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Special pages :
Berlin Miscellany
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 2
Marked with the sign ‘x’
Berlin, August 19. I am writing to you today to report that there is really nothing to report from here. Heaven knows, it is now the silly season or gherkin time, as they say here. Nothing is happening, absolutely nothing! The Union of the Historical Christ gives no more signs of life than the Union of the Free [1]; although officially it exists, no student really knows where it exists or who belongs to it. It is probably the same as with the famous torchlight procession six months ago for the philosopher in the Leipziger Strasse, [2] in which, too, no student would afterwards admit having taken part, and of which it was already said the day before that they were unfortunately mostly “philistines”. The Commissions of the Estates have not yet materialised either, in spite of the Leipziger Zeitung which, with its passion for unhatched Prussian eggs, conducts interminable debates on whatever is to be placed before the Commissions. [3] But we console ourselves with the wisdom of our King, b and leave the unhatched eggs in peace. He is said to have brought with him a trade treaty and a new cartel convention, and that will certainly not be unhatched eggs! Far from bothering about that, we — I mean we Berliners — envy the Rhinelanders the great enjoyment that will be theirs in a few weeks, when not only our King, but many other persons of high rank, including the worthy King Ludwig of Bavaria, the poet on the throne, author of Walhallagenossen and founder of Valhalla, [4] will attend the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral, which is to be completed as an ornament for the German people. The Walhallagenossen caused a lively sensation in local educated circles, and the general, competent judgment pronounces without qualification that King Ludwig has added a new laurel branch to his crown. Terse as Tacitus’, strong and elementally forceful, the King’s style can be confident of imitation and yet will only rarely be equalled.
- ↑ “The Free"-the Berlin group of Young Hegelians which was formed in the first half of 1842 and was led by Edgar Bauer, Eduard Meyen, Ludwig Buhl and Max Stirner (pseudonym of Caspar Schmidt). Its members advocated radical and atheistic views and condemned the half-heartedness of liberalism. The fact that “The Free” lacked any positive programme and ignored the realities of political struggle soon led to differences between them and the representatives of the revolutionary-democratic wing of the German opposition movement. A sharp conflict arose between “The Free” and Marx in the autumn — of 1842, after Marx had become editor of the Rheinische Zeitung (see MECW, Vol. 1, pp. 393-95). During his stay in Berlin Engels associated closely with “The Free” but, unlike many of them, he held that it was necessary to go beyond purely atheistic propaganda and take part in the actual struggle for political liberties and democracy. Engels’ revolutionary-democratic convictions, which found expression in the satirical poem The Insolently Threatened Yet Miraculously Rescued Bible, together with his developing materialistic outlook, led to his parting company with “The Free” and the Young Hegelian trend in general.
- ↑ On March 18, 1842, when Schelling finished his lectures on the “philosophy of revelation”, Berlin students organised a torchlight procession in the Leipziger Strasse, where the philosopher lived
- ↑ The Commissions of the Estates in the Landtags (provincial diets), to which Engels is referring here, were instituted in Prussia in June 1842. Elected by the Landtags from their deputies according to the estates principle, they formed a single advisory body known as the “United Commissions”, which the government intended to convene in Berlin on October 18, 1842. With the help of this body, which was a mockery of a representative institution, Frederick William IV hoped to enforce new taxes and obtain a loan
- ↑ Valhalla (from the name given in Norse mythology to the abode of the souls of slain warriors)-a huge building near Regensburg erected in 1841 by Ludwig I, King of Bavaria. Busts of many famous Germans were collected there Walhalla’s Genossen, geschildert durch König Ludwig den Ersten von Bayern, dem Gründer Walhalla’s was published in Munich in 1842; it contained biographies of Germans whose busts were exhibited in Valhalla.