started on foot for Switzerland via the south-west of France. About 24 October he arrived in Geneva and at the beginning of November moved to Lausanne (these facts served as a basis for establishing the date of this letter and those by Marx which followed and were not dated); Engels arrived in Neuchâtel on 7 November and in Berne on 9 November. He stayed there until mid-January 1849 when it was possible for him to return to Germany. Engels' letter written to Marx from Geneva has not been found.—177, 185,
[263] Jenny Marx spent June 1849 in her native town of Trier. On July 7 she joined her husband in Paris accompanied by her three children and Hélène Demuth (the Marxes' housekeeper).—201, 207, 546,555
[562] Instead of an article on Prussia, Engels soon wrote a series